Roy Lichtenstein
Mirror #7 (C.112), 1972
1972

About the Item

Mirror #7 (C.112) is a screenprint and lithograph on paper, 29.75 x 17.37 inches, signed and dated 'rf Lichtenstein '72' lower right and numbered 62/80 lower left. From the edition of 96 (there were also 10 AP, and 6 other various proofs). Framed in a contemporary white frame. Catalog - Corlett, The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein - A Catalogue Raisonne 1948 - 1997, Hudson Hills Press, NY and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2002, pg.125, #112. About Lichtenstein’s Mirror Series (taken from Corlett): Mirrors were an important subject in Lichtenstein’s paintings and prints of the early 1970s. From late 1969 to 1972 he painted over forty canvases depicting this subject. The first print was in 1970, with Twin Mirrors (cat. no.102) for the Guggenheim Museum. In 1972 he also produced Mirror (cat. No. 115) at Styria Studio, in addition to this Gemini G.E.L. series of nine prints. In the mid-seventies he took up the subject in sculpture, and he returned to it in prints as recently 1990, with Mirror (cat. No 246). In addition, he has often explored the related theme of reflections, incorporating them in various paintings and in several print series: Reflections (1990; cat. Nos. 239 – 245), Interiors (1990, published 1991; cat. nos. 247 – 54), and Water Lilies (1992; cat. nos. 261 – 66). This Gemini group (cat. nos. 106 - 114) utilizes lithography, screenprint, line-cut, and embossing... In an interview with Lawrence Alloway, Lichtenstein noted: “You know, I am always impressed by how artificial things look – like descriptions of office furniture in newspapers. It is the most dry kind of drawing, as in the Mirrors. They really only look like mirrors if someone tells you they do. Only once you know that, they may be moved as far as possible from realism, but you want it to be taken for realism. It becomes as stylized as you can get away with, in an ordinary sense, not stylish.” As Jack Cowart has commented: “One would not actually stand in front of a Lichtenstein Mirror to straighten one’s hat, but one does think about it.” Corlett, The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein - A Catalogue Raisonne 1948 - 1997, Hudson Hills Press, NY and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2002

Creator:
Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997, American)
Creation Year:
1972
Dimensions:
Height: 46 in (116.84 cm)Width: 33 in (83.82 cm)
Medium:
Lithograph,Screen
Movement & Style:
Pop Art
Period:
20th Century
Condition:
generally excellent condition with some minor handling dents, soiling in the margin, scattered scuffs and corner tip wear; sheet is slightly toned.
Gallery Location:
Greenwich, CT
Reference Number:
Seller: GRLIH0112SC1stDibs: LU2664213765202
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Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein is one of the principal figures of the American Pop art movement, along with Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg.

Drawing inspiration from comic strips, Lichtenstein appropriated techniques commercial printing in his paintings, introducing a vernacular sensibility to the visual landscape of contemporary art. He employed visual elements such as the halftone dots that comprise a printed image, and a comic-inspired use of primary colors gave his paintings their signature “Pop” palette.

Born and raised in New York City, Lichtenstein enjoyed Manhattan’s myriad cultural offerings and comic books in equal measure. He began painting seriously as a teenager, studying watercolor painting at the Parsons School of Design in the late 1930s, and later at the Art Students League, where he worked with American realist painter Reginald Marsh. He began his undergraduate education at Ohio State University in 1940, and after a three-year stint in the United States Army during World War II, he completed his bachelor’s degree and then his master’s in fine arts. The roots of Lichtenstein’s interest in the convergence of high art and popular culture are evident even in his early years in Cleveland, where in the late 1940s, he taught at Ohio State, designed window displays for a department store and painted his own pieces.

Working at the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the 1950s, Lichtenstein deliberately eschewed the sort of painting that was held in high esteem by the art world and chose instead to explore the visual world of print advertising and comics. This gesture of recontextualizing a lowbrow image by importing it into a fine-art context would become a trademark of Lichtenstein’s artistic style, as well as a vehicle for his critique of the concept of good taste. His 1963 painting Whaam! confronts the viewer with an impact scene from a 1962-era issue of DC Comics’ All American Men of War. Isolated from its larger context, this image combines the playful lettering and brightly colored illustration of the original comic with a darker message about military conflict at the height of the Cold War. Crying Girl from the same year featured another of Lichtenstein’s motifs — a woman in distress, depicted with a mixture of drama and deadpan humor. His work gained a wider audience by creating a comic-inspired mural for the New York State Pavilion of the 1964 World's Fair, he went on to be represented by legendary New York gallerist Leo Castelli for 30 years.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Lichtenstein experimented with abstraction and began exploring basic elements of painting, as in this 1989 work Brushstroke Contest. In addition to paintings in which the brushstroke itself became the central subject, in 1984 he created a large-scale sculpture called Brushstrokes in Flight for the Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio. Still Life with Windmill from 1974 and the triptych Cow Going Abstract from 1982 both demonstrate a break from his earlier works where the subjects were derived from existing imagery. Here, Lichtenstein paints subjects more in line with the norms of art history — a pastoral scene and a still life — but he has translated their compositions into his signature graphic style, in which visual elements of printed comics are still a defining feature.

Lichtenstein’s work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and many others. He was awarded National Medal of Arts in 1995, two years before he passed away.

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