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Lot Essay
“Lichtenstein never shrunk from depicting the conditions for which his form was the least plausibly adapted. What use is linear clarity in rendering light? To make something solid out of ethereal, something opaque out of transparent; these moments when form and subject work most abrasively against each other are the dramatic points of his career” (M. Kozloff, “Lichtenstein at the Guggenheim,” 1969 in October Files: Roy Lichtenstein, edited by G. Bader, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009, p. 11).
Roy Lichtenstein’s Seascape #18 (1966) coincides with one of the most dynamic periods of Lichtenstein’s development. Specifically, his landscapes and seascapes represent his ongoing conversation with the formal history of art and image making. Lichtenstein began with landscapes in 1964, taking the periphery images from cartoons and creating works whose focus was these overlooked aspects of narrative images. Landscape would prove fertile ground for aesthetic inquiry and was the focus of his solo show at Leo Castelli gallery in 1964. By 1969-1970, his investigation of kinetic land/seascape would lead him to create a film through the Art and Technology program, in which he in integrates still images, moving images, and his Benday dots to investigate the attempt to capture the movement of light on water.
In Seascape #18 Lichtenstein expands this exploration through his use of Rowlux. He combines this filmy, iridescent, trade material to create the illusion of the effect of light on water. As the artist explains, “It seemed to be the perfect quotidian way of producing the appearance of a landscape that seemed on one hand, to be more real because it moved, but obviously less real because you knew it was made of a material that produced this trick” (R. Lichtenstein “A review of my work since 1961,” 1995 in October Files: Roy Lichtenstein, edited by G. Bader, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009, 61). This industrial material is layered to create a divide between sea and sky. The absurdity of the attempt to make the immaterial, material is made delightfully evident. The pleasure in Seascape #18 comes from allowing these contradictions to play, allowing the viewer in on the joke, and ultimately, in Lichtenstein’s ability to create works that hold themselves elegantly together through their structure.
Roy Lichtenstein’s Seascape #18 (1966) coincides with one of the most dynamic periods of Lichtenstein’s development. Specifically, his landscapes and seascapes represent his ongoing conversation with the formal history of art and image making. Lichtenstein began with landscapes in 1964, taking the periphery images from cartoons and creating works whose focus was these overlooked aspects of narrative images. Landscape would prove fertile ground for aesthetic inquiry and was the focus of his solo show at Leo Castelli gallery in 1964. By 1969-1970, his investigation of kinetic land/seascape would lead him to create a film through the Art and Technology program, in which he in integrates still images, moving images, and his Benday dots to investigate the attempt to capture the movement of light on water.
In Seascape #18 Lichtenstein expands this exploration through his use of Rowlux. He combines this filmy, iridescent, trade material to create the illusion of the effect of light on water. As the artist explains, “It seemed to be the perfect quotidian way of producing the appearance of a landscape that seemed on one hand, to be more real because it moved, but obviously less real because you knew it was made of a material that produced this trick” (R. Lichtenstein “A review of my work since 1961,” 1995 in October Files: Roy Lichtenstein, edited by G. Bader, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009, 61). This industrial material is layered to create a divide between sea and sky. The absurdity of the attempt to make the immaterial, material is made delightfully evident. The pleasure in Seascape #18 comes from allowing these contradictions to play, allowing the viewer in on the joke, and ultimately, in Lichtenstein’s ability to create works that hold themselves elegantly together through their structure.