Roy Lichtenstein

Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago
Acquired from the above by the present owner in September 1997

Chicago, Richard Gray Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein, September 1997
Turin, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Roy Lichtenstein: Opera Prima, September 2014 - January 2015, cat. no. 228, p. 227, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. Please contact the Contemporary Department at (212) 606-7254 for a professional condition report prepared by Alan Firkser of Paper Conservation Studio, Inc. Framed under glass.
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BARBARALEE DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL: Many critics have spoken of you as a classical artist. It is obvious that you have rigorous training in drawing. It is clear, too, that you know a great deal about the traditions of the history of art, even as you spoof them. Would you describe yourself as a classical artist?

ROY LICHTENSTEIN: I think you would have to call it classical if you were opposing it to romantic. Even just the style of it, where classical art tends to be more concerned with an edge and then filling in a color, whereas romantic art seems to make the color the shape itself, and the edges are the result of, and emergent of, the work. My feeling is more for romantic art. I mean, my preference would be for that. But there is something about what I do—because classical art usually seems to be more thought out beforehand. So I don't think you could possibly describe it as romantic. If you take the brush strokes I did, the brush stroke is a romantic gesture, a bravura gesture, and mine is drawn and filled in. It's a picture of a brush stroke—a classical rendition of a romantic idea.

Roy Lichtenstein and Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Inside the Art World:  Conversations with Barbaralee Diamonstein, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, 1994, p. 162