Roy Lichtenstein

Leo Castelli Gallery Inc., New York
James Goodman Gallery, New York
Waddington Galleries, Ltd., London
Christie's New York, 5 May 1993, Lot 288
Private Collection, California
Hamilton-Selway Fine Arts, Los Angeles
Private Collection, Switzerland
Christie's London, 21 October 2008, Lot 225
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

The work is in good condition. The catalogue illustration is inaccurate: the colours of the work are bright and fresh, with the "gold frame" collage element in glossy gold colour. There are scattered soft creases to the "gold frame" element, due to the material and the artist's collage process. There is a horizontal crease on the extreme bottom edge, measuring 4.5cm in length, located 6cm from the left edge; along the bottom edge, there are scattered short creases, not visible when framed. The work is framed under Plexiglas.
"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."

 “The capacity of Lichtenstein’s art to engage such dualities – whimsy and complexity, drollery and sophistication, parody and reverence – enlivens his work and is a continual source of pleasure.”  R. Fitzpatrick (Roy Lichtenstein: Interiors, New York, 2001, p.14)

Revered as the master of graphic clarity and a genius of image appropriation, Roy Lichtenstein crafted Pop Art masterpieces that redefined the boundary between High and Low art through an ironic interplay of popular culture, everyday objects and art history. In the case of the Collage for Painting in Gold Frame from 1984, the artist takes direct aim at the notion of the brushstroke as the manifestation of the artist’s genius. By putting a painting within a painting – a mise-en-abyme technique, Lichtenstein uses his unique Pop language to explore and subvert the heroic gestures of the brushstroke championed by the Abstract Expressionists, presenting a highly complex, playful, meta-painterly tour de force.

Using the simplified style of the comic book, a detached manner of representation, the present work depicts a section of a framed Abstract Expressionist painting: a gold frame with its corresponding shadow, a white mat board with wide black contours suggesting thickness, cut out variations of the artist’s famed schematic image of abstract brushstroke, and artist’s own real brushstrokes intertwined with the cut-outs. The emotive immediacy of the Abstract-Expressionism and the carefully flattened coolness of Pop are pitted against each other in a balanced composition. Meanwhile, the artist pokes fun at different ways of representing reality: what is represented is an abstract painting framed as a three-dimensional object, and one would never see an Absract-Expressionist painting in such an elaborate gold frame. The early 1980s, when the present work was created, saw Lichtenstein translating the brushstroke motif from paintings to sculptures in various public art projects, such as Brushstrokes in Flight for the entrance to the International Airport of Columbus, Ohio. The core ironies and the insistence on the conflation of two- and three-dimensionality, however, remained significant.

The present lot is a celebrated example of Lichtenstein’s use of collage to order and balance his surface. Not only is there an exercise of arranging real and cut-out brushstrokes as pure abstract forms, but also the tendency to conflate the abstract with the figural, where the references to a female portrait can be detected: the pink daub in the centre suggests lips, while the vertical yellow brushstroke acts as blonde hair, which is so emblematic of many of Lichtenstein’s depiction of women. To some extent, the artist’s collage works are more complete than his paintings, as they offer insight into his meticulous working method.  The artist explains, “I do a lot of [collaging] in the paintings. I start something and keep adding it – putting pieces of paper down temporarily and looking at the image… it’s just much easier to try it out first in collage to get everything I want.” (Roy Lichtenstein, Beginning to End, exh. cat., Fundacion Juan March, Madrid, 2007, p.126) Aside from a 1983 drawing of the same subject, the present lot became the ultimate maquette for a set of prints titled, Painting in Gold Frame, which further attests to the definitiveness of Lichtenstein’s collage works as complete artworks. 

This bold and graphic work challenges the methods and notions of visual perception and subvert the illusion of representation all the while maintaining the artist’s playful but important conflation of the boundaries between high and low culture.