Roy Lichtenstein

James Goodman Gallery, New York
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1984

New York, 65 Thompson Street, Roy Lichtenstein: Bronze Sculptures 1976-1989, May - July 1989 (another example exhibited)
San Antonio Museum of Art, Southwestern Bell Corporation: Selections of American Art, September - November 1993 (another example exhibited)
Pine Bluff, Arts & Sciences Center, Contemporary American Images, September - November 1994 (another example exhibited)
Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts; The Austin Museum of Art; Corpus Christi, The Museum of South Texas; The El Paso Museum of Art, SBC American Images, November 1997 - December 1998 (another example exhibited)
New York, Gagosian Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein: Still Lifes, May - July 2010, pp. 143 and 221, illustrated in color (another example exhibited)

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., American Images, The SBC Collection of Twentieth-Century American Art, New York, 1996, no. 74, p. 160, illustrated in color

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. There are scattered dust accretions primarily visible in the crevices of the work. There are also scattered pinpoint liquid accretions primarily visible in the white painted areas. There are pinpoint losses to the paint primarily located at the base.
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.

Roy Lichtenstein began making sculptures in the early 1960s. Famous for the comic-strip images he applied to large canvases in primary colors and Benday dots, Lichtenstein transposed the pictorial language of the graphic novel to three dimensional household objects first in ceramic and later in bronze. 

His sculpture is a game of perception, an extended play on illusion and reality. It inhabits the ambiguous territory between image and object by virtue of its seeming indifference to the characteristics of its medium, using pictorial signifiers to illustrate depth and volume, light and shadow, reflection and texture. The third dimension is physically diminished, at odds with logic and literal perspective, but evoked here in Little Glass through the use of black horizontal lines and negative space thereby creating a hyper-real sense of solidity. The subject is reduced to its essential elements through a detailed analysis of the components of its image.

As in much of Lichtenstein's work, clear references to his artistic predecessors are fused with his own unique vision. In his elevation of banal household objects to the realm of high art, Lichtenstein pays homage to the Readymades of Duchamp, and one can see clear echoes of Mondrian's Neoplasticism in Lichtenstein's structural black grid and primary colors. He also playfully subverts the traditional status of bronze in the hierarchy of sculptural materials by covering it in layers of enamel, "From his understanding of preceding art forms...he has created an art of strength through many dialogues," (Diane Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1969, p. 18).