Property From the Tremaine Collection Emily and Burton Tremaine Sr. formed a collection that to this day stands in equal stature alongside the great American 20th Century collections of Victor and Sally Ganz, Robert and Ethel Scull, Agnes Gund, John and Dominique De Menil, David Rockefeller, and Phillip Johnson. Emily, who grew up in Los Angeles, drew inspiration from her friends, the early L.A. collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg and Edward G. Robinson. She was cool, analytic and deliberate, a perfect complement to her husband's decisive yet whimsical sensibility. Emily played an ideal Plato to Burton's joyous Bacchus. Together they assembled a totemic summation of 20th Century art, worthy of a stand-alone museum by today's standards. By 1948, Emily and Burton had formed a comprehensive collection of 20th Century geometric abstraction. They could have stopped there, but their nature was to continue to define the avant-garde. It was in late 1944 that Emily first saw the painting that she immediately recognized would become the lynchpin of the collection: Victory Boogie Woogie, 1942-1944. Piet Mondrian had nearly completed his last painting before his death in February 1944. Emily immediately arranged for its purchase. At $8,000 the couple had extended themselves vastly beyond any previous purchase. Though other works in the collection may have had roots that ran deeper art historically, such as Emily's first purchase of George Braque's Black Rose, 1924, or Pablo Picasso's Woman with a Fan, 1911-1918, or Victory Boogie Woogie's most direct antecedent, Robert Delaunay's unframed masterpiece, Premiere Disque, 1912; it was Victory Boogie Woogie that was the bridge between the first and second halves of the 20th Century. In his vibrant and active composition Mondrian purified and distilled all that came before him and set the stage for successive generations to come. "Emily was so certain of the Victory's profound worth and so convinced that 'it belongs to the world' that she and Burton loaned it through the 1950's and 1960's to the Museum of Modern Art in order for it to be accessible to young artists. Seeing its influence especially on the works of Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt (and Barnett Newman, measured compositional control of Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock), Emily contended years later that Mondrian actually had been the prime mover behind Abstract Expressionism, the dominant art movement of the late 1940's and 1950's: "Ad Reinhardt told me that he, Pollock, and others saw that painting in the museum of Modern art all those years. He said 'As Abstract Expressionists, we got our courage toward the unfinished, toward the Japanese unintentional theory of drip from this.' Bridget Riley, when she came here from England for the Museum of Modern Art exhibition, The Responsive Eye, came to see the painting. She said she had seen it in Belgium and it was the greatest influence on her work" (K. Housley, Emily Hall Tremaine: Collector on the Cusp, Meriden, 2001). One can trace the art historical lineage from the objecthood of Delaunay's unframed target from 1912 to Victory to Jasper John's Duchampian Device Circle to Frank Stella's tondo Sinjerli Variation IV, 1968 to Irwin's luminous Disk of 1970 and with hundreds works filling in between the lines. The pre-Pop geometry of Jasper John's iconic Three Flags, would pave the way for Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych, 1962; Roy Lichtenstein's iconic "I Can See the Whole Room!, 1961, and Tom Wesselmann's Great American Nude, 1961. As in all great collections, the Tremaine's carefully considered choices reveal dialogs between artworks that continue to inspire interpretation and discourse. Each individual work functions as an essential element in the composition of the collection. In its installation in the Tremaine's homes, designed by Phillip Johnson, and photographed by the artist Louise Lawler, the collection itself is elevated to a work of art, an extension of the compositional principles of the masterpiece by Piet Modrian, Victory Boogie Woogie.

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)

Kinetic Seascape #1

Details

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Kinetic Seascape #1
signed and dated 'rf Lichtenstein '66' (on the reverse)
Rowlux, vinyl and electric motor mounted on panel
22½ x 26¼ in. (57.1 x 66.6 cm.)
Executed in 1966.

Provenance

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Burton and Emily Tremaine, Meriden, acquired from the above, 1967
By descent from the above to the present owner

Sale Room Notice

Please note that the Piet Mondrian illustrated in the comparative figure is Victory Boogie Woogie, not Broadway Boogie Woogie.

Lot Essay

This work will be included in the Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.

In 1964, Roy Lichtenstein discovered Rowlux at a specialty store on Canal Street. Produced as a material for high-way signage, the artist was immediately drawn to its prismatic nature, and spent a short period of his career incorporating it into his work. The material came in many different designs and colors, in some instances simulating reflections on water, in others one could say, 3D Benday dots. In his brief stint using the medium, Lichtenstein created a series of seascapes, landscapes and moonscapes. From 1965-1966 onward, the artist's experimentation continued with the incorporation of motors and lamps.

As Emily and Burton Tremaine had a keen eye on the Avant-garde, it is no surprise that they were drawn to Kinetic Seascape #1 when they saw it at Leo Castelli's Gallery in New York. While Emily Tremaine was drawn to visual works that also appealed to her intellect, Burton derived great joy in the mechanical and immediate effects of kinetic art. The Tremaines owned many kinetic works by such artists as Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, Vassilakis Takis, Jesus Raphael Soto, Pol Bury and the present, rare Kinetic work by Roy Lichtenstein. With the use of these experimental mediums, Lichtenstein remains true to his mission as a Pop artist, seeking to suspend art historical norms to create a new visual language.

Kinetic Seascape #1

Lot Essay

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