Seascape (I), from the portfolio “New York Ten” (C.34)

Description

With Andy Warhol, artist Roy Lichtenstein is considered one of the founders of the art movement called Pop Art, so-named because of its borrowings from popular culture. Born in New York, Lichtenstein originally studied with Reginald Marsh before attending the Ohio State University. After obtaining his degree, he worked as a commercial artist and designer and decorated store windows. In the late 1950s, he was working in the Abstract Expressionist style but this gave way in the very early 1960s to a style drawn from commercial art, comics, and advertisements. In 1962, he had his first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, in New York, a gallery also representing Andy Warhol and several others.
Seascape (I), from this early period in his career, demonstrates Lichtenstein’s use of the Benday dots, borrowed from comic book illustrations. In this case, he has applied this comic book vocabulary to one of the long-standing visual traditions in the history of art: the landscape or seascape. Completely reinterpreted, Lichtenstein’s use of this style underscores his investigation into the conventions of visual representation. He would go on to apply this same style to other genres of art history: Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and even Chinese landscape paintings. "I want my painting to look as if it has been programmed," Lichtenstein said. "I want to hide the record of my hand."

Sean M. Ulmer, University Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, for "A Matter of Degree: Abstraction in Twentieth-Century Art," November 10, 2001 - January 27, 2002