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Lot Essay
Executed in 1995, this work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonne being prepared by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
In the 1990s, Roy Lichtenstein made a triumphant return to the female figure in his Women in Interiors series. In this series, the comic book heroine's from the 1960s re-emerged as the focal point and were often presented in the nude and in the midst of monumentally scaled interiors that "give you the feeling that you might be able to walk into them" (R. Lichtenstein, "A Review of My Work Since 1961 - A Slide Presentation (November 11, 1995)," in Roy Lichtenstein, "October Files," Cambridge 2001, p. 70). Inspired by furniture advertisements Lichtenstein saw in the Yellow Pages or on billboards, these interiors were schematizations of actual domestic interiors condensed to their most significant compositional components and rendered in Lichtenstein's iconic style.
Executed in 1995, Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup is impressive in its compositional complexity, technical execution and larger-than-life scale. The aluminum, polyurethane and beeswax wall relief is a result of the artistic genius of Roy Lichtenstein fabricated by Donald Saff, known for his technical expertise.
In 1995, Saff proposed a new technique to Lichtenstein which combined the use of metal and pigmented wax - "morphing a painting into a sculpture" (Ibid, p. 140). These combined materials would allow for enhanced dimension and the optional exploration of an additional dimension: negative space. The process began with a drawing for the basic composition. The next stage was collage, experimentation with scale and finally a full scale maquette before the final version was approved. Through the various stages, sections were rearranged, colors were tested and fields were cut out to take advantage of the negative space the aluminum frame could support. In the final version, only the black and red is painted, all the other colors are composed of pigmented wax.
The dynamic composition of Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cups draws the viewer into the scene. On the right, the monumental back of a young woman's head with her hair tied in a bow regards the room - she holds the same perspective as the viewer. Automatically, the viewer follows her gaze to the yellow cup before her on the table. In the upper left, the viewer shares the perspective of the girl whose glance passes over the coffee table and chair to see, not a reflection of herself in the mirror, as in the 1960s source cartoon by Tony Abruzzo, but rather an image of a feminine icon of Picasso's surrealist period, made so famous by the many portraits of his blonde young lover, Marie-Therese Walter. Lichtenstein pays homage to Picasso with his very personalised sense of artistic irony. It is the voides and layered perspectives that take the hallmarks of Lichtenstein's most iconic paintings to the next level in this innovative work. Bold verticals, horizontals and diagonals disrupt the spatial organization. Negative space exists in the areas where there should be a positive space: the outer edges of the chair, the highlights of the woman's hair and at the center of the composition, the portion of the table underneath the yellow cup.
The structure, simplicity and close-up framing of Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup is closely aligned with the format of Lichtenstein's early Girl paintings of the 1960s. After a lengthy period away from his comic-book inspired motifs, Lichtenstein returns to this source, elevating images from popular culture to high art. The slightly dated comic books published for the burgeoning post-war teenage market typically followed a young girl who falls in love. These subjects fulfilled Lichtenstein's fascination with strong visual and cultural clichés as well as his preoccupation with form and style. In the present work, Lichtenstein has borrowed the format of the woman from one such comic, but removes the speech bubbles and places her in a modernized interior. Through these subtle manipulations, the seemingly familiar narrative is upset with dramatic effect and the situation the viewer is witnessing becomes less obvious and therefore more mysterious. "I don't think the importance of the art has anything to do with the importance of the subject matter. I think importance resides more in the unity of the composition and in the inventiveness of perception" (Roy Lichtenstein quoted in Roy Lichtenstein Beginning to End, Fundacion Juan March, Madrid, 2007, p. 128).
Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup represents Lichtenstein's pioneering spirit and undeniable talent in capturing the rich, infinitesimally nuanced amounts of visual detail that we absorb in our daily lives and reducing them to a beautifully simple series of lines and dots accentuated by bold splashes of blue, yellow and red. The dynamic tension between the hard edged, graphic design elements and the cunningly deranged perspective results in a stunning optically charged representation of Roy Lichtenstein's innovative artistic vision.
In the 1990s, Roy Lichtenstein made a triumphant return to the female figure in his Women in Interiors series. In this series, the comic book heroine's from the 1960s re-emerged as the focal point and were often presented in the nude and in the midst of monumentally scaled interiors that "give you the feeling that you might be able to walk into them" (R. Lichtenstein, "A Review of My Work Since 1961 - A Slide Presentation (November 11, 1995)," in Roy Lichtenstein, "October Files," Cambridge 2001, p. 70). Inspired by furniture advertisements Lichtenstein saw in the Yellow Pages or on billboards, these interiors were schematizations of actual domestic interiors condensed to their most significant compositional components and rendered in Lichtenstein's iconic style.
Executed in 1995, Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup is impressive in its compositional complexity, technical execution and larger-than-life scale. The aluminum, polyurethane and beeswax wall relief is a result of the artistic genius of Roy Lichtenstein fabricated by Donald Saff, known for his technical expertise.
In 1995, Saff proposed a new technique to Lichtenstein which combined the use of metal and pigmented wax - "morphing a painting into a sculpture" (Ibid, p. 140). These combined materials would allow for enhanced dimension and the optional exploration of an additional dimension: negative space. The process began with a drawing for the basic composition. The next stage was collage, experimentation with scale and finally a full scale maquette before the final version was approved. Through the various stages, sections were rearranged, colors were tested and fields were cut out to take advantage of the negative space the aluminum frame could support. In the final version, only the black and red is painted, all the other colors are composed of pigmented wax.
The dynamic composition of Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cups draws the viewer into the scene. On the right, the monumental back of a young woman's head with her hair tied in a bow regards the room - she holds the same perspective as the viewer. Automatically, the viewer follows her gaze to the yellow cup before her on the table. In the upper left, the viewer shares the perspective of the girl whose glance passes over the coffee table and chair to see, not a reflection of herself in the mirror, as in the 1960s source cartoon by Tony Abruzzo, but rather an image of a feminine icon of Picasso's surrealist period, made so famous by the many portraits of his blonde young lover, Marie-Therese Walter. Lichtenstein pays homage to Picasso with his very personalised sense of artistic irony. It is the voides and layered perspectives that take the hallmarks of Lichtenstein's most iconic paintings to the next level in this innovative work. Bold verticals, horizontals and diagonals disrupt the spatial organization. Negative space exists in the areas where there should be a positive space: the outer edges of the chair, the highlights of the woman's hair and at the center of the composition, the portion of the table underneath the yellow cup.
The structure, simplicity and close-up framing of Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup is closely aligned with the format of Lichtenstein's early Girl paintings of the 1960s. After a lengthy period away from his comic-book inspired motifs, Lichtenstein returns to this source, elevating images from popular culture to high art. The slightly dated comic books published for the burgeoning post-war teenage market typically followed a young girl who falls in love. These subjects fulfilled Lichtenstein's fascination with strong visual and cultural clichés as well as his preoccupation with form and style. In the present work, Lichtenstein has borrowed the format of the woman from one such comic, but removes the speech bubbles and places her in a modernized interior. Through these subtle manipulations, the seemingly familiar narrative is upset with dramatic effect and the situation the viewer is witnessing becomes less obvious and therefore more mysterious. "I don't think the importance of the art has anything to do with the importance of the subject matter. I think importance resides more in the unity of the composition and in the inventiveness of perception" (Roy Lichtenstein quoted in Roy Lichtenstein Beginning to End, Fundacion Juan March, Madrid, 2007, p. 128).
Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup represents Lichtenstein's pioneering spirit and undeniable talent in capturing the rich, infinitesimally nuanced amounts of visual detail that we absorb in our daily lives and reducing them to a beautifully simple series of lines and dots accentuated by bold splashes of blue, yellow and red. The dynamic tension between the hard edged, graphic design elements and the cunningly deranged perspective results in a stunning optically charged representation of Roy Lichtenstein's innovative artistic vision.