Roy Lichtenstein
Published for Gagosian’s 2008 exhibition Lichtenstein Girls, this focused catalogue examines the iconic female figures that helped establish Roy Lichtenstein as a central figure of American Pop art. It includes fifteen paintings, two ceramic sculptures, related studies, source images, and contributions by Jeff Koons, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Richard Hamilton, and Richard Prince.
- Publisher
- Gagosian
- Year
- 2008
- Format
- Hardcover
- Pages
- 94
Overview
Selected by ZCA
Selected for its focused treatment of one of Lichtenstein’s most recognizable and consequential subjects, this catalogue combines major paintings with studies, source imagery, and first-hand reflections from artists and figures closely connected to his legacy. Its specificity makes it a particularly valuable reference for understanding the development and afterlife of Lichtenstein’s Pop vocabulary.
Beginning in the summer of 1961, Roy Lichtenstein turned repeatedly to images of women drawn from romance comics and other mass-produced sources. Enlarging, simplifying, and restructuring these anonymous images, he transformed the visual conventions of commercial printing into a highly controlled pictorial language of black outlines, primary color, Ben-Day dots, and compressed emotional drama. The resulting “Girl” paintings, together with his contemporaneous war images, played a decisive role in establishing Lichtenstein as one of the defining artists of American Pop. Gagosian’s 2008 exhibition isolated this body of work to examine how Lichtenstein used the conventions of popular culture while maintaining the aesthetic distance central to his practice.
The accompanying catalogue reproduces fifteen paintings and two ceramic sculptures from the exhibition together with related preparatory studies and source material, allowing the transformation from mass-media image to finished artwork to be considered directly. Its documentary value is strengthened by a conversation between Dorothy Lichtenstein and Jeff Koons, a contribution by Richard Prince, and a tribute by British Pop pioneer Richard Hamilton. Together these materials place Lichtenstein’s work in dialogue with both the generation that shaped Pop and the artists who inherited and extended his strategies of appropriation, repetition, image circulation, and the collision of high and popular culture.
Why It Belongs
This publication is especially useful because it does not attempt to summarize Lichtenstein’s entire career. It concentrates on a tightly defined group of works that became central to his historical identity and then supplements them with source imagery, studies, and commentary from artists deeply informed by his influence.
It also has continued bibliographic relevance. The Roy Lichtenstein Catalogue Raisonné records the book as a 2008 Gagosian exhibition catalogue and identifies twenty-nine Lichtenstein works represented within it. The Dorothy Lichtenstein–Jeff Koons conversation is separately indexed in the catalogue raisonné, including its pagination and the fact that it was conducted in New York on April 11, 2008.
Publication Details
- Full title
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Subtitle
- Girls
- Author(s)
- Richard Hamilton, Jeff Koons, Dorothy Lichtenstein and Richard Prince
- Publisher
- Gagosian
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 2008
- ISBN
- 978-0300149272 / 0300149271
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Pages
- 94
- Language
- English