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Lot 215
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Water lilies with willow
Closed2 July 2014
Price Realised
GBP 434,500
More Information
Specialist note
'It’s an industrial way of making Impressionism-- or something like it-- by a machinelike technique. But it probably takes me ten times as long to do one of the Cathedral or Haystack paintings as it took Monet to do his’ (R. Lichtenstein, quoted in L. Alloway, Lichtenstein, New York 1999, p. 53).
Executed in 1992, Roy Lichtenstein’s Water Lilies with Willows is a wry Pop assault on one of Lichtenstein’s most venerated artistic predecessors. In this painting, Claude Monet’s Nymphéas have been fully re-appropriated into Lichtestein’s signature style by which he deconstructs the entire nature of seeing and by extension of representation. In Water Lilies, he has meticulously dismantled the vocabulary of painting, and in particular, a style of painting that is specifically focused on the brushstroke and the artist’s trace. Famed for taking images from popular culture and smuggling them into the realms of High Art, Lichtenstein has overturned the process with Water Lilies by addressing the hallowed canon of art in his own distinct visual language.
While Monet’s lilies are renowned for their textural brushwork, complex effects of light and shadow, and their vast array of colour, Lichtenstein submits these qualities to dramatic simplification. Through his meticulous attention to detail, he has managed to fully appropriate Monet’s work for the contemporary world, giving him a new visual relevance, turning Impressionism into Pop Art. Monet’s shimmering reflections and ripples of water are echoed by reflective surfaces and systematically generated textures, while any suggestion of perspective is erased. Instead, the forms are visually flattened and layered one on top of the other. Speaking of this process, Lichtenstein admitted ‘when I did paintings based on Monet’s I realised everyone would think that Monet was someone I could never do because his work has no outlines and it’s so Impressionistic. It’s laden with incredible nuance and a sense of the different times of day and it’s just completely different from my art. So, I don’t know, I smiled at the idea of making a mechanical Monet’ (R. Lichtenstein, quoted in M. Kimmelman, PORTRAITS, Talking with Artists at the Met, The Modern, The Louvre and Elsewhere, New York 1988, https://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/kimmelman1.htm [accessed 9th May 2014]).
Executed in 1992, Roy Lichtenstein’s Water Lilies with Willows is a wry Pop assault on one of Lichtenstein’s most venerated artistic predecessors. In this painting, Claude Monet’s Nymphéas have been fully re-appropriated into Lichtestein’s signature style by which he deconstructs the entire nature of seeing and by extension of representation. In Water Lilies, he has meticulously dismantled the vocabulary of painting, and in particular, a style of painting that is specifically focused on the brushstroke and the artist’s trace. Famed for taking images from popular culture and smuggling them into the realms of High Art, Lichtenstein has overturned the process with Water Lilies by addressing the hallowed canon of art in his own distinct visual language.
While Monet’s lilies are renowned for their textural brushwork, complex effects of light and shadow, and their vast array of colour, Lichtenstein submits these qualities to dramatic simplification. Through his meticulous attention to detail, he has managed to fully appropriate Monet’s work for the contemporary world, giving him a new visual relevance, turning Impressionism into Pop Art. Monet’s shimmering reflections and ripples of water are echoed by reflective surfaces and systematically generated textures, while any suggestion of perspective is erased. Instead, the forms are visually flattened and layered one on top of the other. Speaking of this process, Lichtenstein admitted ‘when I did paintings based on Monet’s I realised everyone would think that Monet was someone I could never do because his work has no outlines and it’s so Impressionistic. It’s laden with incredible nuance and a sense of the different times of day and it’s just completely different from my art. So, I don’t know, I smiled at the idea of making a mechanical Monet’ (R. Lichtenstein, quoted in M. Kimmelman, PORTRAITS, Talking with Artists at the Met, The Modern, The Louvre and Elsewhere, New York 1988, https://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/kimmelman1.htm [accessed 9th May 2014]).