拍品專文
In the early 1960s, artists such as Warhol, Oldenburg and Lichtenstein began incorporating the techniques and imagery of commercial art and popular entertainment into the realm of fine art, negating the notion of art-as-personal-expression celebrated by Abstract Expressionism and dissolving the traditional distinctions between "high" and "low" culture. A central figure of Pop Art, Lichtenstein appropriated the appearance, conventions and themes of the mass-produced images of American popular culture.
The accessible iconography and use of commercial art conventions apparent in Spray II surfaced initially in his cartoon and comic book paintings, which were exhibited in his first solo exhibition held at Leo Castelli in 1962. Lichtenstein's representations of pre-existing images have been described as a "notorious marriage of a wholly radical subject matter with the methods of fine art" which "brought to a level of consciousness, both visual and intellectual, an awareness of American lifestyle and brilliantly proclaimed the comic strip as a fitting theme for the new American painting of the 1960s" (D. Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1969, p. 12).
Lichtenstein devised a standard format through which he parodied the visual devices of slick advertising campaigns, achieving the same high-impact immediacy of billboards, magazine ads and commercials.
"Lichtenstein crops away until he gets to the irreduceable minimum and compresses into the format the exact clich he desires to expose. Lichtenstein's technique is similar to his imagery: he reduces his form and color to the simplest possible elements in order to make an extremely complex statement" (J. Coplans, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, p. 23). Most characteristic of his paintings, however, is the presence of the print media technique, Benday dots, to simulate shading and volume, thereby imposing a mechanical, impersonal appearance upon the composition.
From 1961 to 1963 Lichtenstein executed a series of single-object paintings featuring everyday consumer products and women in the stereotypical role of homemaker, wife or mother. Often, the women's presence is indicated only by a hand or leg, rendering them a prop in the process of demonstrating a household product. Spray II is one of several paintings in which Lichtenstein targets the "national fetish for domestic cleanliness revealed in ads for everything from soap flakes to bathroom deodorizers" (R. Rosenblum, "Roy Lichtenstein and the Realist Revolt," in ed. S.H. Madoff, Pop Art, A Critical History, Berkeley, 1997, p. 192). In this painting, as well as Spray of the previous year, a housewife's manicured hand presses effortlessly on the spray can, instantly sanitizing the surrounding air. In contrast to the white background of the 1962 version, Spray II includes a background covered with Benday dots which functions to flatten the picture plane and blur the distinction between figure and ground.
The accessible iconography and use of commercial art conventions apparent in Spray II surfaced initially in his cartoon and comic book paintings, which were exhibited in his first solo exhibition held at Leo Castelli in 1962. Lichtenstein's representations of pre-existing images have been described as a "notorious marriage of a wholly radical subject matter with the methods of fine art" which "brought to a level of consciousness, both visual and intellectual, an awareness of American lifestyle and brilliantly proclaimed the comic strip as a fitting theme for the new American painting of the 1960s" (D. Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1969, p. 12).
Lichtenstein devised a standard format through which he parodied the visual devices of slick advertising campaigns, achieving the same high-impact immediacy of billboards, magazine ads and commercials.
"Lichtenstein crops away until he gets to the irreduceable minimum and compresses into the format the exact clich he desires to expose. Lichtenstein's technique is similar to his imagery: he reduces his form and color to the simplest possible elements in order to make an extremely complex statement" (J. Coplans, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, p. 23). Most characteristic of his paintings, however, is the presence of the print media technique, Benday dots, to simulate shading and volume, thereby imposing a mechanical, impersonal appearance upon the composition.
From 1961 to 1963 Lichtenstein executed a series of single-object paintings featuring everyday consumer products and women in the stereotypical role of homemaker, wife or mother. Often, the women's presence is indicated only by a hand or leg, rendering them a prop in the process of demonstrating a household product. Spray II is one of several paintings in which Lichtenstein targets the "national fetish for domestic cleanliness revealed in ads for everything from soap flakes to bathroom deodorizers" (R. Rosenblum, "Roy Lichtenstein and the Realist Revolt," in ed. S.H. Madoff, Pop Art, A Critical History, Berkeley, 1997, p. 192). In this painting, as well as Spray of the previous year, a housewife's manicured hand presses effortlessly on the spray can, instantly sanitizing the surrounding air. In contrast to the white background of the 1962 version, Spray II includes a background covered with Benday dots which functions to flatten the picture plane and blur the distinction between figure and ground.