Between Sea and Sky $40.00 - £24.95 - €30.00
roy Lichtenstein
roy Lichtenstein www.officinalibraria.com
Between Sea and Sky
roy Lichtenstein
|
roy Lichtenstein
Between Sea and Sky
Officina Libraria in collaboration with Guild Hall East Hampton 2015
Guild Hall 158 Main Street East Hampton, NY 11937 www.GuildHall.org
Roy Lichtenstein: Between Sea and Sky is the catalogue for the exhibition which is a collaboration between Guild Hall in partnership with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. The exhibition is on view at the museum from August 8 through October 12, 2015. The exhibition at Guild Hall has been made possible through the generosity of its sponsors Principal Sponsors Larry Gagosian A generous private donor in memory of Mickey Straus Lead Sponsors Valentino D. Carlotti Barbara Bertozzi Castelli Barbara and Richard Lane Joan and Lucio Noto Fern and Lenard Tessler Co-Sponsors The Broad Art Foundation Raymond J. Learsy and Melva Bucksbaum Katherine and James Goodman
Officina Libraria via Carlo Romussi 4 20125 Milan, Italy www.officinalibraria.com
Editorial coordination Marco Jellinek Graphic design and layout Paola Gallerani Editorial assistant Serena Solla Editing NTL, Florence Color separation Eurofotolit, Cernusco sul Naviglio (MI) Printed by Monotipia Cremonese, Cremona, Italy All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. © Officina Libraria, Milan, 2015 © Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY 2015 Artworks © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein Seashore, 1964 © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Beautiful Kitsch: Lichtenstein’s Seascapes, 1964-1970 © Clare Bell. All Rights Reserved Working with Lichtenstein: James dePasquale and Donald Saff Reminisce © Avis Berman. All Rights Reserved Biography © Avis Berman. All Rights Reserved Chronology by Clare Bell © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. All Rights Reserved isbn 978-88-97737-66-7 Printed in Italy
Cover Night Seascape, 1966
W
e appreciate the generosity of all the lenders and supporters of this free-wheeling and provocative thirty-year survey. Along with the
staff and supporters of Guild Hall, the staffs of the Lichtenstein Foundation and Estate have been essential. Special acknowledgement is due to the Foundation’s Clare Bell, who helped manage the project, and Evan Ryer, who perfected the imagery. Added thanks to our consultants: Roy’s talented studio assistant, James dePasquale; our oral history project director, Avis Berman; and the Whitney Museum’s media team of Chrissie Iles and Richard Bloes. Sincere thanks to Joan Kron for indulging our reconstruction of one of her early Pop art commissioning projects: Roy’s Super Sunset Billboard. Finally, the Board of the Foundation has been, as always, supportive and engaged. Jack Cowart Executive Director The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
I
t is with great pleasure that Guild Hall Museum takes the opportunity to once again highlight the art of world-renowned artist Roy Lichtenstein. In 1992,
working closely with Roy Lichtenstein, Guild Hall mounted Roy Lichtenstein: Three Decades of Sculpture. That exhibition was a rare concentration on the artist’s three-dimensional work. This exhibition, Roy Lichtenstein: Between Sea and Sky, is a collaboration between Guild Hall Museum and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. Encompassing all media—paint, plastic, enamel, drawings, collage, print, and even film—the exhibition celebrates the artist’s abiding relationship with the East End of New York and all that it inspired. We would like to thank Jack Cowart, Executive Director, and the board and staff of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation for their ongoing guidance and support of this exhibition. A special note of thanks goes out to Clare Bell, Exhibition Support Manager, for all her assistance in coordinating the project as well as for her insightful essay. We would also like to thank the Museum Advisory Committee and the Board of Trustees and all of the lenders and sponsors for their support of this exhibition. This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Mickey Straus, former Chairman of the Board of Trustees, whose whole-hearted support of this exhibition assisted us greatly in making this exhibition and catalogue a reality. Ruth Appelhof, Ph.D.
Christina Mossaides Strassfield
Executive Director
Museum Director/Chief Curator
contents
10
Beautiful Kitsch: Lichtenstein’s Seascapes, 1964-1970 Clare Bell
22
Working with Lichtenstein: James dePasquale and Donald Saff Reminisce Avis Berman
39
Works
84
Biography Avis Berman
92
Chronology Clare Bell
109
Photo credits
|
|
works 39
1964 Oil and Magna on Plexiglas 24 5 30 in. (61 5 76.2 cm) Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Collection
|
1 Seashore
41
2 Moonscape 1965 Rowlux and screen print on board 19 15/16 5 23 15/16 in. (50.6 5 60.8 cm) Ed: AP Private Collection
|
3 Pink Seascape
42
1965 Rowlux and cut-and-pasted paper on board 28 5 21 1/2 in. (71.1 5 54.6 cm) Matthew Marks Gallery
| 43
biography
Avis Berman
R
oy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is pre-eminently identified with Pop
Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery lifted from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein’s success was matched by his focus and energy, and after his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create an oeuvre of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals, and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention. Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923, in New York, New York, the first of two children of Milton and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein. Milton Lichtenstein (1893-1946) was a successful real estate broker, and Beatrice Lichtenstein (1896-1991), a homemaker, had trained as a pianist, and she exposed Roy and his sister Rénee to museums, concerts, and other aspects of New York culture. Roy showed artistic and musical ability early on: he drew, painted, and sculpted as a teenager, and spent many hours in the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art. He played piano and clarinet, and developed an enduring love of jazz, frequenting the nightspots in midtown to hear it. Lichtenstein attended the Franklin School for Boys, a private junior high and high school, and graduated in 1940. That summer he studied painting and drawing from the model at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh. In September, he entered Ohio State University (OSU) at Columbus, enrolling in the College of Education. His early artistic idols were Rembrandt, Daumier, and Picasso, and he often said that Guernica (1937; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), then on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art, was his favorite painting. Even as an undergraduate, Lichtenstein objected to the notion that one set of lines (one person’s drawings) “was considered brilliant, and somebody’s else’s, that may have looked better to you, was considered nothing by almost everyone.”1 Lichtenstein’s questioning of accepted canons of taste
|
The artist at age 10, c. 1933
85
Between Sea and Sky $40.00 - £24.95 - €30.00
roy Lichtenstein
roy Lichtenstein www.officinalibraria.com
Between Sea and Sky