“The mechanically produced image represents only the ‘idea’ of mirror, making it easier to reduce it even further into a flat amalgam of lines, shapes, and colors…. He uses the tropes of the shadow or reflection as they are rendered in the media and gives us just enough of these details so that we can recognize the image as a mirror.”
E xecuted in 1970, Roy Lichtenstein’s Mirror #8 (Study) is a sophisticated and historically resonant collage that offers rare insight into the artist’s conceptual rigor and meticulous process. A preparatory work for one of his celebrated Mirror paintings, this collage on joined boards blends cut painted and printed paper, tape, and graphite, distilling the artist’s signature Pop vocabulary into a meditative exploration of perception and illusion.
The Mirror series, begun in 1969, marked a conceptual pivot in Lichtenstein's practice. At first glance, these works appear to be depictions of empty ovals or rounded rectangles; yet their subject—the mirror—functions paradoxically as both a void and a reflector. With no figurative image contained within, the mirrors instead offer formal investigations into surface, abstraction, and the very act of seeing. Mirror #8 (Study) exemplifies this approach, using the graphic tools of Pop—Ben-Day dots, flat planes of color, and bold outlines—to simulate light, shadow, and curved reflection within the elliptical shapes.
What makes this particular work especially compelling is its hand-assembled quality. Each element of the image has been carefully cut and placed, revealing how Lichtenstein choreographed visual rhythm before executing a final version in paint. The split composition—two ovals side by side—creates a quiet dialogue between forms. The left mirror is composed of rhythmic Ben-Day patterns and sharp linear accents in green, yellow, and white. The right, by contrast, is dominated by bold, dark color fields with subtle inflections of green and blue. Together, the forms imply not a literal scene but a choreography of light and absence, signal and space.
