Lichtenstein Remembered

Roy and Irving: A bad name for a ’60s folk duo, but a great name for a powerful art combo.
—Steve Martin

Gagosian is pleased to present Lichtenstein Remembered, an exhibition of sculptures and related studies by Roy Lichtenstein, curated by Irving Blum in recognition of the centenary of the artist’s birth. Organized in close collaboration with the Estate of Roy Lichtenstein and featuring an exhibition design by Bill Katz, Lichtenstein Remembered opens at 980 Madison Avenue, New York, on September 9, 2023. This is the first gallery exhibition dedicated to Lichtenstein’s sculpture since the survey presented in London and New York in 2005.

To create the miraculous drawings in space that constitute his sculptural work, Lichtenstein employed an array of visual strategies familiar from his painting and printmaking. Representing glasses, lamps, mirrors, and mobiles, as well as portrait heads and stylized explosions, he produced witty and seductive sculptures in the Pop art mode of which he was a progenitor. Referencing his adaptation of popular print media in general and comic book illustration in particular, the works on view in New York evoke the stylistic and conceptual innovations of artists including Matisse and Picasso.

Also included in Lichtenstein Remembered are drawn and painted studies that illuminate the sculptures’ conception and manufacture. Desk Explosion (1965), for instance, is a small sculpture in porcelain enamel on steel that reduces its subject to a burst of yellow and red, with the perforations in a flat sheet of white metal representing a cloud of smoke that approximates the artist’s use of the Benday dot. Desk Explosion (Study) (c. 1965) is a loose pencil sketch of the same basic form that has a jagged energy all its own. Lichtenstein turned such outlines into full-scale drawings from which an assistant, sculptor Carlos Ramos, made wooden maquettes. Tallix Foundry (now UAP) used these to produce molds, from which the sculptural editions were cast (most often in bronze), and then typically painted and patinated.