Roy Lichtenstein

When we think of still lifes, we think of paintings that have a certain atmosphere or ambience. My still life paintings have none of those qualities, they just have pictures of certain things that are in a still life, like lemons and grapefruits and so forth. It’s not meant to have the usual still life meaning.
—Roy Lichtenstein

Gagosian is pleased to present Roy Lichtenstein: Still Lifes, the first exhibition devoted solely to Lichtenstein’s still-life paintings, sculptures, and drawings, which span from 1972 through the early 1980s.

Although Lichtenstein will always be synonymous with Pop art, he continued to make inventive new work for almost three decades beyond the 1960s, during which he had become famous for his distinctive use of popular cartoon images and commercial painting styles. Beginning in 1972, he began to work on still lifes, making his own updated contribution to the venerated historical genre, using hard, vivid color and simulated Benday dots, laboriously painted by hand. Lichtenstein rendered his Still Lifes in flat, outlined shapes that were inspired by newspaper and print advertisements and painted to look like the originals. Frequently his evocations of mechanical reproduction were more pronounced than in the original source; even when adapting motifs from other artists’ works, Lichtenstein used postcards or reproductions of the original rather than the original itself.

Lichtenstein’s Still Lifes cover a variety of motifs and themes, including the most traditional such as fruit, flowers, and vases. He also created still lifes from contemporary vernacular subjects, including the intentionally banal Office Still Lifes, as well as from the contents of his own studio. During the 1970s he began to quote art-historical styles as well as his own previous works, for instance rendering his subject in a way that conflated Cubist or Expressionist style with his own signature technique. Using his “cartoonish” method of painting, he stripped both subjects and movements of their original import and gravitas. He also mined the modern masters of painting—from Matisse to Leger, Gris, and Raphael Peale, among others—for still life motifs, which he included in paintings or used alone in sculptures.