.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
During the 1970s, Lichtenstein eschewed the comic book imagery and familiar household items that had dominated his work of the 1960s in favor of more esoteric subjects, developed from art historical sources such as Fauvism, Cubism and Purism. Between 1974 and 1976, he experimented with a number of still-lifes primarily concerned with reevaluating the visual vocabulary of Picasso and Gris, and more significantly, the work of Purist artists Ozenfant and Le Corbusier. Situating himself within the work of the great modern masters, Lichtenstein continued to question the development of modern art, especially the mingling of popular culture materials within the realm of high art, a subject first broached by the Cubists.
Abstraction with Guitar is based on the most recognizable Cubist subject, namely the still life with guitar that had preoccupied Picasso, Braque and Gris as early as 1912. Lichtenstein has reduced the form of the guitar to its most abstract, transforming the three-dimensional plastic object into a two-dimensional grid. The arrangement calls attention to the flatness of the canvas itself, in which the once-three-dimensional shape is arranged within a purely two-dimensional field. But perhaps the work's most obvious illusion is to Piet Mondrian, in its arrangement of color and line. Lichtenstein sought to liberate color from its signifiers, and he preferred the use of synthetic, commercially manufactured paint that he applied directly from the tube to the surface of the canvas itself.
Lichtenstein echoes the cubists' love of collage, in which they often attached pieces of newsprint, wallpaper and other ephemera directly to the surface of the canvas itself. Particularly appealing to Picasso was the use of faux bois, or decorative paper that mimicked the appearance of wood grain. In the present work, Lichtenstein includes three panels that mimic the cubist faux bois, here colored in an entirely synthetic way, the colors of which no longer associate themselves with the thing they once sought to represent.
Abstraction with Guitar also incorporates the bold, parallel black and white lines and diagonal stripes that the artist had increasingly employed in the 1970s, here used to define the shape of the guitar and frame it within a unified composition. The inclusion was a departure from the artist's signature ben-day dots of the 1960s, but it signals a new readiness to expand his visual vocabulary into another realm.
The present work is one of the most purely abstract in Lichtenstein's series, in which he has created a work that speaks to its cubist antecedents but that forges into another, newer, field entirely. Homages to past movements exist but Lichtenstein seems to have taken them to their logical conclusion, transforming the three-dimensional world into a purely two-dimensional field.
During the 1970s, Lichtenstein eschewed the comic book imagery and familiar household items that had dominated his work of the 1960s in favor of more esoteric subjects, developed from art historical sources such as Fauvism, Cubism and Purism. Between 1974 and 1976, he experimented with a number of still-lifes primarily concerned with reevaluating the visual vocabulary of Picasso and Gris, and more significantly, the work of Purist artists Ozenfant and Le Corbusier. Situating himself within the work of the great modern masters, Lichtenstein continued to question the development of modern art, especially the mingling of popular culture materials within the realm of high art, a subject first broached by the Cubists.
Abstraction with Guitar is based on the most recognizable Cubist subject, namely the still life with guitar that had preoccupied Picasso, Braque and Gris as early as 1912. Lichtenstein has reduced the form of the guitar to its most abstract, transforming the three-dimensional plastic object into a two-dimensional grid. The arrangement calls attention to the flatness of the canvas itself, in which the once-three-dimensional shape is arranged within a purely two-dimensional field. But perhaps the work's most obvious illusion is to Piet Mondrian, in its arrangement of color and line. Lichtenstein sought to liberate color from its signifiers, and he preferred the use of synthetic, commercially manufactured paint that he applied directly from the tube to the surface of the canvas itself.
Lichtenstein echoes the cubists' love of collage, in which they often attached pieces of newsprint, wallpaper and other ephemera directly to the surface of the canvas itself. Particularly appealing to Picasso was the use of faux bois, or decorative paper that mimicked the appearance of wood grain. In the present work, Lichtenstein includes three panels that mimic the cubist faux bois, here colored in an entirely synthetic way, the colors of which no longer associate themselves with the thing they once sought to represent.
Abstraction with Guitar also incorporates the bold, parallel black and white lines and diagonal stripes that the artist had increasingly employed in the 1970s, here used to define the shape of the guitar and frame it within a unified composition. The inclusion was a departure from the artist's signature ben-day dots of the 1960s, but it signals a new readiness to expand his visual vocabulary into another realm.
The present work is one of the most purely abstract in Lichtenstein's series, in which he has created a work that speaks to its cubist antecedents but that forges into another, newer, field entirely. Homages to past movements exist but Lichtenstein seems to have taken them to their logical conclusion, transforming the three-dimensional world into a purely two-dimensional field.