Roy Lichtenstein

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York (LC# 1012)
James Goodman Gallery, New York
Joseph Haddad, Los Angeles
Sotheby's, New York, May 6, 1992, Lot 24
Jeffrey Loria & Co., New York
James Goodman Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in April 1993

Exh. Cat., Columbus, Columbus Museum of Art; Charleston (and travelling), Roy Lichtenstein as a Sculptor: Recent Works 1977 - 1984, 1985, checklist no. 16 (another example)
Boston, Thomas Segal Gallery, Homage to Leo Castelli, October 1986 
Pully/Lausanne, FAE Muée d'Art Contemporain, Roy Lichtenstein, September 1992 - January 1993, p. 93, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
San Francisco, John Berggruen Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints, October - November 2004 (ed. no. 4/6)

Exh. Cat., New York, 65 Thompson Street, Roy Lichtenstein Bronze Sculpture 1976 - 1989, 1989, cat. no. 27, p. 73, illustrated in color (ed. no. 0/6, the artist's proof)
Exh. Cat., Mexico City, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Salas Nacional y Diego Rivera (and traveling), Roy Lichtenstein: Sculptures & Drawings, 1998, cat. no. 104, p. 153, illustrated in color (ed. 0/6, the artist's proof)
Exh. Cat., London, Gagosian Gallery (and traveling), Roy Lichtenstein Sculpture, 2005, p. 73, illustrated in color (ed. no. 0/6, the artist's proof)

This sculpture is in excellent condition. There are no apparent scratches and scuffs, with only scattered light areas of airborne dust.
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.
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Towards the end of the late 1970's, Lichtenstein began to translate forms and styles from his earlier paintings into painted bronze sculptures. Throughout his prolific career, Lichtenstein produced a complex body of sculpture whose images continue the investigation that his paintings began, now thrust into three dimensional space. These bold and graphic works challenge the methods and notions of visual perception and subvert the illusion of representation.

The artist's technique when making sculpture was rigorous. He would begin by making small sketches which were either imagined forms or ideas borrowed from advertisements or other media stimuli. He then translated this sketch into a paper collage which would become a small working model. This was adjusted before he and the assistants went on to create a full-scale maquette that was used to create the sand or lost-wax molds for casting in bronze. The work would then be painted at a later stage with weather-resistant colors. Thus the realized work was a literal translation from a two-dimensional concept into a three-dimensional form.

Both Lichtenstein's sculptures and paintings play on his fascination with various conventions of commercial and high art. Indeed both the present sculpture and the artist's paintings are brightly colored mechanized creations built out of Benday dots. The mechanical perfection of the slickly painted bronze can be seen to echo the perfect blocks of oil and magna on the canvases. The sculpture also serves to reinforce the role of the two-dimensional image as object; although the work is three-dimensional it is hyper flattened with no clear sense of depth, leaving the viewer to complete the form and make sense of the work. "It's a relationship of contrast to contrast rather than volume to volume, which makes it work. So even though I realize it is three-dimensional, it is always a two- dimensional relationship to me - or as two-dimensional as drawing is." (Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Roy Lichtenstein, 1994, p. 327)

These plastic commentaries on visual perception may be seen as "... concrete versions of the artist's basic graphic painting techniques. Ironies abound, Lichtenstein's signature lines become three-dimensional and concrete, and the painted and patinated bronze sculptures are as inescapably pictorial as the paintings. The crucial difference is that the spaces we 'read' on canvases are real in the sculptures ... But with both the concrete and the insubstantial, everything depends on the precision of the image, and here Lichtenstein is the master." (Nancy Spector, "Plane Talk: Notes on Roy Lichtenstein's Sculptures" in Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Lichtenstein: Sculpture and Drawings, 1999, p. 33).