Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Fox Lichtenstein[2] (/ˈlɪktənˌstaɪn/; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the premise of pop art through parody.[3] Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style. His artwork was considered to be "disruptive".[4] He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting".[5] His paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.
Roy Lichtenstein
October 27, 1923
September 29, 1997 (aged 73)
- Painting
- sculpture
- Look Mickey (1961)
- Drowning Girl (1963)
- In the Car (1963)
- Whaam! (1963)
- Oh, Jeff...I Love You, Too...But... (1964)
- Girl with Hair Ribbon (1965)
- Brushstrokes (1965)
2, including Mitchell
Whaam!, Drowning Girl, and Look Mickey proved to be his most influential works.[6] His most expensive piece is Masterpiece, which was sold for $165 million in 2017.[7]
Early years[edit]
Lichtenstein was born into an upper middle class German-Jewish family in New York City.[2][8][9] His father, Milton, was a real estate broker, his mother, Beatrice (née Werner), a homemaker.[10] He was raised on New York City's Upper West Side and attended public school until the age of twelve. He then attended New York's Dwight School, graduating from there in 1940. Lichtenstein first became interested in art and design as a hobby, through school.[11] He was an avid jazz fan, often attending concerts at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.[11] He frequently drew portraits of the musicians playing their instruments.[11] In his last year of high school, 1939, Lichtenstein enrolled in summer classes at the Art Students League of New York, where he worked under the tutelage of Reginald Marsh.[12]
Personal life[edit]
In 1949, Lichtenstein married Isabel Wilson, who previously had been married to Ohio artist Michael Sarisky.[70] However, the brutal upstate winters took a toll on Lichtenstein and his wife,[71] after he began teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1958. The couple sold the family home in Highland Park, New Jersey, in 1963[72] and divorced in 1965.
Lichtenstein married his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, in 1968.[73] In the late 1960s, they rented a house in Southampton, New York that Larry Rivers had bought around the corner from his own house.[74] Three years later, they bought a 1910 carriage house facing the ocean on Gin Lane.[74] From 1970 until his death, Lichtenstein split his time between Manhattan and Southampton.[75] He also had a home on Captiva Island.[76]
In 1991, Lichtenstein began an affair with singer Erica Wexler who became the muse for his Nudes series including the 1994 "Nudes with Beach Ball". She was 22 and he was 68.[77] The affair lasted until 1994 and was over when Wexler went to England with future husband Andy Partridge of XTC. According to Wexler, Lichtenstein and his wife Dorothy had an understanding and they both had significant others in addition to their marriage.
Lichtenstein died of pneumonia on September 29, 1997[20] at New York University Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized for several weeks, at age 73.[10] He was survived by his second wife, Dorothy Herzka,[78] and by his sons, David and Mitchell, from his first marriage.
Relevance[edit]
Pop art continues to influence the 21st century. Pop Art from the Collection features a wide range selection of screenprints by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as an assortment of Warhol's Polaroid photographs known as the leading figures of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Warhol and Lichtenstein are celebrated for exploring the relationship between fine art, advertising, and consumerism. Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were both used in U2's 1997, 1998 PopMart Tour and in an exhibition in 2007 at the British National Portrait Gallery.[79]
Among many other works of art lost in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, a painting from Lichtenstein's The Entablature Series was destroyed in the subsequent fire.[80]
Exhibitions[edit]
In 1964, Lichtenstein became the first American to exhibit at the Tate Gallery, London, on the occasion of the show "'54–'64: Painting and Sculpture of a Decade." In 1967, his first museum retrospective exhibition was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in California. The same year, his first solo exhibition in Europe was held at museums in Amsterdam, London, Bern and Hannover.[70] Lichtenstein later participated in documentas IV (1968) and VI in (1977). Lichtenstein had his first retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1969, organized by Diane Waldman. The Guggenheim presented a second Lichtenstein retrospective in 1994.[55] Lichtenstein became the first living artist to have a solo drawing exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art from March – June 1987.[81] Recent retrospective surveys include the 2003 "All About Art", Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in Denmark (which traveled on to the Hayward Gallery, London, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid,[82] and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, until 2005); and "Classic of the New", Kunsthaus Bregenz (2005), "Roy Lichtenstein: Meditations on Art" Museo Triennale, Milan (2010, traveled to the Museum Ludwig, Cologne). In late 2010 The Morgan Library & Museum showed Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961–1968.[83] Another major retrospective opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2012 before going to the National Gallery of Art in Washington,[84] Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2013.[85] 2013:Roy Lichtenstein, Olyvia Fine Art. 2014: Roy Lichtenstein: Intimate Sculptures, The FLAG Art Foundation. Roy Lichtenstein: Opera Prima, Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Arts, Turin.[86] 2018: Exhibition at The Tate Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.
Collections[edit]
In 1996 the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. became the largest single repository of the artist's work when Lichtenstein donated 154 prints and 2 books. The Art Institute of Chicago has several important works by Lichtenstein in its permanent collection, including Brushstroke with Spatter (1966) and Mirror No. 3 (Six Panels) (1971). The personal holdings of Lichtenstein's widow, Dorothy Lichtenstein, and of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation number in the hundreds.[87] In Europe, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne has one of the most comprehensive Lichtenstein holdings with Takka Takka (1962), Nurse (1964), Compositions I (1964), besides the Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunst with We rose up slowly (1964) and Yellow and Green Brushstrokes (1966). Outside the United States and Europe, the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler Collection has extensive holdings of Lichtenstein's prints, numbering over 300 works. In total there are some 4,500 works thought to be in circulation.[2]
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation[edit]
After the artist's death in 1997, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation was established in 1999. In 2011, the foundation's board decided the benefits of authenticating were outweighed by the risks of protracted lawsuits.[88]
In late 2006, the foundation sent out a holiday card featuring a picture of Electric Cord (1961), a painting that had been missing since 1970 after being sent out to art restorer Daniel Goldreyer by the Leo Castelli Gallery. The card urged the public to report any information about its whereabouts.[89] In 2012, the foundation authenticated the piece when it surfaced at a New York City warehouse.[90]
Between 2008 and 2012, following the death of photographer Harry Shunk in 2006,[91] the Lichtenstein Foundation acquired the collection of photographic material shot by Shunk and his János Kender as well as the photographers' copyright.[92] In 2013, the foundation donated the Shunk-Kender trove to five institutions – Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art in Washington; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; and the Tate in London – that will allow each museum access to the others' share.[92]