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Property from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley Wright
Roy Lichtenstein was an artist who was not confined by one medium. He was equally comfortable sculpting as he was painting. For Lichtenstein it was not so much how he made a work of art but how many ways he could explore that subject. As Jack Cowart wrote, "The artist simultaneously created works which could shuttle across multiple lines of definition, function, and aesthetic appearances and, thus, take on a variety of personalities" (J. Cowart, Roy Lichtenstein: Sculpture & Drawing, exh. cat., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999, p. 11). Lichtenstein's Ceramic Sculpture #9 and Glass V (the two subsequent lots) exemplify his prowess as a sculptor and his unparalleled ability to apply lessons learned in one medium to another. They also present an interesting view of the development of the artist's vision as he takes on like-subjects more than a decade apart.
Lichtenstein's first forays into sculptures were in the 1940s and 1950s. These works were totemic "primitive" sculptures and Surrealist pastiches. In 1964, soon after developing his signature Pop style, Lichtenstein embarked upon his first mature sculptures that included ceramic heads of woman and coffee cups and saucers. Ceramic Sculpture #9 is a part of that seminal group of work. The initial impetus came from his desire to explore the vocabulary of cartooning employed in his paintings on three-dimensional objects. He recalled to John Coplans, "It's another kind of unrealitywomen draw themselves this way- that is what makeup really is. They put their lips on in a certain shape and do their hair to resemble a certain ideal. There is an interaction that is very intriguing. I've always wanted to make up someone as a cartoonI was going to do this for some fashion magazine. I was going to make up a model with black lines around her lips, dots on her face, and a yellow dyed wig with black lines drawn on it, and so forth. This developed into the ceramic sculpture heads. I was interested in putting two-dimensional symbols on a three-dimensional object" (quoted in J. Coplans, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, p. 23). Lichtenstein quickly moved from the heads of models as portrayed in beauty magazines to that ultimate quotidian object- the cup of coffee.
Rendering both heads and coffee cups and saucers in three-dimensions, Lichtenstein used symbols usually reserved for cartooning, or in his case painting, to embellish them. This layering gives them a paradoxical appearance. With these markings they become hyper-realities. Constance Glenn writes, "both real and illusionary high-lights appeared. Finally they could be distributed over the entire object until it approached a cartoon of itself, complete with all the references to stereotypical rendering of reflective surfaces" (C. Glenn, Roy Lichtenstein: Ceramic Sculpture, exh. cat., The Art Galleries, California State University, Long Beach, 1977, p. 10). Herein lies the genius of Lichtenstein's artistry. He seamlessly moved from one medium to another, producing objects of equal quality, while exploring questions about one medium in another. Glenn continues, "In each case, the essential combination of craftsmanship and artistry produced the paradoxical object which Lichtenstein demanded- a work of art which alluded to the banal, to trivia, to the anonymous industrial object, yet remained finally what has been described as "the first sculpture about painting" (Ibid, p. 11).
It is no surprise that Lichtenstein would take the cup of coffee as the subject of one of his earliest mature sculptures. He first painted the subject in 1961. Lichtenstein not only mined his own subject matter, but was acutely aware of art history. Ceramic Sculpture #9 draws on Lichtenstein's investigation of Pablo Picasso. One need only look to Picasso's Glass of Absinthe, 1914 to find a direct art historical precedent. Unusual among his Pop Art peers, Lichtenstein, early-on, began appropriating other artists' famous subjects. Lichtenstein's Ceramic Sculpture #9 is an appropriate updating of Picasso's sculpture. Absinthe, that hallucinogenic potion that fueled the avant-garde culture of fin de siecle Paris is replaced by the jet-fuel efficiency of caffeine in the idealized and streamlined society of American media of the 1950s and 1960s. Interestingly, both works share a graphic quality of dots and hash marks, one to represent the Cubist revolution and the other to emulate printing techniques.
Ceramic Sculpture #9 represents the beginning of Lichtenstein's long engagement with sculpture. It is a form in which he could explore his subjects in the most intense and extensive means. "It is clear that the ceramicsare at the real heart of Lichtenstein's aesthetic. They continue to personify his images, his methodology, and can be seen today as central to the crucial creative renewal and resurgence which describe his nature and that of the enduring artist" (Ibid, p. 15).
In stark contrast to pithily adding two-dimensional symbols to a three-dimensional object in Ceramic Sculpture #9, Lichtenstein has completely dematerialized the object in Glass V. The "glass" he presents is just a few fleeting marks. He has only shown the reflections with which the glass would shimmer. In comparing the Ceramic Sculptures (referring to them as Dinnerware Objects) of 1965 and works like Glass V, Richard Morphet writes, "For where in the Dinnerware Objects the cups had the form of cups and the reflections were so obviously graphic phenomena, here graphic representation has become a rival physical entity, its subservience to earlier models denied by its unyielding distinctness as a thing, tall and thin, and equally itself from the side (from which view it represents nothing). We are inclined to ask not whether these sculptures are distant dependents from real glasses and pots, but whether real glasses and pots may not be these sculptures' sculptural ghosts, concentrated conceptual essences of the complicated sculptural presences that we see" (R. Morphet, "Lichtenstein's New Sculpture," Roy Lichtenstein Sculpture, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1977, n.p.).
Though representing the fleeting marks of a glass of water Glass V and the other sculptures of 1977 have an enormous physical heft. Made of cast bronze and enamel, Glass V is the scale of a human. Lichtenstein has transformed his sculptures of the 1960s that sought to emulate their manufactured counterparts almost identically into play-land behemoths. In these later works, Lichtenstein is referencing Minimalism where an object's purpose was to transform its environment. In Glass V Lichtenstein translates this sentiment perfectly but with an absurdist's sensibility. The reflections of a glass of water have taken on an almost menacing scale defining the space they occupy as much through their form as their sense of humor.
Revisiting, reinterpreting, and rethinking define Roy Lichtenstein's sculpture and art. He explores both his own production, the artist who preceded him and his peers to create works that transform how we see the world and interpret our culture. His determination to continually look anew at his own work led to one of the most fruitful bodies of sculpture and of the 20th Century. Ceramic # 9 and Glass V are testimony to his achievement.
Property from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley Wright
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Ceramic Sculpture #9
Details
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Ceramic Sculpture #9
signed and dated 'rf Lichtenstein 1965' (on the underside)
glazed ceramic
11 x 8½ x 8½ in. (27.9 x 21.5 x 21.5 cm.)
Executed in 1965. This work is unique.
Ceramic Sculpture #9
signed and dated 'rf Lichtenstein 1965' (on the underside)
glazed ceramic
11 x 8½ x 8½ in. (27.9 x 21.5 x 21.5 cm.)
Executed in 1965. This work is unique.
Provenance
Leo Castelli, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1965
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1965
Literature
J. Gruen, "Kitsch as Kitsch Can," New York Herald Tribune, 5 December 1965 (illustrated and incorrectly referred to as Ceramic Sculpture #1).
D. Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, London, 1971, p. 246, no. 123 (illustrated and incorrectly referred to as Ceramic Sculpture #1).
D. Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, London, 1971, p. 246, no. 123 (illustrated and incorrectly referred to as Ceramic Sculpture #1).
Exhibited
New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein: Brushstrokes and Ceramics, November-December 1965.
Long Beach, California State University, The Art Galleries, Roy Lichtenstein Ceramic Sculpture, February-March 1977, no. 14 (illustrated).
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Collects, January-May 2000.
Long Beach, California State University, The Art Galleries, Roy Lichtenstein Ceramic Sculpture, February-March 1977, no. 14 (illustrated).
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Collects, January-May 2000.