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Lot Essay
Roy Lichtenstein's Diana (1965) is a vintage Pop master drawing. Although drawing has always been integral to Lichtenstein's working methods, he actually created few fully realized drawings in the 1960s. Diana is part of Lichtenstein's ongoing dialogue between art and popular culture, and is an extraordinary example from his pantheon of images of women, which range from romance comic book characters, mythological figures and classical and contemporary nudes.
Drawing is an important aspect of Lichtenstein's work, dating back to his student years in the 1940s, when he underwent a rigorous art training, which held draftsmanship as the basis for art. Aside from the standard classes of drawing from life models and en plein air, he also took some unorthodox courses including drawing in the dark and copying images flashed onto a screen, in the interest of developing visual memory.
Lichtenstein's graphics oeuvre can be divided into rough sketches, studies for paintings and completed drawings. The sketches/studies category were preparations for paintings and completed drawings and indeed, Lichtenstein worked out all of the problems for Diana in a preliminary sketch. The completed drawing, in contrast to the sketches were conceived just like his paintings and are fully finished, stand-alone works.
Lichtenstein was very interested in the challenges and possibilities posed by drawings and he explored a variety of techniques during his breakthrough Pop years of the early 1960s. In order to achieve the desired Ben Day dot effects, he experimented with a range of screens and frottage techniques. Lichtenstein was after a truly machine-made appearance, stating, "I want my painting to look as if it had been programmed. I want to hide the record of my hand" (R. Lichtenstein, as quoted in D. Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein: Drawings and Prints, New York, 1970, p. 16).
In Diana, the artist created the Ben Day dot background by placing a screen on top of the sheet and pushing stick tusche (a lithographic crayon) through the perforations, giving it its desired uniform effect. The grid of dots in varying consistencies suggests the inconsistency of a freehand rendering, causing the figure of Diana to dramatically project from the surface.
Lichtenstein's use of line and form has rarely been as sensuous as in Diana. The swirling locks and garment folds are beautifully realized and convey another Lichtenstein subject, the image of the brushstroke.
Although Lichtenstein has always been viewed in the context of the avant-garde, he had strong feelings about being part of a larger tradition of art history. "The big tradition, I think, is unity and I have that in mind; and with that, you know you could break all the other traditions--all the other so-called rules, because they're stylistic...Unity in the work itself depends on unity of the artist's vision...I've never thought of my work as anti-art, because I've always thought it was organized; it's just that I thought it was a different style and therefore a different content as well" (R. Lichtenstein, as quoted in The Drawings of Roy Lichtenstein, New York, p. 15). Diana is an example of a work that is both part of a larger dialogue of art history, of portraiture and mythology, as well as the more contemporary concerns of commodification and popular culture, realized with an astonishing level of assurance and beauty.
Drawing is an important aspect of Lichtenstein's work, dating back to his student years in the 1940s, when he underwent a rigorous art training, which held draftsmanship as the basis for art. Aside from the standard classes of drawing from life models and en plein air, he also took some unorthodox courses including drawing in the dark and copying images flashed onto a screen, in the interest of developing visual memory.
Lichtenstein's graphics oeuvre can be divided into rough sketches, studies for paintings and completed drawings. The sketches/studies category were preparations for paintings and completed drawings and indeed, Lichtenstein worked out all of the problems for Diana in a preliminary sketch. The completed drawing, in contrast to the sketches were conceived just like his paintings and are fully finished, stand-alone works.
Lichtenstein was very interested in the challenges and possibilities posed by drawings and he explored a variety of techniques during his breakthrough Pop years of the early 1960s. In order to achieve the desired Ben Day dot effects, he experimented with a range of screens and frottage techniques. Lichtenstein was after a truly machine-made appearance, stating, "I want my painting to look as if it had been programmed. I want to hide the record of my hand" (R. Lichtenstein, as quoted in D. Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein: Drawings and Prints, New York, 1970, p. 16).
In Diana, the artist created the Ben Day dot background by placing a screen on top of the sheet and pushing stick tusche (a lithographic crayon) through the perforations, giving it its desired uniform effect. The grid of dots in varying consistencies suggests the inconsistency of a freehand rendering, causing the figure of Diana to dramatically project from the surface.
Lichtenstein's use of line and form has rarely been as sensuous as in Diana. The swirling locks and garment folds are beautifully realized and convey another Lichtenstein subject, the image of the brushstroke.
Although Lichtenstein has always been viewed in the context of the avant-garde, he had strong feelings about being part of a larger tradition of art history. "The big tradition, I think, is unity and I have that in mind; and with that, you know you could break all the other traditions--all the other so-called rules, because they're stylistic...Unity in the work itself depends on unity of the artist's vision...I've never thought of my work as anti-art, because I've always thought it was organized; it's just that I thought it was a different style and therefore a different content as well" (R. Lichtenstein, as quoted in The Drawings of Roy Lichtenstein, New York, p. 15). Diana is an example of a work that is both part of a larger dialogue of art history, of portraiture and mythology, as well as the more contemporary concerns of commodification and popular culture, realized with an astonishing level of assurance and beauty.