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拍品专文
This work will be included in the Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
Roy Lichtenstein is widely known for basing his work on popular culture and creating prosaic images that are ironic in their tone. Created in 1995, Imperfect Sculpture forms part of an important late series in the artist's oeuvre, in which he extended his exploration of the reduction of form at a time when 'neo-geo' painting was reaching its ascendancy. With this series, the sculptor took a playful approach to geometric abstraction, reflecting his ability to continually re-evaluate the strictures of art historical models and bring new meaning to the sign systems of mass culture.
Since his earliest appropriations of commercial illustration and comic book imagery, Lichtenstein's work suggests that, though style may not be everything, every kind of image comes to us packaged with stylistic characteristics that inexorably turn into conventions. "All my art is in some way about other art," he explained, "even if the other art is cartoons" (Roy Lichtenstein, quoted in J. Hendrickson, Roy Lichtenstein, Cologne 2000, frontispiece). As early as 1964, Lichtenstein broke his pattern of basing each work directly on specific sources, devising his own compositions and sometimes taking specific motifs from his own or other artists' work as found objects for quotation. The Brushstroke paintings of the late sixties, with their imitation of the emotionally driven painterly gestures associated with Abstract Expressionism, and his appropriations of such 20th-century styles as Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism in the seventies, set the precedent for the abstractions of the Imperfect series in their parody of revered artistic genres. This succession of styles became, for Lichtenstein, an instrument for challenging and understanding art as an expression of an ideal state of being and he consistently chose his subjects on the basis of their appeal as stereotypes.
For the Imperfect series, Lichtenstein moves beyond direct quotation, adapting his signature style to produce compositions built from scratch. As with all Lichtenstein's work, however, these sculptures undergo a process of standardization that methodically eradicates traces of the handmade and improvisational to create works that deliberately mimic the type of "nameless or generic abstraction you might find in the background of a sitcom" (Lichtenstein, quoted in D. Solomon, 'The Art Behind the Dots', The New York Times, 8 March 1987). Imperfect Sculpture follows a conceptual rather than emotive approach, but is dominated by Lichtenstein's feeling for the abstract qualities of image making. "It's supposed to be humorous," he explained, "Art becomes this game of whether I hit the edges" (ibid).
Although distanced from the narrative aspects of his earlier work, these abstractions arguably remain figurative, in their ironic re-presentation of the aesthetic problems confronted by artists as diverse as Piet Mondrian, Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly. Lichtenstein was fascinated by the way an artistic picture operates differently from all other pictures, and sought to investigate the limits and possibilities of art whilst also confronting the myth of the artist. In Imperfect Sculpture, Lichtenstein's anonymous, though paradoxically personal style, with its imitation of industrial reproduction techniques, seeks to undermine the purity typically attributed to abstraction.
This experimentation with geometric imagery represents the formidable level of inventiveness Lichtenstein sustained throughout his career, by displaying a subversive questioning of pictorial precedents that confronts complex artistic problems in a uniquely simple and striking visual form.
Roy Lichtenstein is widely known for basing his work on popular culture and creating prosaic images that are ironic in their tone. Created in 1995, Imperfect Sculpture forms part of an important late series in the artist's oeuvre, in which he extended his exploration of the reduction of form at a time when 'neo-geo' painting was reaching its ascendancy. With this series, the sculptor took a playful approach to geometric abstraction, reflecting his ability to continually re-evaluate the strictures of art historical models and bring new meaning to the sign systems of mass culture.
Since his earliest appropriations of commercial illustration and comic book imagery, Lichtenstein's work suggests that, though style may not be everything, every kind of image comes to us packaged with stylistic characteristics that inexorably turn into conventions. "All my art is in some way about other art," he explained, "even if the other art is cartoons" (Roy Lichtenstein, quoted in J. Hendrickson, Roy Lichtenstein, Cologne 2000, frontispiece). As early as 1964, Lichtenstein broke his pattern of basing each work directly on specific sources, devising his own compositions and sometimes taking specific motifs from his own or other artists' work as found objects for quotation. The Brushstroke paintings of the late sixties, with their imitation of the emotionally driven painterly gestures associated with Abstract Expressionism, and his appropriations of such 20th-century styles as Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism in the seventies, set the precedent for the abstractions of the Imperfect series in their parody of revered artistic genres. This succession of styles became, for Lichtenstein, an instrument for challenging and understanding art as an expression of an ideal state of being and he consistently chose his subjects on the basis of their appeal as stereotypes.
For the Imperfect series, Lichtenstein moves beyond direct quotation, adapting his signature style to produce compositions built from scratch. As with all Lichtenstein's work, however, these sculptures undergo a process of standardization that methodically eradicates traces of the handmade and improvisational to create works that deliberately mimic the type of "nameless or generic abstraction you might find in the background of a sitcom" (Lichtenstein, quoted in D. Solomon, 'The Art Behind the Dots', The New York Times, 8 March 1987). Imperfect Sculpture follows a conceptual rather than emotive approach, but is dominated by Lichtenstein's feeling for the abstract qualities of image making. "It's supposed to be humorous," he explained, "Art becomes this game of whether I hit the edges" (ibid).
Although distanced from the narrative aspects of his earlier work, these abstractions arguably remain figurative, in their ironic re-presentation of the aesthetic problems confronted by artists as diverse as Piet Mondrian, Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly. Lichtenstein was fascinated by the way an artistic picture operates differently from all other pictures, and sought to investigate the limits and possibilities of art whilst also confronting the myth of the artist. In Imperfect Sculpture, Lichtenstein's anonymous, though paradoxically personal style, with its imitation of industrial reproduction techniques, seeks to undermine the purity typically attributed to abstraction.
This experimentation with geometric imagery represents the formidable level of inventiveness Lichtenstein sustained throughout his career, by displaying a subversive questioning of pictorial precedents that confronts complex artistic problems in a uniquely simple and striking visual form.