Knock Knock

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Roy Lichtenstein
Knock Knock
1975

About the Item

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was one of the most successful and influential artists of the 20th century, helping pioneer and define Pop Art in the 1960's. Lichtenstein's signature style mined images from comic books and advertisements, elevating them beyond their humble or banal sources. Using hand-painted, single-color Ben-Day dots, Lichtenstein sought to emphasize the artificiality of his images by mimicking the look of commercial press production - to the point that his own brushstrokes nearly disappear. Artificiality, appropriation, parody, consumer culture, and the undying question "What is considered art?" were asked by Pop Art - and all play an obvious and essential role in Lichtenstein's oeuvre. Having achieved international recognition and success throughout the 1960's, Lichtenstein turned away form his comic book subjects and began experimenting with new subjects and styles. During this time he created a body of work exploring cubism, surrealism, and the limits of a 'signature style'. This iconic poster was created to promote the exhibition "Dessins de Lichtenstein" ("Drawings of Lichtenstein") at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain (CNAC) in Paris from January 11th- February 16th, 1975. True to the exhibition's focus, Lichtenstein created a stripped-down, hand-drawn comic style image for the poster. "Knock Knock" is an onomatopoeic phrase, not only mirroring the sound of knocking, but cleverly mirroring the acronym (CNAC) representing the publisher/venue where the exhibition was held. This word play pun perfectly showcases Lichtenstein's sense of humour within his signature style.

Creator:
Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997, American)
Creation Year:
1975
Dimensions:
Height: 27.5 in (69.85 cm)Width: 18.9 in (48.01 cm)
Medium:
Lithograph,Offset
Movement & Style:
Pop Art
Period:
Late 20th Century
Condition:
Signed by the artist. Framed with museum glass. Publisher: Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Paris.
Gallery Location:
Toronto, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: 07-201stDibs: LU21526436042

Shop All Roy Lichtenstein

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.

Find a collection of Roy Lichtenstein prints, drawings and more on 1stDibs.