Roy Lichtenstein’s aesthetic is pathetic, melodramatic. With tears in her eyes and cheesy text in the speech bubble – “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than ask Brad for help!” the blue beauty is weakening, her eyes are closed and she seems to be sinking in a sea of turbulent waves.
This painting of 171 by 169 centimeters from 1963 is one of the images created by Pop Art inventor Roy Lichtenstein. In Vienna’s Albertina, visitors quickly encounter her – in a room full of unique portraits of women.
Lichtenstein would have been 100 years old in 2023, but Corona has disrupted all plans for an anniversary exhibition. The Whitney Museum of American Art he is not planning his centenary exhibition until 2026. So the Albertina offered to present the big birthday exhibition in Vienna now, a feast for the eyes and for the artist’s fans. The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and family expressed their gratitude for the generous gift of 95 works, paintings, tapestries, sculptures, prints and models.
Roy Lichtenstein, “We rose slowly”, 1964
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/Bildrecht, Vienna 2024
The exhibition begins with famous comic works, which are quite large compared to the small templates that Lichtenstein cut and pasted from magazines, thus emphasizing the kitschy banality of the motif. With his unique style, Lichtenstein brought the comic beauty of love and war magazines into art, which is instantly recognizable, but at the same time reduced to an unrecognizable individual feature.
“The women I paint are just black lines and red dots. “I’d have a hard time rooting for one of these creatures because they’re not really real to me,” Lichtenstein once said. “When I was a child, I thought they were beautiful. Today I can only see the picture drawn.”
Just two years later, Lichtenstein transferred his painting style to plaster mannequin heads. He adds dots and black contour lines to them in the same way as they are in the pictures he has now mentioned. In the end, he copied his motifs from advertising and comics and did everything possible to paint in a style that did not allow individual traces. Nevertheless, his approach with a dot grid and clear contour lines has become a unique trademark.
He didn’t just paint pictures: Roy Lichtenstein’s A Carpet (1967).
© Roy Lichtenstein Estate/ Bildrecht, Vienna 2024
While Lichtenstein first painted the dots by hand, he then used stencils, and later his assistants executed them as in the studio of an old master. The so-called Ben-Day Dots come from printing technology. Like the pointillists, Lichtenstein succeeds in obtaining a color that appears violet from a distance by condensing and overlapping red and blue dots. He paints as if he were printed.
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Lichtenstein soon began creating smaller landscapes in this style, including sunsets by the sea in blue and white. He picks up styles from art history, but not by copying specific works, but by applying the individual style to his humorous painting style. This continues in tapestries and large format rugs.
Roy Lichtenstein, “Drowning Girl”, 1963
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/Bildrecht, Vienna 2024
Presented for the first time is a large selection of sculptures that he created first from painted wood and then from bronze. He will accomplish the impossible: who casts the rays of light from a torch with a beam of light on the floor in bronze? Lichtenstein manages this, three-dimensional and still smooth, so that the sculpture in the end looks like a real Lichtenstein with its contour lines.
View of the Albertina Museum
© IMAGO/Leopold Nekula/VIENNAERPORT
The world abstract artists like Jackson Pollock it was not for Lichtenstein. He made fun of this singularity and painted an exaggerated brushstroke in the comic style he tried, making the individual movement frozen, a picture of violent movement.
Information about the exhibition and more cultural recommendations for Vienna:
- “Ry Lichtenstein. For the 100th birthday»to July 14 in the Albertina Vienna, daily 10am to 6pm, Wednesday and Friday 10am to 9pm. More information at: albertina.at
- “Die Dubarry”. Operetta by Carl Millöcker and Theo Mackeben, 20th May, 24th, 29th and 5th June, 9th and 12th, Volksoper in Vienna, volksoper.at
- “In the eye of the storm. Modernisms in Ukraine”, exhibition until June 2, Lower Belvederedaily 10am to 6pm, belvedere.at
- Beethoven, Mass Op. 123. Concerto by the Vienna Philharmonic, conductor Adam Fischer. Music society24th and 25th May, 7.30pm, music.at
He adds to this effect by casting the seemingly spontaneous brushstroke in bronze and painting it. He also discovers his humorous style in bronze sculptures such as “Coup de Chapeau II”. A hat is waved up and draws a trail of air behind it, just as one draws motion in a comic.
“Wallpaper with blue interior floor”, screenprint from 1992
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/Bildrecht, Vienna 2024
In his late work, Lichtenstein focuses on carefully painted interiors that convey a cold, anonymous, impersonal richness. “America has been hit harder and harder by industrialism and capitalism, and its values seem to be even more shattered than in the rest of the world. “I think the essence of my work is that it shows what the whole world will be like in the near future,” Lichtenstein once said.
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2024-05-09 15:50:19
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