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Lot Essay
Roy Lichtenstein’s elegantly refined Still Life – Red Apples presents a dynamic interplay between depth and flatness, placing an iconic art historical genre in conversation with a Pop Art juxtaposition of high and low culture. While the tilting angular recession of the table and the apples’ recession of scale hint at perspectival depth, Lichtenstein’s use of his signature Ben Day dots flattens the image, nodding to his comic book inspirations while parodying the chiaroscuro effect of Old Master painting through his application of variegated dots of local color. This work emerges from his exploration of still lifes which began in the 1970s, when he moved beyond the cartoon imagery that first brought him fame to investigate art historical styles like Surrealism and Cubism.
Lichtenstein articulates the outline of three apples placed atop a table with unmodulated black lines. He crops the first apple across the bottom edge of the canvas, conveying a jarringly foreshortened perspective in which the viewer is placed amid the assembled fruits. The apples cast a singular shadow across the table which converges in the center of the composition—this unnatural lighting is conveyed by the oblong form of hatched red lines, which provides a lovely contrast with the Ben Day dots. A teal jug placed to the top of the table is mostly beyond the composition’s edges, but expresses a reassuring solidity amid the somewhat weightless apples. Appointed with a consistent application of paint, the jug is the sole item to be fully colored, allowing it to anchor the ephemeral apples in place on the picture pane. Lichtenstein distinguishes the deep red hue of the table and apples with a bold blue dotted background, unifying the ground into a singularly ebullient composition.
Lichtenstein’s engagement with art history is evident in his fusion of traditional still-life arrangements and Pop Art’s emphasis on mass media procedures and images. The jarring proximity with which the artist places his apples, held discordantly aloft from the sloping table, evocatively exaggerates the perspectival effects mastered by Paul Cézanne in his many still lifes of apples. By incorporating Ben Day dots—a pulp magazine printing technique—into a still life, he disrupts high art with the vocabulary of the magazine. This work is a balance of wit and formality, transforming a storied art historical trope into geometric shapes that resonate with both humor and artistic rigor.
Still Life – Red Apples is an exceptional example of Lichtenstein’s intervention into the still life genre, applying his idiosyncratic techniques to a time-honored form to produce intriguing painterly effects. Operating amid the Pop Art milieu in which fellow artists including Jasper Johns, Wayne Thiebaud, and Andy Warhol similarly explored the possibilities of the still life, Lichtenstein demonstrates here how his revolutionary approach to painting continues to revive and reframe the art historical canon in the era of mass media.
Lichtenstein articulates the outline of three apples placed atop a table with unmodulated black lines. He crops the first apple across the bottom edge of the canvas, conveying a jarringly foreshortened perspective in which the viewer is placed amid the assembled fruits. The apples cast a singular shadow across the table which converges in the center of the composition—this unnatural lighting is conveyed by the oblong form of hatched red lines, which provides a lovely contrast with the Ben Day dots. A teal jug placed to the top of the table is mostly beyond the composition’s edges, but expresses a reassuring solidity amid the somewhat weightless apples. Appointed with a consistent application of paint, the jug is the sole item to be fully colored, allowing it to anchor the ephemeral apples in place on the picture pane. Lichtenstein distinguishes the deep red hue of the table and apples with a bold blue dotted background, unifying the ground into a singularly ebullient composition.
Lichtenstein’s engagement with art history is evident in his fusion of traditional still-life arrangements and Pop Art’s emphasis on mass media procedures and images. The jarring proximity with which the artist places his apples, held discordantly aloft from the sloping table, evocatively exaggerates the perspectival effects mastered by Paul Cézanne in his many still lifes of apples. By incorporating Ben Day dots—a pulp magazine printing technique—into a still life, he disrupts high art with the vocabulary of the magazine. This work is a balance of wit and formality, transforming a storied art historical trope into geometric shapes that resonate with both humor and artistic rigor.
Still Life – Red Apples is an exceptional example of Lichtenstein’s intervention into the still life genre, applying his idiosyncratic techniques to a time-honored form to produce intriguing painterly effects. Operating amid the Pop Art milieu in which fellow artists including Jasper Johns, Wayne Thiebaud, and Andy Warhol similarly explored the possibilities of the still life, Lichtenstein demonstrates here how his revolutionary approach to painting continues to revive and reframe the art historical canon in the era of mass media.