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Lot Essay
With commanding linear clarity and graphic intensity, Roy Lichtenstein’s The Kiss is a striking masterpiece heralding the beginning of the American Pop artist’s famed mature style. One of the few highly-finished independent presentation drawings made by the artist, The Kiss is also one of the first instances of Lichtenstein’s iconic Ben-Day dot patterns, magisterially used to indicate light and shadow across the couple’s faces, unveiling the artistic process which would later inform his most important works. Executed in graphite pencil, The Kiss is a rare opportunity to examine the hand of an otherwise mechanically pristine artist. Intitially acquired directly from the artist by his friend, the prominent art critic and curator David Whitney, the work has been a highlight of several prestigious collections. The related painting, which follows a similar composition, has similarly been prodigiously exhibited, making the image one of the most well-known from the artist’s oeuvre. The impact of Lichtenstein’s first drawings on the art world were immediate, with curator Isabelle Deveraux describing the works as “the most original contribution of Pop Art to the history of drawing” (I. Deveraux, "Baked Potatoes, Hot Dogs and Girls' Romances: Roy Lichtenstein's Master Drawings," in Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings 1961-1968, exh. cat., Morgan Library and Museum, New York, 2011, p. 15).
The fervent embrace between the pilot and the woman is searingly rendered, the intimate moment poignantly encapsulated within the contours of the composition. Here, Lichtenstein created an entirely new system of drawing by synthesizing two apparently diametrical opposites, bringing together a parody of Pablo Picasso’s graphic drawing with the uniform representational drawing made by commercial illustrators for comic books and popular ads. Lichenstein ingeniously translates an image taken from a comic into a complex composition, elevating the protean subject to the status of high art. The artist eliminates any extraneous detail, completely flattening the image against the paper sheet, doing without perspective or illusionistic natural space to focus intensely on the internal drama between the two figures. His carefully adjusted framing edges, compressing the composition into a cropped close-up, makes the image appear more the a film still than a cartoon, which curator Bernice Rose describes as having “all the pseudo-drama of a freeze-frame” (B. Rose, The Drawings of Roy Lichtenstein, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p. 21).
As Rose notes, the first appearance of these works were “astonishing slaps to both the prevailing avant-garde tradition and the aesthetic of drawing” (Ibid., p. 15). Lichtenstein’s bold innovation in Pop Art reexamined representational drawing, one of the most established aspects of the Western artistic tradition, into a radical exercise, parodying the traditional forms which it illustrated with a certain ironic and humorous aloofness. The probing, hard-edge lines and sharp edges in the work reveal Lichtenstein first working out the style and technique which he would later adapt across his entire oeuvre. Rose summates the importance of his drawings to the artist, writing that “drawing is both the core of his aesthetic and an essential part of the making of his art. It is the point of departure for a new order in painting” (Ibid.).
Amid the many linear and textural inventions evinced in The Kiss, the tightly weaved lines and patterns spread across both visages are perhaps the most important. The artist had first experimented with recreating the Ben-Day dots from comic books the prior year, rubbing a dog-grooming brush dipped in ink over a sheet of aluminum drilled through with holes. He was discontented with his first attempts, desiring for their effect to appear less hand-made and more mechanical. His innovation here is using a frottage technique, placing the paper over a window screen and rubbing the graphite into the grains of the paper, thus creating the pattern. Varying the pressure on his tool allowed him to create subtle changes in tone, the effortless appearance of the result acquired through a great degree of precision and experimentation.
The subject matter is of great import to the artist, and functions both as a broadly autobiographical gesture and as a unifying motif across several of his drawings. Lichtenstein had trained as a U.S. Army pilot during World War II before being transferred to make cartoons for the Army magazine. Pilots are a recurring motif in both his first drawings and across his career, appearing in Jet Pilot (1962, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), as well as the paintings Brattata (1962, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art) and Wham! (1963, Tate Modern, London). While the other works focus more on the action of flying, The Kiss removes the pilot from his plane, seen only as a two-dimensional form barely abutting the upper right, to instead express what critic Robert Rosenblum describes as a latent eroticism where “the ‘girl next door’ meets her mate, a virile Air Force pilot who seems to have dropped from the clouds in order to provide the total ecstasy that, in a less secularized society, was once experienced by a swooning Santa Teresa” (R. Rosenblum, quoted in Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, op. cit., p. 116).
Lichtenstein was exacting in his choice of materials, utilizing only the highest quality supplies in contrast to his cheaply produced source images. The Kiss is on neutral toned white hot pressed Arches paper, which had a smooth texture and refined finish which allowed him to create his precise images. Its thickness and quality meant that the support withstood the heavily reinforced pencil lines, scraping, and frottage which entailed his intense drawing technique. As art historian Margaret Holben Ellis and conservator Lindsey Tyne note, Lichtenstein’s drawings “are best viewed in the original because their evocative function is negated when they are reproduced in the very printing technique—offset lithography—they sought to imitate. On printed page, the reproduced image is often cropped and its -black-and-white contrast exaggerated, thus minimizing the subtle nuances of paper and drawing” (M. H. Ellis and L. Tyne, “‘Mechanical’ Drawings in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in op. cit., p. 61).
The Kiss, along with Lichtenstein’s other early drawings, had a vast impact on the course of the artist’s career as well as on the development of Pop Art. The work is perhaps most important in the way that it exposes the artistry which lays latent behind all of the artist’s works, but is often obscured in his larger paintings. The New York Times critic Roberta Smith articulates the success of these drawings, writing, “the artist's hand is everywhere, adjusting the density of the dots from faint to dark (sometimes by doubling them up), filling in areas so that even finer lines have a slightly chiseled, insistent roughness, and making useful discoveries... What is perhaps most striking is his determination to have the entire sheet of paper come alive and register as a whole. This electricity unifies nearly all his paintings, edge to edge, with a bracing combination of the familiar and the abstract that still has few equals in modern art" (R. Smith, "Following the Dots Around the City," New York Times, 24 September 2010).
The fervent embrace between the pilot and the woman is searingly rendered, the intimate moment poignantly encapsulated within the contours of the composition. Here, Lichtenstein created an entirely new system of drawing by synthesizing two apparently diametrical opposites, bringing together a parody of Pablo Picasso’s graphic drawing with the uniform representational drawing made by commercial illustrators for comic books and popular ads. Lichenstein ingeniously translates an image taken from a comic into a complex composition, elevating the protean subject to the status of high art. The artist eliminates any extraneous detail, completely flattening the image against the paper sheet, doing without perspective or illusionistic natural space to focus intensely on the internal drama between the two figures. His carefully adjusted framing edges, compressing the composition into a cropped close-up, makes the image appear more the a film still than a cartoon, which curator Bernice Rose describes as having “all the pseudo-drama of a freeze-frame” (B. Rose, The Drawings of Roy Lichtenstein, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p. 21).
As Rose notes, the first appearance of these works were “astonishing slaps to both the prevailing avant-garde tradition and the aesthetic of drawing” (Ibid., p. 15). Lichtenstein’s bold innovation in Pop Art reexamined representational drawing, one of the most established aspects of the Western artistic tradition, into a radical exercise, parodying the traditional forms which it illustrated with a certain ironic and humorous aloofness. The probing, hard-edge lines and sharp edges in the work reveal Lichtenstein first working out the style and technique which he would later adapt across his entire oeuvre. Rose summates the importance of his drawings to the artist, writing that “drawing is both the core of his aesthetic and an essential part of the making of his art. It is the point of departure for a new order in painting” (Ibid.).
Amid the many linear and textural inventions evinced in The Kiss, the tightly weaved lines and patterns spread across both visages are perhaps the most important. The artist had first experimented with recreating the Ben-Day dots from comic books the prior year, rubbing a dog-grooming brush dipped in ink over a sheet of aluminum drilled through with holes. He was discontented with his first attempts, desiring for their effect to appear less hand-made and more mechanical. His innovation here is using a frottage technique, placing the paper over a window screen and rubbing the graphite into the grains of the paper, thus creating the pattern. Varying the pressure on his tool allowed him to create subtle changes in tone, the effortless appearance of the result acquired through a great degree of precision and experimentation.
The subject matter is of great import to the artist, and functions both as a broadly autobiographical gesture and as a unifying motif across several of his drawings. Lichtenstein had trained as a U.S. Army pilot during World War II before being transferred to make cartoons for the Army magazine. Pilots are a recurring motif in both his first drawings and across his career, appearing in Jet Pilot (1962, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), as well as the paintings Brattata (1962, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art) and Wham! (1963, Tate Modern, London). While the other works focus more on the action of flying, The Kiss removes the pilot from his plane, seen only as a two-dimensional form barely abutting the upper right, to instead express what critic Robert Rosenblum describes as a latent eroticism where “the ‘girl next door’ meets her mate, a virile Air Force pilot who seems to have dropped from the clouds in order to provide the total ecstasy that, in a less secularized society, was once experienced by a swooning Santa Teresa” (R. Rosenblum, quoted in Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, op. cit., p. 116).
Lichtenstein was exacting in his choice of materials, utilizing only the highest quality supplies in contrast to his cheaply produced source images. The Kiss is on neutral toned white hot pressed Arches paper, which had a smooth texture and refined finish which allowed him to create his precise images. Its thickness and quality meant that the support withstood the heavily reinforced pencil lines, scraping, and frottage which entailed his intense drawing technique. As art historian Margaret Holben Ellis and conservator Lindsey Tyne note, Lichtenstein’s drawings “are best viewed in the original because their evocative function is negated when they are reproduced in the very printing technique—offset lithography—they sought to imitate. On printed page, the reproduced image is often cropped and its -black-and-white contrast exaggerated, thus minimizing the subtle nuances of paper and drawing” (M. H. Ellis and L. Tyne, “‘Mechanical’ Drawings in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in op. cit., p. 61).
The Kiss, along with Lichtenstein’s other early drawings, had a vast impact on the course of the artist’s career as well as on the development of Pop Art. The work is perhaps most important in the way that it exposes the artistry which lays latent behind all of the artist’s works, but is often obscured in his larger paintings. The New York Times critic Roberta Smith articulates the success of these drawings, writing, “the artist's hand is everywhere, adjusting the density of the dots from faint to dark (sometimes by doubling them up), filling in areas so that even finer lines have a slightly chiseled, insistent roughness, and making useful discoveries... What is perhaps most striking is his determination to have the entire sheet of paper come alive and register as a whole. This electricity unifies nearly all his paintings, edge to edge, with a bracing combination of the familiar and the abstract that still has few equals in modern art" (R. Smith, "Following the Dots Around the City," New York Times, 24 September 2010).