Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013

Roy Lichtensteinin 2013
New York
Roy Lichtenstein
I he Museum of Contemporary Art, 1 os Angeles
January >" April V 1994
Used b\ permission All rights reserved
Published U the Guggenheim Museum.
1071 I i!( It Avenue. New York, New York 10128
1 1. ml, ovei edition distributed b\
Rjzzoli International Publications, In<
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
M.i\ 26 September 5, 1994
I Ins exhibition has been supported m p.irt by .i generous
grant from I In. Owen ( heatham Foundation
Adilition.il support has been provided by I ufthansa
( lei man \irlines.
I rontispie< e
Gelatin-silver print. 61 x 50.8 cm (2-4 \ 20 inches)
I roni 1 1 »ver:
Detail ol Km Lichtenstein, Gofoi Baroque, 1979
(fig. U
Contents
\u
1
19
45
91
Preface
Acknowledgments
2 ( In ho into [cons I arly Pop Pictures
3 i omi( Strips and Advertising Im i
4 War Comics, 1962 64
5 Girls, 1963 (^
6 Landscapes, 1964
9 Mirrors. 1969 72, and I nl iblatures, l
( >7l 76
11 Futurism, Surrealism, and German Expressionism, 1974 so
12 11k- 1980s
15 Murals. 1964 93
Richard Brown Baker
Jean-Christophe Castelli
Leo Castelli
Stefan T. Edlis Collection
Larry Gagosian, New York
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
McCrory Collection, New York
New York
Maryland
Texas
The Patsy R. .md Raymond D.
Nfasher Collection, Dallas, Texas
National Gallery of Art,
Michael and Judy Ovitz
Waltham, Massachusetts
I )enise and Andrew Saul
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art,
Edinburgh
Sonnabend Collection
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
New York
New York
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
Private collections
Deputy Director and Senior Curator
Clare Bell, Assistant Curator
Tracey Bashkoff, Curatorial Assistant
Linda Thacher, Exhibitions Registrar
Exhibitions and Programming
Services
Collection Services
Services
Timothy Ross. Technical Specialist
Administration
and Planning
Michelle Smigallia. Curatorial Intern
Laura Morns, Assistant Editor
Shelly Lee
M Plus M Inc.
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Justin K. Thannhauser
Wendy L-J. McNeil
Robert M. Gardiner
Mary Sharp Cronson
Robm Chandler Duke
Robert M. Gardiner
Jacques Hachuel Moreno
Thomas M. Messcr
Preface As one of the artists who invented Pop art in the 1960s, R<>\ I ichtenstein shocked the
art world with the new visual syntax of his paintings and sculptures. Merging popular
imagery and "high art," and borrowing the techniques oi advertising and the comics, he
established Ins own unique style and attitude. Representing a composite portrait of
American consumer culture, his oeuvre has exerted .1 worldwide influence for more than
three decades.
Lichtenstem and the Guggenheim Museum have a long-standing relationship.
The Guggenheim mounted its first retrospective exhibition devoted to the works of this
most enduring and important American artist in 1969; now, nearly twenty five years later,
we present our second Lichtenstein retrospective. In addition, his paintings, sculptures,
.md works on paper figure proudly in our permanent collection. In bringing together
works spanning I ichtenstein's entire career, this book and exhibition make evident his
achievement.
I express mv sincere appreciation to the artist for his generous mk\ enthusiastic help
in this project. To Diane Waldman, Deputy Director and Senior Curator, whose curatorial
expertise and knowledge of Lichtenstein's work have brought this presentation and
publication to fruition with sensitivity and intelligence, 1 am especially thankful.
Finally, it is to the individuals and foundations who have generously given then
financial support that 1 owe a great debt of -latitude. We are especially thankful to I eo
Castelli for his aid to the project. Acknowledgment is also due to The Owen Cheatham
Foundation; Stephen and Nan Sw.d: Stephen Ma/oh and Co., Inc.; and The Merrill ( !
and Emita E. Hastings Foundation; their contributions and assistance have been vital to
the success of this exhibition. My appreciation is also extended to I uftliansa German
Airlines for its continuing support of the Guggenheim and all its endeavors,
Thomas Krens
Director
Acknowledgments It has been a rare privilege to organize this second retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein's
paintings and sculptures. I first had the pleasure of presenting his work to audiences at the
Guggenheim Museum in 1969. It would have been impossible then as it would be now to
achieve such an undertaking without the generous cooperation of the artist himself. I am
grateful for the unwavering support that he has given me in this project. Over the years,
he has shared his insights and reminiscences And provided indispensable information on his
influences, motivations, and details about his work. His keen perception and unfailing
humor have added greatly to our diseussions. That same boundless spirit of interaction and
exchange has enabled Lichtenstein to produce a body of work whose originality of
expression and style are appreciated worldwide. Today, nearly twenty-five years after his
first retrospective at this museum, he continues to have an enormous impact on the art of
our time.
As I traced the development of his oeuvre since the late l
( J(><>s, it was evident that new
inquiries had to be made 111 locating the whereabouts of many key works from different
periods. I am especially grateful to Elizabeth Richebourg Rca tor her tireless and
painstaking contributions in this and other areas of research and documentation.
New information on Lichtenstein's work was brought to my attention by many
colleagues, through personal conversations as well as published and unpublished materials.
My gratitude is extended to those who generously volunteered their findings and
recollections, including Richard Bellamy; Irving Blum; James Corcoran; Constance
Glenn; James Goodman; Joseph Helman; Tim Hunt, Director of The Warhol Foundation;
Ivan Karp; Margo Leavin; Dorothy Lichtenstein; James Mayor; Lucy Mitchell-Innes,
Senior Vice-President of Contemporary Paintings at Sotheby's, New York; George Segal;
Daniel Templon; Phyllis Tuchman; Diane Upright, Vice-President of Contemporary Art
at Christie's, New York, and her staff; and Leslie Waddington. I would also like to thank
Curly Grogan for his advice and support. To the staff members at the numerous libraries,
universities, and museums that we contacted tor essential bibliographic information and
details of Lichtenstein's exhibition history, 1 am also most grateful.
This exhibition and publication could not have been accomplished without the help of
Lichtenstein's studio assistants. A deep debt of thanks is extended to Cassandra Lozano for
her enormous help on so many aspects of both projects, and for her assistance in
facilitating the use of the artist's archives by members of the Guggenheim Museum's stall I
am sincerely grateful to James di Pasquale, Shelly Lee. Robert McKeever, and Heather
Ramsdell for their invaluable participation in the planning and implementation of the
show and publication.
My thanks are due especially to Leo Castelli and the staff of his gallery, in particular
Susan Brundage, Director, and Patty Brundage, Associate Director, for providing crucial
information about Lichtenstein's paintings and sculpture. To Larry Gagosian, Melissa
McGrath, Robert Pincus-Witten, and others at the Gagosian Gallery working on the Roy
Lichtenstein catalogue raisonne, I wish to extend my gratitude for supplying us with
much-needed data as well as a range of important materials.
An exhibition of this magnitude could never be achieved without the assistance of the
entire staff of the Guggenheim Museum. I am deeply indebted to Clare Bell, Assistant
Curator, who managed every phase of the project, contributed to the research, and wrote
the chronology. My gratitude also goes to Tracey Bashkoff, ( uratorial Assistant; Julia
Blaut, Research Assistant, who compiled the bibliography; and Susan Joan Schenk,
Research Assistant. In addition, I would like to thank the dedicated interns who have
volunteered their services on the project over the course of several years: Karrie Ad.mum,
Sarah Ellen Cunningham, Blythe Kingston, Michelle Mahoney, James Rondeau. K\
Sta. Iglesia, and Michelle Sinigallia.
Among those most involved with the presentation were 1 inda Thacher, Exhibitions
Registrar, who coordinated the intricate details of transportation foi works m the
exhibition; Pamela Myers, Administrator for Exhibitions .\\k\ Programming, who oversaw
all technical aspects of the installation and who. with the help oi Scott Wixon, Manager of
Installation and Collection Services, negotiated the complex details of bringing
Lichtenstcms larger works into the museum and installing them on the ramps and town
galleries; and Carol Strmgari. Associate ( ouservator, whose expertise was invaluable. To
those staffmembers in the areas of Fabrication. Lighting. Collection Services, and Design
who also gave their tune and energy to the project. I am most grateful.
A monograph of this scope could not have been accomplished without the talents o\
Anthony Calnek, Managing Editor, who supervised evei \ asp< Ct ol its publication, mu\
Stephen Robert Frankel, Editor of the monograph, whose critical comments, editing, and
advice were indispensable to m\ essay. My deep appreciation to rakaaki Matsumoto ol
M Plus M Inc. for designing the book. 1 would also like to extend a sincere note ot
gratitude to the other members of the Publii ations Department: Elizabeth 1 evy,
Production Editor, who coordinated production of the book; and 1 aura Morns. Assistant
Editor, and Jennifer Knox, Editorial Assistant, for their expertise on the project.
Others on the Guggenheim's staffwho have worked diligently in helping to realize this
exhibition and its accompanying catalogue include Amy Husten, Manager of Budget and
Planning; Glory Jones, Public Affairs Officer; Ward Jackson, Archivist; Son,.. Bay,
Librarian; Tara Massarskv, Assistant Librarian; Stuart Gerstein, Director of Wholesale and
Retail Operations; and Susan Landesmann, Production Assistant.
The names of lenders to the exhibition appear in the catalogue (except those who
wished to remain anonymous). I thank them wholeheartedl) for enabling us to
bring together many of I achtenstcins most important paintings and sculptures; without
their generosity and enthusiastic assistance, this exhibition would not be possible.
Diane Waldman
The Early Years
I. Roy Liechtenstein, Washington Crossing lite Delaware /, ca 1951 < >il Oil canvas,
crion
,op 2. Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851 Oil oil
canvas, 387 5 x 644 7 cm (149 x 255 inches). The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
New York, Gift ofjohn Stewart Kennedy, 1897
bottom 3. Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 Oil, graphite, and
charcoal on Unen. 212.4x283.5 cm (83 Ixlll inches) Hie Museum ofModern
Art. New York Given inonymousl)
One of the most challenging decades in the history of twentieth i entury rVmei u an art
began in the early 1960s with the inception of the Pop art movement. In February 1962,
at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. K.n Lichtenstein exhibited his first series oi
paintings based on comic strips and advertising images of consumer goods. By/ 1963, he
and other artists of his generation such as Jim Dine, JasperJohns, Claes ( )ldenburg,
Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, George Segal, and Andy Warhol, many ol
whom were working independently, had turned to the common object, popular culture,
or the mass media as the underlying theme of their paintings and sculpture, and effectively
brought to .\n end the long reign of Abstract Expressionism. In a seminal interview in
ARTnewi in 1963, Lichtenstein remarked to critic Gene Swenson that his ambition was to
make a painting that was so ••despicable" that no one would hang it. He noted that
-everybody was hanging everything. It was almost a< ( eptable to lung a dripping paint rag,
everybodx was accustomed to this. The one thing everyone hated was commercial art." In
the interview. Lichtenstein stated that his art—and Pop art in general—was concerned
with the world, and that "art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and
unrealistic, feeding on art; it is Utopian. It has had less and less to do with the world, it
looks inward." Although I ichtenstein maintained that his was not ., i riti< al VOi< e, he
declared that he was "anti-contemplative, anti-nuance, anti-gettmg-away-from-the-
tyranny-of-the-rectangle. anti-movement and -light, anti-mystery, anti pain. -quality, anti-
Zen, and and- all of those brilliant ideas of preceding movements which every
understands so thoroughly"'
In the late 1950s, Abstract Expressionism completely dominated the New York avant-
garde, had spread throughout the United States, and was gaining converts in Europe.
Young "action painters" Hocked to Lenth Street in Manhattan, then a hub tor
experimental art. The Club, an important forum for New York School artists from I'M"
to 1962, located on Eighth Street, and the Cedar Bar on University Place were among the
landmarks that any ambitious young artist knew about or would want to frequ< ril
Heated debates raged on at the Club oxer issues of concern to New York School artists,
but by the late 1950s abstract painting had largely exhausted itself and been repla. ed by a
mannerist style without rage or grace. Few could emulate Jackson Polio, I Barnett
Newman or Clyfford Still, but there were legions of embryonic Willem de Koonings
who content to follow in his wake, blatantly imitated his every gesture. I he shelter that
he provided was as awesome as it was deceptive, and it gave the New York art world a
collective hangover. .
1„ 1952 the influential critic Harold Rosenberg had described Action Painting in the
Mowing manner: "Ifa painting is an action, the sketch is one action, the pamtmg that
follows ,; another. What was to go on the canvas." he pro, [aimed, "was no, ., picture but
,„ event " Rosenberg also believed that the "new painting has broken down .
distinction between art and life." 5 Rosenberg's commitment to action and event found a
remarkable parallel in the attitudes and philosophy ofRauschenberg, , tnfluenced In
the chance theor.es of the influential composer John « ,ge, decided to act ,,, the gap
between art and life. (Rauschenberg became friendly with Cage in 1952 at Black
Mountain College in North Carol,,,,/) In a statement written lor the catalogue ol v- „
a,,,,,,, ,„ exhibition at the Museum ofModern An ,„ 1959, Rauschenberg wrote.
Chapter 1: The Early Years
4. Marcel Duchamp. Bicycle Wheel, 1913 Original lost; lixth version Gallcria
od md metal numbei eighi ol m edition of eighl i
and numbered replicas, 12 inchi Indiana University An
,-itt ofMrs WiUiam * onroj
Am incentive to paint is as good as any other There is no poo. subject. Painting is
aways strongest when in spite ofcom] tion, color, etc. it appears as a .... t, or an
inevltability, „ opposed to .. souvenir or arrangement. Painting relates to both art and
life. Neither can be made. .1 try to ac. .., that gap between the two.) A pair ol socks ,
„o less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric. A
canvas is never empty.
I„ 1951-52 Rauschenberg made a series of Black Paintings, in many ofwhich he
combined painting and newsprint. In IOS2-53. he produced his Elemental Sculptures, ,
memorable group ofboxed found objects, which were shown at the Stable Callers m the
mtumn of 1953. He also began to attach three-dimensional objects to his canvases; by
1955 he had created such epic combine paintings as Bed (fig. 14). Hymnal, and Rebus,
some of the images ofwhich were prototypes for images that appeared a few years later m
several of Warhol's and Lichtenstein's early works. Rebus includes a double page ol comic
strips front a Sunday newspaper among its evocations of urban life, and Hymnal features a
Manhattan telephone directory (minus us cover) and an F.B.I, "most wanted man poster.
Rauschenberg and [ohns, who first met in the winter of 1953-54, were profoundly
important to the development of Pop art because they celebrated mass culture by
presenting some of us most cherished artifacts in a line-arts context. For example,
Rauschenberg incorporated portions of newspaper comas pages in his works throughout
1954-SS and Coca-Cola bottles in some of lus combines, such as Coca Cola Plan, 1958,
,nd |ohns replicated Ballantine Ale cans in his Painted Bronze (Ale Cans) (fig. 5), I960. (In
1958 Johns also used a comic-Strip image, basing the central figure of his painting Alley-
Oop on Vincent Hamlin's 1931 strip "Alley-Oop") Both Rauschenberg and Johns
renewed a dialogue begun bv Marcel Duchamp in 1913, when the eminent Dadaist
mounted a bicycle wheel on a painted wooden stool (fig. 4). In presenting these and other
found objects, such as the notorious urinal that he had signed "R. Mutt" and entitled
Fountain (fig. 6), 1917. as works of art. Duchamp called into question the nature of the art
object w.thrn the larger issue of the meaning of art itself. In reinterpreting Duchamp. both
Rauschenberg and Johns transformed common objects into uncommon works of art.
Lichtenstein himself was a late convert to Abstract Expressionism. He began making
paintings m this mode in 1957 and did not abandon the style until 196(1. It was a
remarkably late date to become an Expressionist, as the high point of the movement had
long since passed. From Lichtenstein's point of view, however. Abstract Expressionism was
the only viable alternative in the 1950s. Like most artists living on the fringe of a
movement, he avidly followed its latest developments from afar— specifically, Ohio, where
he was living and working, reading ARTnews and other magazines devoted to the
paintings and sculpture of the New York School. He also made several trips to New York,
where, at galleries such as Charles Egan's and Betty Parsons's, he could see the Abstract
Expressionists' work firsthand. In June 1959. he exhibited some of his Abstract
Expressfonist paintings at the Condon Riley Gallery in New York. These canvases express
a self-conscious styhzation that was surely unintentional and that now. in retrospect, seems
to be a link between his otherwise dissimilar paintings of Americana of 1949-51, his
Cubist and Abstract Expressionist phases, and his Pop paintings of the earlv 1960s. In
196(1. he made some paintings in which he used torn bedsheets to apply the paint.
top 5. jasper Johns, Painted Bronze {Ah- Cms). I960 Painted bronze, 14 x 20.3 X
12 I cm (5 14x8x4 Ya inches). Museum Ludwig, * ologne
,.,.«,,„ 6. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain. 1917 Original lost; $e< I version Sidney
[anis Gallery. Nev York 1951 Pveadymade porcelain urinal. 61 cm (24 inchi
( ourtesj Sidney [anis Gallery, New York
producing drips th.it resemble cascading ribbons of color (see fig. I 3) In other paintings
from this period, areas of bare canvas are complemented by painted areas, or certain
brushstrokes and colors are used only m specific areas of .1 canvas. Superficially, the
paintings resemble the Abstract Expressionist idiom in that thc\ h ature many of the
movement's mannerisms; however, there is a deliberation about even the most painterly of
these canvases that separates them from the tot.il abandonment thai ( haia< terizes the best
work of the Abstract Expressionists.
Lichtenstem understood many of the fundamental issues invoked in Abstract
Expressionism, but he resisted its metaphysical go.ils and its heroi< posture. An art oi
compelling inner necessity m which intuition, randomness, and spontaneity pl.i\ a
prominent role is a poor match for an artist more temperamentally suited to making
pictures than creating events. 1 lchtenstem found his inspiration not m the blank canvas 01
through action, not in the unconscious mind, but in the world around him. Although
many artists of the New York School had been, in the early stages of their development,
devoted advocates of Cubism, they had abandoned it for Surrealism sev( 1 ll years before
they came into their own. This was due. in part, to the presence in New York of main ol
the European Surrealists—Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Yves L.ngnv, and
oth crs—vv }10 h aa fled Europe tor the United States during the Nazi occupation.
Lichtenstem s continuing dependence on Synthetic Cubism undermined his ability to
adapt to Abstract Expressionism, since the latter movement was founded, in sonic measure.
on a rejection of European art in order to create .111 authentically American art. Thus, as
Abstract Expressionist paintings. I ichtenstem's canvases seem studied, but they clearly
show two important, lasting…