.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Executed in 1964, this work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
Girl in Mirror perfectly blends the conceptual games and wit that mark Roy Lichtenstein's greatest works. The mirror was an important motif in his work from his earliest days, as he explored and deconstructed how the viewer 'reads' images in the modern, media-saturated world. While he found it easy to paint everyday domestic objects by assembling his characteristic Benday dots, a reflection challenged him more, as he tried to capture the fleeting image that appears on the mirror's surface. In Girl in Mirror, Lichtenstein used the graduation of dots to highlight the face and give a sense of light cast across the reflective surface. He deconstructed the not the 'reality' of the mirror but instead the artistic shorthand by which mirrors are represented. By limiting his use of Benday dots to the face's reflection, Lichtenstein highlights the reflection's artificiality. 'Mirrors are flat objects that have surfaces you can't easily see since they're always reflecting what's around them,' Lichtenstein explained.
'There's no simple way to draw a mirror, so cartoonists invented dashed or diagonal lines to signify 'mirror.' Now, you see those lines and you know it means 'mirror,' even though there are obviously no such lines in reality. If you put horizontal, instead of diagonal, lines across the same object, it wouldn't say 'mirror.' It's a convention that we unconsciously accept" (R. Lichtenstein, quoted in M. Kimmelman, PORTAITS, Talking with Artists at the Met, The Modern, The Louvre and Elsewhere, reproduced at www.lichtensteinfoundation.org).
Lichtenstein invokes our reflex understanding of the image, tapping into his career-long fascination with how we see, instilled in him early by his teacher Hoyt L. Sherman. Lichtenstein casts a spotlight on the absurd way these abstract dots, lines, and areas of canvas come together and become comprehensible. In Girl in Mirror, he takes an age-old subject, used by artists such as Van Eyck and Velasquez to create a picture-within-a-picture, and then plays with the boundaries between subject and object. Rather than examining popular culture's ephemera, Lichtenstein's Pop Art explores how images function within the broad mass of the populace.
Lichtenstein decided to execute Girl in Mirror in porcelain enamel on steel, a significant decision since he went on to adopt sculpture as an ever more important part of his career. He was beginning to recognize that diverse mediums were important in helping him to achieve a clean aesthetic that eschewed all signs of the artist's hand. Lichtenstein chose the perfect medium to replicate the mirror's smooth surface, combining steel support with enamel's crisp aesthetic. As the curator Diane Waldman observed, 'With enamel, Lichtenstein accomplished two objectives: he reinforced the look of mechanical perfection that paint could only simulate but not duplicate and it provided the perfect opportunity to make an ephemeral form concrete' (quoted in Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1971, p. 23).
Throughout his oeuvre, Lichtenstein challenged rigid art-historical stereotypes while maintaining his idiosyncratic world view. Girl in Mirror embodies Roy Lichtenstein's innovative artistic vision, combining an awareness of art history with a deliberate visual duality contrasting abstraction and realistic depiction.
Girl in Mirror perfectly blends the conceptual games and wit that mark Roy Lichtenstein's greatest works. The mirror was an important motif in his work from his earliest days, as he explored and deconstructed how the viewer 'reads' images in the modern, media-saturated world. While he found it easy to paint everyday domestic objects by assembling his characteristic Benday dots, a reflection challenged him more, as he tried to capture the fleeting image that appears on the mirror's surface. In Girl in Mirror, Lichtenstein used the graduation of dots to highlight the face and give a sense of light cast across the reflective surface. He deconstructed the not the 'reality' of the mirror but instead the artistic shorthand by which mirrors are represented. By limiting his use of Benday dots to the face's reflection, Lichtenstein highlights the reflection's artificiality. 'Mirrors are flat objects that have surfaces you can't easily see since they're always reflecting what's around them,' Lichtenstein explained.
'There's no simple way to draw a mirror, so cartoonists invented dashed or diagonal lines to signify 'mirror.' Now, you see those lines and you know it means 'mirror,' even though there are obviously no such lines in reality. If you put horizontal, instead of diagonal, lines across the same object, it wouldn't say 'mirror.' It's a convention that we unconsciously accept" (R. Lichtenstein, quoted in M. Kimmelman, PORTAITS, Talking with Artists at the Met, The Modern, The Louvre and Elsewhere, reproduced at www.lichtensteinfoundation.org).
Lichtenstein invokes our reflex understanding of the image, tapping into his career-long fascination with how we see, instilled in him early by his teacher Hoyt L. Sherman. Lichtenstein casts a spotlight on the absurd way these abstract dots, lines, and areas of canvas come together and become comprehensible. In Girl in Mirror, he takes an age-old subject, used by artists such as Van Eyck and Velasquez to create a picture-within-a-picture, and then plays with the boundaries between subject and object. Rather than examining popular culture's ephemera, Lichtenstein's Pop Art explores how images function within the broad mass of the populace.
Lichtenstein decided to execute Girl in Mirror in porcelain enamel on steel, a significant decision since he went on to adopt sculpture as an ever more important part of his career. He was beginning to recognize that diverse mediums were important in helping him to achieve a clean aesthetic that eschewed all signs of the artist's hand. Lichtenstein chose the perfect medium to replicate the mirror's smooth surface, combining steel support with enamel's crisp aesthetic. As the curator Diane Waldman observed, 'With enamel, Lichtenstein accomplished two objectives: he reinforced the look of mechanical perfection that paint could only simulate but not duplicate and it provided the perfect opportunity to make an ephemeral form concrete' (quoted in Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1971, p. 23).
Throughout his oeuvre, Lichtenstein challenged rigid art-historical stereotypes while maintaining his idiosyncratic world view. Girl in Mirror embodies Roy Lichtenstein's innovative artistic vision, combining an awareness of art history with a deliberate visual duality contrasting abstraction and realistic depiction.