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Lot Essay
Painted in 1974, Roy Lichtenstein’s Cubist Still Life is a dazzling and perceptive homage to the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. Fragments of the objects that populate traditional still lifes, including grapes, lemons, a pipe and an apple, are placed atop a slanting tabletop, and rendered in vivid, high-keyed colors. In the present work, Lichtenstein engages in a dialogue with Cubist painting, which he then filters and reinterprets through his own Pop Art lens. Exceedingly rare, Cubist Still Life is one of only eleven paintings that Lichtenstein titled Cubist Still Life and painted between 1973 and 1975. Of these, at least three are located in major international and national museum collections, including Cubist Still Life (1974; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), Cubist Still Life with Pipe (1974; The Broad, Los Angeles), and Cubist Still Life with Lemons (1975; Ludwig Museum for International Art, Beijing/Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany).
In this particular configuration, Lichtenstein has arranged several different vantage points within the same composition. Beginning along the right edge, he depicts a pipe and a yellow plate, which are placed upon a tabletop whose surface is dramatically foreshortened and rendered in raking diagonal lines. Proceeding toward the left, a cluster of grapes is caught in a glimpse, and this is followed by a shiny red apple and a pert yellow lemon. Everything is simplified, flattened and foreshortened, painted in primary colors and rendered with crisp, black outlines. 1974 is the year in which Lichtenstein invented the use of raking diagonal lines in his paintings, and in Cubist Still Life we find these in abundance. He also delights in the Cubist’s penchant for faux bois, which they combined with printed paper collage and painted in trompe l'oeil detail. This calls to mind the inherent flatness of the picture plane and the pictorial deceptions at play. Lichtenstein does all of this and more, conflating these Cubist techniques with his signature Pop Art style. The result is a witty reinvention that’s part pastiche, part homage, but also an ingenious way for a contemporary painter to engage with the past whilst finding ways to continue painting well into the future.
An artist capable of ceaseless reinvention whilst staying true to his signature Pop Art style, in the 1970s Roy Lichtenstein turned away from looking at comic books and advertisements to focus on the great “isms” of Art History. Between 1972 and 1976, he tackled Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Purism, along with paintings based on the work of Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse. Picasso, in particular, had always fascinated the artist; as early as 1962, Lichtenstein painted Femme au Chapeau after Picasso’s painting of the same name, followed by Femme d’Alger in 1963 and Still Life After Picasso in 1964. “Picasso always had an influence on me,” Lichtenstein said. “Together with Matisse, he is the enormous influence on 20th-century art. When you think about Cubism, you think about Picasso…” (R. Lichtenstein, quoted in B. Diamonstein, "Caro, de Kooning, Indiana, Lichtenstein, Motherwell and Nevelson on Picasso's Influence," ArtNews, April 1974, p. 45).
The Cubist Still Life paintings were exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York on several occasions between 1973 and 1975. Reviews were favorable, with the art critic Gerrit Henry writing: “Taking his cue (and copious visual references) from the still-life tradition of the past, Lichtenstein has turned out a body of paintings that stands as a kind of immovable feast of art historical observation, parody, cultural criticism and modernist esthetics. … All of these still-lifes are executed in Lichtenstein's trademark [style…which] still packs surprises. Unlike other Pop artists of the 60s, Lichtenstein’s imaginative and regenerative powers continue to run high, wide and handsome with each succeeding show” (G. Henry, "Reviews and Previews," ArtNews, April 1973, p. 77).
In the 1960s, Lichtenstein’s subject matter had been the consumer culture of postwar America, with its gleaming modern appliances, its homogenized foodstuffs and the pithy advertisements that brought these items into the home of the average American. Along with Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein was keenly aware of the power of these images to capture and hold our attention. In the 1970s, he extended this focus to Art History itself. In creating the Cubist Still Lifes, he worked from reproductions from textbooks history books, acknowledging that most people would be more familiar with a picture of a Picasso rather than an actual Picasso painting. He understood that everything in our world is paraphrased, condensed, and copied from the real thing—essentially a reproduced cliché. Lichtenstein said, in an interview with Alain Robbe-Grillet, “I have the feeling that these flat images conform far more to what really goes on inside our heads, than those false depths…” (R. Lichtenstein, paraphrased by A. Robbe-Grillet, and quoted in L. Alloway, "On Style: An Examination of Roy Lichtenstein's Development," Artforum, March 1972, p. 54).
Lichtenstein’s paintings of the 1970s reconfigured the great Modern artists, and these are now considered to be some of his most iconic and thought-provoking work. In Cubist Still Life, the hard, raking diagonals, the “implied” textures that mimic “real” things, in combination with the bright Magna acrylics used straight from the tube, would never be found in real life, but somehow they conform more to our idea of Cubism than the actual product. Lichtenstein also vastly enlarged the scale of these Cubist still lifes, which tended to be smaller, more intimate portrayals. There are also references to the nineteenth-century American trompe l’oeil paintings by William Harnett, in which Harnett painted sheets of paper, letters or newsprint tacked to the painting’s surface. So too, does Lichtenstein reference the tradition of Vanitas and Nature morte paintings of the seventeenth century Dutch “Golden Age.” Indeed, as Karen Rosenberg summarized after seeing the Still Life paintings exhibited in 2010, “He finally liberated his style from the cartoon and became this classical painter, which he had always been” (K. Rosenberg, “Lichtenstein, After the Funny Papers,” The New York Times, June 11, 2010, p. C25).
In this particular configuration, Lichtenstein has arranged several different vantage points within the same composition. Beginning along the right edge, he depicts a pipe and a yellow plate, which are placed upon a tabletop whose surface is dramatically foreshortened and rendered in raking diagonal lines. Proceeding toward the left, a cluster of grapes is caught in a glimpse, and this is followed by a shiny red apple and a pert yellow lemon. Everything is simplified, flattened and foreshortened, painted in primary colors and rendered with crisp, black outlines. 1974 is the year in which Lichtenstein invented the use of raking diagonal lines in his paintings, and in Cubist Still Life we find these in abundance. He also delights in the Cubist’s penchant for faux bois, which they combined with printed paper collage and painted in trompe l'oeil detail. This calls to mind the inherent flatness of the picture plane and the pictorial deceptions at play. Lichtenstein does all of this and more, conflating these Cubist techniques with his signature Pop Art style. The result is a witty reinvention that’s part pastiche, part homage, but also an ingenious way for a contemporary painter to engage with the past whilst finding ways to continue painting well into the future.
An artist capable of ceaseless reinvention whilst staying true to his signature Pop Art style, in the 1970s Roy Lichtenstein turned away from looking at comic books and advertisements to focus on the great “isms” of Art History. Between 1972 and 1976, he tackled Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Purism, along with paintings based on the work of Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse. Picasso, in particular, had always fascinated the artist; as early as 1962, Lichtenstein painted Femme au Chapeau after Picasso’s painting of the same name, followed by Femme d’Alger in 1963 and Still Life After Picasso in 1964. “Picasso always had an influence on me,” Lichtenstein said. “Together with Matisse, he is the enormous influence on 20th-century art. When you think about Cubism, you think about Picasso…” (R. Lichtenstein, quoted in B. Diamonstein, "Caro, de Kooning, Indiana, Lichtenstein, Motherwell and Nevelson on Picasso's Influence," ArtNews, April 1974, p. 45).
The Cubist Still Life paintings were exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York on several occasions between 1973 and 1975. Reviews were favorable, with the art critic Gerrit Henry writing: “Taking his cue (and copious visual references) from the still-life tradition of the past, Lichtenstein has turned out a body of paintings that stands as a kind of immovable feast of art historical observation, parody, cultural criticism and modernist esthetics. … All of these still-lifes are executed in Lichtenstein's trademark [style…which] still packs surprises. Unlike other Pop artists of the 60s, Lichtenstein’s imaginative and regenerative powers continue to run high, wide and handsome with each succeeding show” (G. Henry, "Reviews and Previews," ArtNews, April 1973, p. 77).
In the 1960s, Lichtenstein’s subject matter had been the consumer culture of postwar America, with its gleaming modern appliances, its homogenized foodstuffs and the pithy advertisements that brought these items into the home of the average American. Along with Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein was keenly aware of the power of these images to capture and hold our attention. In the 1970s, he extended this focus to Art History itself. In creating the Cubist Still Lifes, he worked from reproductions from textbooks history books, acknowledging that most people would be more familiar with a picture of a Picasso rather than an actual Picasso painting. He understood that everything in our world is paraphrased, condensed, and copied from the real thing—essentially a reproduced cliché. Lichtenstein said, in an interview with Alain Robbe-Grillet, “I have the feeling that these flat images conform far more to what really goes on inside our heads, than those false depths…” (R. Lichtenstein, paraphrased by A. Robbe-Grillet, and quoted in L. Alloway, "On Style: An Examination of Roy Lichtenstein's Development," Artforum, March 1972, p. 54).
Lichtenstein’s paintings of the 1970s reconfigured the great Modern artists, and these are now considered to be some of his most iconic and thought-provoking work. In Cubist Still Life, the hard, raking diagonals, the “implied” textures that mimic “real” things, in combination with the bright Magna acrylics used straight from the tube, would never be found in real life, but somehow they conform more to our idea of Cubism than the actual product. Lichtenstein also vastly enlarged the scale of these Cubist still lifes, which tended to be smaller, more intimate portrayals. There are also references to the nineteenth-century American trompe l’oeil paintings by William Harnett, in which Harnett painted sheets of paper, letters or newsprint tacked to the painting’s surface. So too, does Lichtenstein reference the tradition of Vanitas and Nature morte paintings of the seventeenth century Dutch “Golden Age.” Indeed, as Karen Rosenberg summarized after seeing the Still Life paintings exhibited in 2010, “He finally liberated his style from the cartoon and became this classical painter, which he had always been” (K. Rosenberg, “Lichtenstein, After the Funny Papers,” The New York Times, June 11, 2010, p. C25).