.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Roy Lichtenstein came of age in a time when Abstract Expressionism was the dominant mode of expression and in many ways, his paintings, sculptures and prints were a response to it. The artist's use of Ben Day dots gave the work a machine-made look, which was a challenge to the supposed angst-ridden strokes of the New York School. His Imperfect Paintings, the series which includes the present lot, is a part of the artist's dialogue with abstraction.
Lichtenstein directly tackled abstraction throughout his career, creating series of paintings of objects that are inherently abstract. Some of those series include his Mirrors, Bruststrokes and Entablatures--like Jasper Johns paintings of flags and numbers, they are both representational and abstract at the same time.
The Imperfect paintings continue Lichtenstein's dialogue with the non-objectives. In the Imperfect Paintings, he takes on the geometric work of Kandinsky and his circle, as well as the shaped paintings of Ellsworth Kelly. Consisting of abstract compositions of interlocking triangles and the quadrilaterals formed within the triangles' crisscrossed lines, the titles refer to Lichtenstein's deformation of the "perfect" rectangular frame here, turning it into a shaped canvas.
Compared to the spiritual rhetoric attached to the early modernists, in Lichtenstein's hands, abstraction becomes a playful event, with baby blue, bright orange and yellow forms jauntily scattered throughout. A small segment of the canvas projects out beyond one of its rectilinear edges in order to accommodate one of the triangles that doesn't "fit." Rather than truncate the triangle, Lichtenstein wittily extends the canvas. Here, the perimeter of the canvas conforms to the logic of the overall symmetrical composition, putting the image and the frame into perfect alignment. The wit of Lichtenstein's Imperfect compositions arises from the conflict that he has set up between these two elements.
Brilliantly balanced and with a sophisticated and whimsical color harmony, Imperfect Painting is an extraordinary and large-scale example of an important late series for the artist.
Lichtenstein directly tackled abstraction throughout his career, creating series of paintings of objects that are inherently abstract. Some of those series include his Mirrors, Bruststrokes and Entablatures--like Jasper Johns paintings of flags and numbers, they are both representational and abstract at the same time.
The Imperfect paintings continue Lichtenstein's dialogue with the non-objectives. In the Imperfect Paintings, he takes on the geometric work of Kandinsky and his circle, as well as the shaped paintings of Ellsworth Kelly. Consisting of abstract compositions of interlocking triangles and the quadrilaterals formed within the triangles' crisscrossed lines, the titles refer to Lichtenstein's deformation of the "perfect" rectangular frame here, turning it into a shaped canvas.
Compared to the spiritual rhetoric attached to the early modernists, in Lichtenstein's hands, abstraction becomes a playful event, with baby blue, bright orange and yellow forms jauntily scattered throughout. A small segment of the canvas projects out beyond one of its rectilinear edges in order to accommodate one of the triangles that doesn't "fit." Rather than truncate the triangle, Lichtenstein wittily extends the canvas. Here, the perimeter of the canvas conforms to the logic of the overall symmetrical composition, putting the image and the frame into perfect alignment. The wit of Lichtenstein's Imperfect compositions arises from the conflict that he has set up between these two elements.
Brilliantly balanced and with a sophisticated and whimsical color harmony, Imperfect Painting is an extraordinary and large-scale example of an important late series for the artist.