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Lot Essay
This large mixed-media screenprint is one of most celebrated works of the artist’s later printed oeuvre. Featuring a classically handsome man and large comic book-style font, the artist is looking back to his by-now classic early works as a source of inspiration. This process of re-visitation is a witty reference to Pop Art’s use of imagery from mass media as sources of inspiration, as the artist’s own work had by now become a part of popular visual culture. As Lichtenstein noted, 'all my art is in some way about other art, even if the other art is cartoons' (Lichtenstein, quoted in: J. Hendrickson, Roy Lichtenstein, Cologne, 2000, frontispiece).
In the Reflections Series, Lichtenstein investigates the ways in which the reflective surface can both prevent and enable comprehension of the underlying subject. 'It enable[d] him to unleash a new range of inventive bravura, a heightened exploitation of spatial effects, and a new freedom in suggesting illusion' (E. Baker, 'The Glass of Fashion and the Mold of Form’ in: J. Coplans (ed.), Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, p. 179). The figure is partially obscured by diagonal blocks of white filled with Benday dots and diagonal dashes. The colour of the blue on white suggests a reflective sheen and the metalised PVC strip of collage in the center of the composition heightens this effect of light reflections.
'Mirrors are flat objects that have surfaces you can't easily see since they're always reflecting what's around them. There's no simple way to draw a mirror, so cartoonists invented dashed or diagonal lines to signify 'mirror'. Now, you see those lines and you know it means 'mirror' even though there are obviously no such lines in reality. If you put horizontal, instead of diagonal lines across the same object, it wouldn't say 'mirror'. It's a convention that we unconsciously accept’ (R. Lichtenstein quoted in: M. Kimmelman, ‘Roy Lichtenstein at the Met - Portraits, Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, The Louvre and elsewhere’, The New York Times, 31 March 1995, p. C1).
In the Reflections Series, Lichtenstein investigates the ways in which the reflective surface can both prevent and enable comprehension of the underlying subject. 'It enable[d] him to unleash a new range of inventive bravura, a heightened exploitation of spatial effects, and a new freedom in suggesting illusion' (E. Baker, 'The Glass of Fashion and the Mold of Form’ in: J. Coplans (ed.), Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, p. 179). The figure is partially obscured by diagonal blocks of white filled with Benday dots and diagonal dashes. The colour of the blue on white suggests a reflective sheen and the metalised PVC strip of collage in the center of the composition heightens this effect of light reflections.
'Mirrors are flat objects that have surfaces you can't easily see since they're always reflecting what's around them. There's no simple way to draw a mirror, so cartoonists invented dashed or diagonal lines to signify 'mirror'. Now, you see those lines and you know it means 'mirror' even though there are obviously no such lines in reality. If you put horizontal, instead of diagonal lines across the same object, it wouldn't say 'mirror'. It's a convention that we unconsciously accept’ (R. Lichtenstein quoted in: M. Kimmelman, ‘Roy Lichtenstein at the Met - Portraits, Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, The Louvre and elsewhere’, The New York Times, 31 March 1995, p. C1).