Roy Lichtenstein

Christie's, New York, February 20, 1988, lot 32A
James Goodman Gallery, New York
Acquavella Contemporary Art, Inc., New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1990

Diane Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein: Drawings and Prints, Lausanne, 1970, no. 63-14, p. 138 (citation of ownership incorrect)

This work is in good condition overall. The work is executed on a larger sheet of unevenly torn tracing paper, particularly the upper right corner and along the bottom edge. There are a few tears attendant to the uneven edges but these are not in proximity of the graphite design. There is slight puckering to the paper primarily under the current mat extending slightly into mat window area. There is mat burn on the 4 sides around the window of the previous and current mats, while the area in the mat window has only light discoloration. The signature runs vertically along the left side underneath the mat and the surrounding paper is slightly darker related to a window in a previous mat that revealed the signature. Within the window of the current mat, there is a repaired tear along the upper edge, located 1 - 1 ½ in. in from the upper left corner. There is an extremely fine network of hairline scratches with some breaks barely visible to the naked eye, located 2 ¼ - 3 1/8 in. up from the bottom and 3 ¾ in. from the right. There is a pin point loss at the bottom edge 4 in. from the left. Underneath the mat there is a tear with a folded tip 6 3/8 - 7 in. from the right edge of the sheet and 3/8 in. up from the bottom. The work is framed in an ornate wood frame under glass and hinged to the ragboard mount at the top corners.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Ball of Twine is a classic example of Lichtenstein's single-object still-lifes done in the early 1960s, works where he elevated mundane items to painting subjects. Ball of Twine is the reversal of the famous painting of the same name and another drawing in pencil and touche previously owned by Mr. and Mrs. Leo Castelli.  As an appropriated image from printed materials (a technique now synonymous with Pop art), the dark outlines of Ball of Twine define its 'objecthood.' Once delineated, the outlines portray no sense of shadow, or modeling, and consequently deny all illusion of volume. The intricate weaving pattern of the twine is richly fluid and allows for wonderful traces of pentimenti: the idiosyncratic changes recorded by the artist's quick execution as he finalizes the original design of the composition. Having appropriated an everyday object located at the bottom of the hierarchy of genres where mythological and historical subject matter take precedence, Lichtenstein denotes his ironic stance to the artifice of painting.

As if his affront weren't enough to disturb the Abstract Expressionist aestheticism of mid-century America, Lichtenstein intertwines the irony of everyday subject matter with commercial graphic art. 
Lichtenstein's generation, the celebrated conglomeration of 1960s artists: Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg amongst others, were the first to experience the effect of mass popular culture in post-World War II America. The impact of industrial expansion, and more precisely advertising, altered consumer behavior in a wholly recuperated America. Lichtenstein did not perceive commercialization in negative terms. Like most other young men growing up in New York City, he welcomed contemporary culture. In an interview conducted with art critic Michael Kimmelman near the end of his life, Lichtenstein asserted: "there are certain things that are usable, forceful and vital about commercial art." The Pop artists, he added, are "using those things, but we are not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism and terrorism." (Michael Kimmelman, Portraits, Talking with Artists at the Met, The Modern, The Louvre and Elsewhere, New York, Random House, 1998).

Advertising presents an intriguing counterpoint to the accepted styles of High Art. Since the advent of technologies for photomechanical reproduction in the middle of the nineteenth-century, advertising has propelled an almost overwhelming flood of imagery in posters, billboard, catalogues, newspapers, and magazines. Its sole purpose to make a product arresting, desirable and above all, completely necessary. From the turn of the twentieth-century, artists responded to the challenge of these pedestrian, yet powerful images. Lichtenstein's Ball of Twine follows in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp, the champion of ready-made twentieth-century art, known for placing a urinal on its back (Fountain, 1917) and upending a bicycle wheel on a high stool (1913) in order to create a new type of mundane icon on a pedestal. Duchamp is currently recognized for having permanently subverted the nature and function of these objects; the opening of a Pandora's box relished by Lichtenstein, and the establishment of a legacy which continues to question, ever more radically, the nature of artistic authorship.
Lichtenstein himself admitted his subjects, whether comics, advertising or modern art,  were always two-dimensional or at least originating from two-dimensional sources. "In other words, even if I'm painting a room, it's an image of a room that I got from a furniture ad in a phone book, which is a two-dimensional source. This has meaning for me in that when I came onto the scene, abstract artists like Frank Stella or Ellsworth Kelly were making paintings the point of which was that the painting itself became an object, a thing, like a sculpture, in its own right, not an illusion of something else. And what I've been trying to say all this time is similar: that even if my work looks like it depicts something, it's essentially a flat two-dimensional image, an object." (Ibid)

Lichtenstein relished provocation. His art contradicts expectations and demands the formulation of new ones. Although now well immersed within the Western canon of the history of art, Lichtenstein's critical success and the rise of Pop was not without controversy. From the moment they first encountered his works at Leo Castelli's gallery in 1962, most art critics responded with hostility towards Lichtenstein's 'anti-emotional style'. By then, "the one thing everyone hated was commercial art," noted Lichtenstein. ("What is Pop Art", Art News 62, November 1963, pp.25) Lichtenstein was granted the dubious accolade of "The Worst Artist in America" by Life Magazine (January 1964). Ironically, the article inadvertently contributed to popularize the cause of Pop artists in America, actually propelling Lichtenstein to greater success.

By the time Lichtenstein drew Ball of Twine, Pop Art had already begun to be recognized as a serious movement encapsulating multiple layers of meaning, pertinent to contemporary art historical discourse. Lichtenstein's bequest is perhaps best described by painter Larry Rivers who once said: "Roy got the hand out of art and put the brain in." (Ibid)  Today we remember him as a master satirist; a provocateur that was partly taken for granted in his later years, but only because his ideas had so infiltrated art that they were no longer only his. The mixing and appropriation of text and images, of high and low, paved the way for a generation of artists.