Roy Lichtenstein

The Pace Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1992

This work is in excellent condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art Department at +1 (212) 606-7254 for the report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The canvas is framed in a wooden frame painted white.
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.

Iconic yet enigmatic, entirely alluring yet utterly elusive, Still Life with Head in Landscape is the ultimate exemplar of the virtuosic dexterity with which Roy Lichtenstein faced, assimilated, and thrillingly reimagined  the art historical canon throughout his celebrated oeuvre. Arranged with exacting precision upon the canvas, each irresistibly intriguing element of Lichtenstein’s vibrant composition suggests innumerable referential meanings, drawing the viewer ever closer in our desire to enter the bewitchingly chromatic realm of Lichtenstein’s masterpiece. Executed in 1976, at the inception of the artist’s celebrated Surrealist series, Still Life with Head in Landscape exemplifies the peerless formal execution and conceptual sophistication which define this celebrated period of the artist’s career. In fact, the present work momentously marks the very first occasion in which Lichtenstein inserted the female figure into a Surrealist landscape - while the year of 1977 saw him produce a number of Surrealist figures, it was this painting in 1976 that birthed the beginning of this landmark series. Describing the indisputable ingenuity of the limited series, Diane Waldman notes, “In his distillation, Lichtenstein brought his gamesmanship into play, merging prototypical subjects from any one of the major Surrealists with the outstanding images of another and conflating them with images drawn from his own earlier work… [In] his Surrealist paintings, he unleashed a more fanciful aspect of his nature, layering one wild form on top of another and creating a panoply of imagery that he intertwined with forms from his previous work.” (Diane Waldman in Exh. Cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Roy Lichtenstein, 1994, pp. 243-251) With examples of Lichtenstein’s Surrealist paintings from 1977 and 1978 held in such collections as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, amongst numerous others, this series represents the inventive mind of the artist at the creative apex of his extraordinary career. Held in the collection of Barbara and Morton Mandel for over twenty five years and never publically exhibited, the present work is amongst the most captivating realizations of Pop Art’s scintillatingly absorptive approach to precedent. Seamlessly fusing a dazzling amalgamation of art historical tropes with slyly concealed allusions to his own oeuvre, Still Life with Head in Landscape is an emphatic testament to Lichtenstein’s own astute summation: “All my art is, in some way, about other art.” (Roy Lichtenstein quoted in Janis Hendrickson, Roy Lichtenstein, Cologne, 2000, frontispiece)Picasso explored the etchings of Rembrandt, while Warhol deftly repurposed the devotional imagery of Leonardo da Vinci; for centuries, artists have confronted the art of centuries past, engaging in and contributing to a timeless dialogue with their art historical forbearers. Achieving an exceptionally superb continuation of this venerated custom, Still Life with Head in Landscape articulates the tenets and tropes of innumerable art historical masterworks with unparalleled pictorial exuberance and graphic charge.  In its title alone, the present work suggests a blurring of the traditional genre distinctions between landscape, still life, and portraiture; deftly combining the three, Still Life with Head in Landscape is a work of virtually incomparable intricacy. While Lichtenstein considered Surrealism to be the specific aesthetic departure for this series, the present work merges sly references to a diverse range of artists, periods, and masterpieces. Asked to describe his inspiration for the Surrealist paintings, Lichtenstein reflected, “They were of no particular Surrealist artist, just Surrealism in general…These works are something like the Artist’s Studio paintings in that they are large compositions that include various images from various periods.” (Roy Lichtenstein, “A Review of My Work Since 1961,” 1995, quoted in Exh. Cat., Milan, Roy Lichtenstein: Meditations on Art, 2010, p. 235)

 In the present work, the dramatically foreshortened space between Lichtenstein’s sumptuous blonde, intimately leaning into the viewer’s space, and the near horizon bisecting the composition recalls the destabilization of space in the metaphysical landscapes of Salvador Dali and Giorgio de Chirico, whose hyper-real scenes aimed to conjure the uncanny environment of a dream; in contrast, the sinuously organic curves of the cooing blonde offer sly reference to the fantastical aesthetic of Max Ernst, imbuing her with an underlying sensuality. Below the horizon, a crisp blue swath of Lichtenstein’s trademark Ben-Day spots echoes the sweeping beaches and rugged cliffs of the Catalan coastline portrayed in many of Dali’s best known paintings. As in those works, the unfamiliar space of Still Life with Head in Landscape confounds traditional expectations of the landscape genre, paying homage to Dali’s exploration of psychological topography, rather than of the tangible realm. In the foreground, the combination of objects within Lichtenstein’s still life – the precise yellow pyramid, partially concealed crescent moon, and gleaming red apple, amongst others – recalls the seemingly incongruous combinations of Dali’s so-called “symbolically functioning objects;” unlike his Surrealist predecessors, whose painstakingly selected forms reference internal forces of the psyche, the crisp forms of Lichtenstein’s still life are chosen precisely for their frequent usage in other paintings, both from the Surrealists and within Lichtenstein’s own oeuvre. Describing the remarkable skill with which Lichtenstein seamlessly absorbs, adapts, and rearranges such disparate inferences within his Surrealist paintings, scholar Jack Cowart notes: “Lichtenstein, rather, takes stylistic and subject elements and modifies them into a kind of Surrealist slang. He becomes involved in composite-scale tableaux with a rich dialogue of forms—all intuitively modified and released from their nominal sources. The forms assume new roles…In his shallow pictorial space, Lichtenstein’s inanimate forms become animate with sharp sources of light and shadow, and each painting becomes a tableau vivant.” (Jack Cowart, “Surrealism, 1977-79,” in Exh. Cat., St. Louis Art Museum, Roy Lichtenstein: 1970-1980, 1981, p. 109) The gleaming red apple evokes the green apple suspended in René Magritte’s infamous self-portrait, The Son of Man, while the bright reflection echoes that same artist’s frequent portrayal of bewilderingly non-perspectival windows. The gaunt tree, one branch topped by a lone leaf, recalls the bare tree of Salvador Dalí’s masterpiece, The Persistence of Memory, while the neatly delineated pyramid conjures such de Chirico works as Hermes’ Meditation and The Nostalgia of the Infinite. Eloquently summarizing Lichtenstein’s ingenious engagement with his Surrealist predecessors, scholar Diane Waldman reflects: “[Lichtenstein’s] Surrealist-style works give us Surrealism pared down to its essential vocabulary and enhanced by his own visual commentary. While they do not share Surrealism’s fundamental premise—that a language of art could be shaped from the unconscious—they have captured much of its style, a large measure of its wit, and not a little bit of its pathos.” (Diane Waldman, “Futurism, Surrealism, and German Expressionism, 1974-80” in Exh. Cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Roy Lichtenstein, 1993, pp. 241-243)

 

Breathtaking in the scope of its referential vernacular, Still Life with Head in Landscape aligns numerous elements from Lichtenstein’s own oeuvre alongside this rich compendium of art historical inferences, culminating in a captivating homage to art of the past. Reintroduced in the mysterious realm of Surrealism, familiar elements from Lichtenstein’s earlier masterworks suggest new, intriguingly opaque meanings; Cowart notes, “One can identify sources and colors or document the compositional reuse, but one still wonders about the implications and the artist’s private intentions…Included are vestiges of his Pop comic works, Brushstrokes, temples, Pyramids, Mirrors, Entablatures, Landscapes, Trompe l’Oeils, Office Still Lifes, and Abstractions, and minor references to yet other works. Having developed style, technical expertise, and malleability in the intended rendering and communication between 1970 and 1977, Lichtenstein now combines all these skills in a virtuosic display.” (Jack Cowart, “Surrealism, 1977-79,” in Exh. Cat., St. Louis Art Museum, Roy Lichtenstein: 1970-1980, 1981, p. 111) Although rendered through the kaleidoscopic prism of Surrealism, the buttery yellow tresses of Lichtenstein’s signature blonde invoke the familiar bombshells of his Pop masterworks of the 1960s: departing from her role as the heroine of fictional and comic narrative, here, the artist’s archetypal female undergoes a radical stylistic transformation, emerging anew, entirely reimagined, in the fantastical dreamscape before us. Her obscured speech bubble temptingly evokes her lineage from the comic –based bombshells of Lichtenstein’s earlier paintings; in true Surrealist form, however, the cropped word tauntingly eludes legibility, lingering just beyond the viewer’s reach like a dream, only half remembered in the light of day. In her flowing locks of yellow hair, the shadows of Lichtenstein’s iconic Brushstroke paintings appear, winding sinuously alongside the figure’s face. Likewise, while the yellow pyramid and shining apple are immediately familiar from such earlier works as Pyramids II and III, 1969 or Two Apples, 1972, in addition to a number of works from the artist’s Still Life paintings of the mid 1970s, they acquire further shades of meaning from their Surrealist alter-egos, offering the viewer an intimate engagement with both art historical precedent and Lichtenstein’s own artistic past. The myriad diversity of external references is counter-balanced by the highly personalized treatment of his own oeuvre in the present work, as the artist draws on the forms of figures from his iconic paintings with the same acerbic wit and artistic license that has always characterized his distinctive practice. Indeed, considering his relationship to art history, Lichtenstein commented, “All painters take a personal attitude toward painting. What makes each object in the work is that it is organized by that artist’s vision. The style and the content are also different from anyone else’s. They are unified by the point of view—mine. This is the big tradition of art.” (The artist cited in Calvin Tomkins, Roy Lichtenstein: Mural with Blue Brushstroke, New York, 1988, p. 42) Compounding inference upon inference in a spectacular and multifaceted fusion of artistic homage and wry, subtly satirical commentary, in Still Life with Head in Landscape Lichtenstein confronts art history as his subject matter with striking finesse, systemically fracturing and reimagining iconic paintings of the Twentieth Century to compose his own, utterly original masterwork.