Roy Lichtenstein

Irving Galleries, Palm Beach
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner circa 1975

Alberto Boatto and Giordano Falzoni, Eds., Lichtenstein, Rome 1966, illustration of another example on the cover in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein, 1968, no. 48, illustration of another example in colour
Diane Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, New York 1971, no. 114, illustration of another example in colour
Jack Cowart, Roy Lichtenstein 1970-1980, New York 1981, p. 16, illustration of another example
Exhibition Catalogue, Fort Collins, Colorado State University, Roy Lichtenstein at Colorado State University, 1982, illustration of another example on the inside of the back cover
Kodansha Ltd., Contemporary Great Masters: Roy Lichtenstein, Tokyo 1992, p. 5, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, Chiastro del Bramante, Roy Lichtenstein: Reflections, 1999, p. 103, no. 45, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Wolfsburg, Kunstmuseum, Roy Lichtenstein: Mirror Paintings, 1963 - 1997, 2000, illustration of another example on the cover in colour
Michael Lobel, Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art, New Haven 2002, p. 135, no. 84, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Gagosian Gallery, Lichtenstein: Girls, 2008, p. 63, illustration of another example in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the red is brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is a very small spot of enamel loss towards the top centre of the left edge, visible in the catalogue illustration, and another one to the top right corner overturn edge.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"In these cartoon images...It is an intensification, a stylistic intensification of the excitement which the subject matter has for me; but the style is, as you say, cool. One of the things a cartoon does is to express violent emotion and passion in a completely mechanical and removed style." The artist in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein, 1968, p. 9

 

Articulated in Lichtenstein's signature schema of Benday dots and registering bold linear contours in black and white, red and yellow, Girl in Mirror utterly exudes the iconic visual lexicon that propelled Roy Lichtenstein to prominence in the early 1960s. Painted in 1964, this work bears witness to the year Lichtenstein reached the height of his technical prowess and attained the very apogee of his comic strip paintings - the series that propelled the artist to international fame. Exuding immaculate graphic efficiency, heightened by the pioneering application of enamel paint on steel, Lichtenstein's composition offers a superb commentary on high versus low art, the female beau idéal, alongside an intriguing allusion to tradition through a complex painterly dialogue with the conceit of reflection. Lichtenstein was not merely an artist; he was an innovator, able to catapult mass-produced commercial images into the realm of fine art. His innate gift for editing found images and capturing the essence of collective ideal defines the Pop leader's profoundly insightful understanding of the nature of contemporary perception.

 

Roy Lichtenstein instinctively understood the phenomenal potential of popular imagery, and more than any artist of his generation realigned the cipher of that imagery to unveil verities behind the ever-proliferating pictorial panorama of contemporary culture in 1960s America. By so doing he revolutionized how we perceive the world around us and how, in turn, the world has subsequently been presented back unto itself. Indeed, the very content of Lichtenstein's comic book paintings can be considered an authentic reflection of this new wave of popular culture. By assimilating its visual vocabulary and mastering the primary modus of industrial pictographic transmission, Lichtenstein's paintings stand as conceptual mirror images of contemporary culture and the means of its mass production. Between 1963 and 1965, inspired by the hard-finish and reflective sheen of the New York subway signage, Lichtenstein began incorporating the slick perfection of advertising into his work. The resultant corpus of enamel paintings, to which Girl in Mirror belongs, achieved a heightened look of mechanical perfection, an effect he could only suggest in his works on canvas.

 

In addition to echoing the aesthetic of the contemporary milieu, Lichtenstein retroactively takes on art historical precedent. A diligent student of art history, this painting incites a dialogue with the conceptually loaded conceit of the mirror, a theme that traces a powerful lineage across the grand tradition of painting. Though Lichtenstein famously invoked Renaissance methods in using the mirror as a tool for detecting flaws in its reversed visage, the mirror as a symbolic device at once has its roots in the Vanitas genre via the myth of narcissus. As canonically prevalent in Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage (1434), Velazquez's Las Meninas (1656) and Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), the mirror is subtly employed to complicate and dislocate the viewer's seat of vision. Perspective, perception and illusion are unsettled, and the viewer is at once invited yet obstructed from participating in the depicted drama. Throughout the history of painting, the mirror represents the locus par excellence for a complex scrutiny of two-dimensional illusion. Repeatedly taken up by Lichtenstein throughout his career, as his famous Self-Portrait from 1978 attests, the canonical conceit of the mirror here confers an innovative modernization of one of the most prescient and enduring dialogues with art and illusion.

 

Captured in the reflection of her handheld vanity mirror, Lichtenstein's blonde ideal of American beauty encapsulates the prevalent archetype that had become the socio-cultural aspiration for millions since the Second World War. The dream of looking like Lichtenstein's comic-book heroines, or of winning their hearts, drove entire billion-dollar industries. Alfred Hitchcock populated his classic movie thrillers with a cast of divine blonde actresses - Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint and Kim Novak - who played the part of alluringly independent protagonists before invariably being rescued by Cary Grant or James Stewart and safely returned to reassuring domesticity. Regarding Roy's Girls series, Dorothy Lichtenstein has said, "I think that he was portraying his idea of the dream girl" (Ibid. 15).

 

Focused through the lens of a pervasive Popular culture engendered by the increasingly buoyant and distinctly American model of consumerism, the art historical archetypal ideal of the female muse underwent a dramatic transformation. Alongside Lichtenstein, this transformation is perhaps most identifiable with the powerful imagery of Andy Warhol. For Warhol, the stars and international media figures of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy were the symbolic and generic epitome of beauty and posterity. Their physical loveliness, grace, humor, flirtatiousness, love of fashion or jewels and - above all - their fame, were emblematic of the pulsing vitality and international symbolism of post-war America. Together with Lichtenstein's happy homemakers and lovelorn heroines, Warhol's female muses embodied potent purveyors of this prosperous mood. However, unlike these real-life icons, Lichtenstein's "Girls" are entirely of the imagination, existing solely within the realm of his oeuvre. As such, Lichtenstein's archetype of blonde American beauty is at once a vessel for the artist's ideal woman and our own: "[Roy] specifically picked images and cartoons that had a lot of emotional charge - the archetypal idea of the woman disappointed by love, the war hero in the heat of battle. These are typically American; and it is atypically American way of glorifying a subject" (Ibid. p. 10).

 

Lichtenstein's is a fundamentally contemporary painting, inherently addressing the concerns of its day. Indeed, the mere act of isolating the woman out of the context of the comic strip affords an unprecedented level of analysis. Roy Lichtenstein once stated "I had been interested in the comic strip as a visual medium for a long time before I actually used it in a painting. This technique is a perfect example of an industrial process that developed as a direct result of the need for inexpensive and quick color-printing. These printed symbols attain perfection in the hands of commercial artists through the continuing idealization of the image made compatible with commercial considerations. Each generation of illustrators makes modifications and reinforcements of these symbols, which then become part of the vocabulary of all. The result is an impersonal form. In my own work, I would like to bend this toward a new classicism" (the artist in: Michael Lobel, Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art, New Haven, 2002, p. 155). Many of Lichtenstein's paintings from 1964 incorporate the cartoon bubble containing theatrical phrases, however, when the text bubbles were eliminated - as prevalent in fellow works from 1964 such as Happy Tears, Frightened Girl, and the record-breaking Sleeping Girl - a distinct change was effected and they become more complex and enigmatic. Indeed, Lichtenstein never copied an image verbatim, and it is in the subtle manipulation of the images that the artist's true genius lies.

 

The painter's espousal of the prosaic commonplaces of popular culture - both in style and frame of reference - and his alchemy of the mass-produced visual qualities of 'base' commercial images into poetic pictorial elements worthy of fine art, is unequivocally one of the most original innovations of twentieth-century art practice. Girl in Mirror and the iconic gamut of blonde comic-book American beauties, represent the climactic endpoint of the artist's most acclaimed and sustained body of work.