Lichtenstein Comic Inspired Art Estimated at $35-45 Million 2 2

[Dbrewer75]

Did Ramos do those because he's a fan or did he do them to exhibit?

 

Ramos isn't in the same league as Warhol or Lichtenstein, but he's pretty well know in the fine art world for his pop art.

Wiki entry

 

And his intent, just like Lichtenstein, was to exhibit publicly, his works are quite valuable

Ramos Green Lantern sells for $600k

 

That's rather interesting.

 

The Green Lantern painting, as with the Superman and Atom, is quite dreadful.

 

Some of the other works, I see from your Ramos Wiki entry link, look really good.

 

Go figure . . .

 

 

That GL is AWFUL and it's sad that it sold for that much (though I guess not too sad for the seller)

[comix4fun]

Unlike the poster above me, I won't try to make a hero out of a thief. To answer your question, there is absolutely ZERO difference between Lichtenstein and Rob Granito. Both profited by stealing images created and drawn by other artists and claiming they created them. Doing it first only means you paved the way for the rest of the thieves. Getting away with it just means you got to keep all of your money you made by stealing. It's no different than someone robbing your house and getting away with it. They stole your stuff and no one caught them. They got to keep your stuff.

 

Wait, there IS a difference. No one ever CONGRATULATED a house thief and said they were a freaking genius for breaking into houses and stealing property. I guess it's ok if you steal art though. At least some people here think it is. I guess Rob Granito wasn't doing anything wrong in their eyes either. Now we know where they stand.

 

How does Lichtenstein differ from Rob Granito? Given the page rates that the artists who RL swiped from were on isn't he actually more of a dbag than Granito?

 

 

Thanks for the JPEG. I was looking for that to post the next time someone posts something about Lichtenstein using the words "reexamining", "introspection", "deeper meaning", or "global impact"..oh oh...and especially "transformative".

[Terry Doyle]

Unlike the poster above me, I won't try to make a hero out of a thief. To answer your question, there is absolutely ZERO difference between Lichtenstein and Rob Granito. Both profited by stealing images created and drawn by other artists and claiming they created them. Doing it first only means you paved the way for the rest of the thieves. Getting away with it just means you got to keep all of your money you made by stealing. It's no different than someone robbing your house and getting away with it. They stole your stuff and no one caught them. They got to keep your stuff.

 

Wait, there IS a difference. No one ever CONGRATULATED a house thief and said they were a freaking genius for breaking into houses and stealing property. I guess it's ok if you steal art though. At least some people here think it is. I guess Rob Granito wasn't doing anything wrong in their eyes either. Now we know where they stand.

 

How does Lichtenstein differ from Rob Granito? Given the page rates that the artists who RL swiped from were on isn't he actually more of a dbag than Granito?

 

[Nexus]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/08/national/a192658S78.DTL&tsp=1

 

Lichtenstein 'Room' painting fetches $43M in NYC

 

(11-08) 19:26 PST NEW YORK, (AP) --

 

A painting by the late pop artist Roy Lichtenstein has sold at auction in New York City for more than $43 million, a world auction record for him.

 

The 1961 painting is titled "I Can See the Whole Room! ... and There's Nobody in It!" It depicts a man's face peering through a peephole. It sold Tuesday night at a Christie's auction house post-war and contemporary art sale.

 

Lichtenstein's 1964 painting "Ohhh ... Alright ..." sold for his previous auction record of more than $42 million last November. It's a comic book image of a distressed woman speaking into a telephone.

 

Lichtenstein was famous for his cartoon-inspired style and along with artists including Andy Warhol and Jasper John helped launch the pop art movement. He died in 1997.

 

 

 

[AKA Rick]

Yes... over $43 Million...

 

http://news.yahoo.com/roy-lichtenstein-canvas-pops-43-million-record-025714881.html

 

Like it or not, that's real money and a legit transaction, not a price guide valuation, or something like on the Coollines Website or any other art dealer looking to get a certain rate with prices listed that the market doesn't support.

 

It takes two to tango in an auction, so that means there's someone out there who would have paid $40 million, so it's not just one obsessed fan with deep pockets determining the valuation and price realization here.

 

I hope this bodes well for the potental of comic art as well as a sign the economy isn't all doom and gloom.

[Ted Knight]

As for the old masters, basically they were old, working a long time ago. Times were very different. They painted NOT what they felt or even chose to paint.. They painted to eat! They always had a benefactor paying them for each portrait, etc.

 

Plenty of old masterpieces were painted by the artist for themselves. The Mona Lisa isn't known to be a commission and it was in his possession until he died. Who exactly did Van Gogh paint for? Only a couple were sold in his lifetime. Rembrandt didn't do self-portraits because he was such a popular pin-up model.

 

Regardless, I view this modern/academic argument that it is somehow "lesser" art if there is a commission as a rather silly distinction. Critics and agents have often played a strong role in influencing the direction of many of the modern artists who are more "purely" motivated than their predecessor. Furthermore, if it is a universal rule, then practically no architecture could ever be art as it is almost all commissioned and often very closely supervised by the client and modified by the engineer/builder.

 

Yeah, lots of inaccuracies and failures of logic in this thread. Particularly about the history of art. And, yes, of course, you are correct about the ridiculousness of considering art that is sponsored or patronized prior to inception as being less legitimate somehow. Although, I can see how someone with a heavily romanticized ideal of art might feel that way.

 

Ultimately, art is a form of communication, one that exceeds the capacity of words to convey something we all share about the human condition. I have spent countless hours in every major museum in the world looking at works of art and I have finally come to this: either something speaks to you or it doesn't. But when assessing the lyrical qualities of art, I find it worthless if it requires an essay to understand the intention or supposed cleverness of the artist. If it doesn't function (speak) on it's own, it has failed. That's the only measure that matters to me when it comes to art: whether or not it is successful. This isn't to say that deeper and more profound meaning can't be gained by better understanding context (just ask Sister Wendy) but that content should function on it's own terms.

 

Cleverness is a poor substitute for inspired creativity but, unfortunately, all to often in today's world, it passes for the real thing. Hence, I've always viewed Lichtenstein as one of the worst kinds of artist in the 20th century. He obfuscates and reduces to the ridiculous to make a one-line point that is dubious in it's meaning. And then pretends that he gets something that everyone else has been mystified about, thereby exacerbating the current emperor's new clothes environment that pervades the modern era.

 

My sense is that since the advent of the avant-garde, virtually all fine art has been the mathematical equivalent of multiplying both sides of an equation by 0. There are exceptions, but this is the general environment. If you doubt this, simply listen to the language that people use to describe how they appreciate something. It's as vague and obtuse as the art itself.

 

But then what do I know? I'm a big fan of comic book and illustration art. It doesn't get much more pedestrian than that!

[delekkerste]

Cleverness is a poor substitute for inspired creativity but, unfortunately, all to often in today's world, it passes for the real thing. Hence, I've always viewed Lichtenstein as one of the worst kinds of artist in the 20th century. He obfuscates and reduces to the ridiculous to make a one-line point that is dubious in it's meaning. And then pretends that he gets something that everyone else has been mystified about, thereby exacerbating the current emperor's new clothes environment that pervades the modern era.

 

Wow, so no credit for his contributions to technique (e.g., the use of enlarged Ben-Day dots), the development of the Pop Art movement, or all the work he did in his career outside of the brief period (1961-1965) he worked on the cartoon-themed pieces for which he's come under such heavy criticism here? His Rouen Cathedrals (a number of which are currently on exhibition at LACMA), anyone?

 

 

[Bronty]

I have to admit I am not very familiar with his work and only had a very passing knowledge of the rouen cathedral pieces, but googling them for a fresh look leaves me pretty cold

 

http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/196

 

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/monetlichtenstein

[Bronty]

On the second link there is a passage (click 'more') that reads:

 

"Monet painted his sensually beautiful series of the façade at Rouen Cathedral in 1892–93, depicting the same view at different times of day and in different weather. He painstakingly built up stroke after stroke into superb effects of sunlight playing on the stone tracery of the Gothic church. Lichtenstein responded 75 years later by reducing this intricate approach to a dot pattern silk-screened over a ground color, transforming Monet’s brushwork and complex transcription of light through the modern means of mass-market printing and reproduction"

 

which is roughly as TedKnight said

 

"the mathematical equivalent of multiplying both sides of an equation by 0"

 

I don't know, I'm just not impressed. So he took a well known painting and did it as though it were a printed piece. Yippee.

 

Or I guess I should say "deep."

 

In the same way that you said your girlfriend looked at Jones and dismissed it as 'chocolate box art' I look at that Lichty and think 'how utterly uninteresting.'

 

(As an aside I don't entirely disagree with your girlfriend I find a large part of Jones' work to have diminished in my esteem over time).

 

I suppose that right wrong or indifferent Lichty was at the cutting edge of a well known movement and I can understand his paintings having value as a result even if the degree of swiping does bother me. But to me Lichty's art is a little bit like that valuable golden age comic that is a dreadful read. Let's say Pep 22. I love Archie as much as the next guy but that first story is beyond awful. Painful to look at, but historic. Just like Lichty

[Whizzer]

IMHO, the only reason his cartoon/comic book images were ever popular was so a few wealthy intellectuals could talk at cocktail parties about how Lichtenstein is a genius dahling, see how he deconstructs the childish medium of comic books whilst showing such naive and raw understanding of the very nature of irony, blah, blah, blah.

 

Strictly emperor's new clothes!

[delekkerste]

On the second link there is a passage (click 'more') that reads:

 

"Monet painted his sensually beautiful series of the façade at Rouen Cathedral in 1892–93, depicting the same view at different times of day and in different weather. He painstakingly built up stroke after stroke into superb effects of sunlight playing on the stone tracery of the Gothic church. Lichtenstein responded 75 years later by reducing this intricate approach to a dot pattern silk-screened over a ground color, transforming Monet’s brushwork and complex transcription of light through the modern means of mass-market printing and reproduction"

 

which is roughly as TedKnight said

 

"the mathematical equivalent of multiplying both sides of an equation by 0"

 

I don't know, I'm just not impressed. So he took a well known painting and did it as though it were a printed piece. Yippee.

 

Happy Birthday. (thumbs u

 

Or, you could look at the Rouen Cathedrals as innovative in its deconstruction and technique, and in its use of serial imagery as a technique/concept in art and the Pop Art movement. Which may just sound like high-falutin' artspeak to some, but, since art has quite necessarily moved away from traditional figurative representation over the past century-plus, so the conversation has also necessarily moved away from just admiring "how purty a painting is".

 

 

In the same way that you said your girlfriend looked at Jones and dismissed it as 'chocolate box art' I look at that Lichty and think 'how utterly uninteresting.'

 

I think you just have to appreciate the work for what it is. I like a lot of Jones' art, and the fine art efforts by other artists who have worked in the comics medium, but I no longer harbor any illusions that any of it is more than just pretty pictures.

[Bronty]

On the second link there is a passage (click 'more') that reads:

 

"Monet painted his sensually beautiful series of the façade at Rouen Cathedral in 1892–93, depicting the same view at different times of day and in different weather. He painstakingly built up stroke after stroke into superb effects of sunlight playing on the stone tracery of the Gothic church. Lichtenstein responded 75 years later by reducing this intricate approach to a dot pattern silk-screened over a ground color, transforming Monet’s brushwork and complex transcription of light through the modern means of mass-market printing and reproduction"

 

which is roughly as TedKnight said

 

"the mathematical equivalent of multiplying both sides of an equation by 0"

 

I don't know, I'm just not impressed. So he took a well known painting and did it as though it were a printed piece. Yippee.

 

Happy Birthday. (thumbs u

 

 

thanks!

 

I like purdy pictures

[SC in SC]

Or, you could look at the Rouen Cathedrals as innovative in its deconstruction and technique, and in its use of serial imagery as a technique/concept in art and the Pop Art movement. Which may just sound like high-falutin' artspeak to some, but, since art has quite necessarily moved away from traditional figurative representation over the past century-plus, so the conversation has also necessarily moved away from just admiring "how purty a painting is".

 

Or you could come to the conclusion that Lichtenstein's greatest works are really nothing more than copies of someone else's work. He may have come up with new ways to show them, and that is clever, but his contribution to the art world looks like he was pretty much just an old version of a xerox machine.

Edited November 9, 2011 by SC in SC

[comix4fun]

Or, you could look at the Rouen Cathedrals as innovative in its deconstruction and technique, and in its use of serial imagery as a technique/concept in art and the Pop Art movement. Which may just sound like high-falutin' artspeak to some, but, since art has quite necessarily moved away from traditional figurative representation over the past century-plus, so the conversation has also necessarily moved away from just admiring "how purty a painting is".

 

Or you could come to the conclusion that Lichtenstein's greatest works are really nothing more than copies of somoeone else's work. He may have come up with new ways to show them, and that is clever, but his contribution to the art world looks like he was pretty much just an old version of a xerox machine.

 

 

In the days before personal computers I wonder if anyone called his work "Lichten-shopped".

[Terry Doyle]

Ursus Wehrli (tidying up 'art') . . .

 

. . . said he couldn't figure out how to fix this Jackson Pollock, so he gave up and just put the paint back in the cans.

 

 

[Terry Doyle]

I have to admit I am not very familiar with his work and only had a very passing knowledge of the rouen cathedral pieces, but googling them for a fresh look leaves me pretty cold

 

http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/196

 

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/monetlichtenstein

 

The Monet is real purdy.

 

 

[Bronty]

quite necessarily moved away from traditional figurative representation over the past century-plus, so the conversation has also necessarily moved away from just admiring "how purty a painting is".

 

all kidding aside, I understand what you mean. The trouble I have is that if representationalism is given no value whatsoever then all you are left with is conceptualism and the measure of a work of art becomes how clever the idea is.

 

In and of itself I can understand that but the problem is that taken to the extreme you end up with vivisected sharks and human excrement on display because at the end of the day a picture may tell 1000 words when trying to express simple ideas (that pollock spoof terry posted being a great example), but it is also a singularly poor and imprecise way to convey a complex idea (try doing a thorough analysis of macbeth or a detailed description of how a jet engine works on a 24 by 36 canvas with no written element, I dare you).

 

You end up with a bunch of people trying to express little witticisms through their canvas and/or dead animals and the whole process ends up being a collective participation in mental masturbation

 

In other words, pretty pictures is where its at.

[adamstrange]

quite necessarily moved away from traditional figurative representation over the past century-plus, so the conversation has also necessarily moved away from just admiring "how purty a painting is".

 

all kidding aside, I understand what you mean. The trouble I have is that if representationalism is given no value whatsoever then all you are left with is conceptualism and the measure of a work of art becomes how clever the idea is.

 

In and of itself I can understand that but the problem is that taken to the extreme you end up with vivisected sharks and human excrement on display because at the end of the day a picture may tell 1000 words when trying to express simple ideas (that pollock spoof terry posted being a great example), but it is also a singularly poor and imprecise way to convey a complex idea (try doing a thorough analysis of macbeth or a detailed description of how a jet engine works on a 24 by 36 canvas with no written element, I dare you).

 

You end up with a bunch of people trying to express little witticisms through their canvas and/or dead animals and the whole process ends up being a collective participation in mental masturbation

 

In other words, pretty pictures is where its at.

 

A lengthier exposition on this theme was written by Tom Wolfe http://www.amazon.com/Painted-Word-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0312427581/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320863842&sr=1-3

 

It's a short and interesting read.

 

Tom Wolfe turned his attention to the contemporary art world. The patron saint (and resident imp) of New Journalism couldn't have asked for a better subject. Here was a hotbed of pretension, nitwit theorizing, social climbing, and money, money, money--all Wolfe had to do was sharpen his tools and get to work. He did! Much of The Painted Word is a superb burlesque on that modern mating ritual whereby artists get to despise their middle-class audience and accommodate it at the same time. The painter, Wolfe writes, "had to dedicate himself to the quirky god Avant-Garde. He had to keep one devout eye peeled for the new edge on the blade of the wedge of the head on the latest pick thrust of the newest exploratory probe of this fall's avant-garde Breakthrough of the Century.... At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching."

 

The other bone Wolfe has to pick is with the proliferation of art theory, particularly the sort purveyed by postwar colossi like Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Leo Steinberg. Decades after the heyday of abstract expressionism, these guys make pretty easy targets. What could be more absurd, after all, than endless Jesuitical disputes about the flatness of the picture plane? So most of them get a highly comical spanking from the author. It's worth pointing out, of course, that Wolfe paints with a broad (as it were) brush. If he's skewering the entire army of artistic pretenders in a single go, there's no room to admit that Jasper Johns or Willem DeKooning might actually have some talent. But as he would no doubt admit, The Painted Word isn't about the history of art. It's about the history of taste and middlebrow acquisition--and nobody has chronicled these two topics as hilariously or accurately as Tom Wolfe. --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

[delekkerste]

In and of itself I can understand that but the problem is that taken to the extreme you end up with vivisected sharks and human excrement on display because at the end of the day a picture may tell 1000 words when trying to express simple ideas (that pollock spoof terry posted being a great example), but it is also a singularly poor and imprecise way to convey a complex idea (try doing a thorough analysis of macbeth or a detailed description of how a jet engine works on a 24 by 36 canvas with no written element, I dare you).

 

You end up with a bunch of people trying to express little witticisms through their canvas and/or dead animals and the whole process ends up being a collective participation in mental masturbation

 

In other words, pretty pictures is where its at.

 

I like pretty pictures even more than the next guy (as my CAF gallery will attest!), but I'm open-minded enough to appreciate Hirst's vivisected sharks or Manzoni's brilliant "Artist's S***" as well.

 

Funny you should mention Macbeth, as I actually saw "Sleep No More", the near-wordless, deconstructed, voyeuristic, interactive version of "Macbeth" during its run in NYC this summer. Was it "singularly poor and imprecise"? Perhaps; I did not really enjoy it very much myself, though my girlfriend and her friend did quite a bit, as did many others. That said, who needs another cookie-cutter, boring production of Macbeth, especially if it's not a big-budget production with big names? Isn't it a good thing that people are taking chances with art and trying to advance the dialogue?

 

Like I've said before, it seems as though many here are stuck in the 19th century and would be very content if art had just remained purdy pictures of landscapes, portraits and still-lifes, with all the art movements and developments of the past 100+ years being dismissed as high-falutin', bamboozling, gimmicky, meritless nonsense being peddled by high-brow intellectuals and greedy dealers in an incomprehensible, pseudo-intellectual vernacular at the expense of the common sense of the average man.

 

I wonder how many Lichtenstein critics out there have any real understanding of and appreciation at all for Modern and Contemporary Art? My guess is not many judging from all the anti-Warhol, anti-Pollock, anti-everything Contemporary Art comments that have been made here over the years. As I've said, it's not my preferred genre either, but I can at least respect the ideas and profound impact they've had on not just the art world, but on culture in general.

[Bronty]

In and of itself I can understand that but the problem is that taken to the extreme you end up with vivisected sharks and human excrement on display because at the end of the day a picture may tell 1000 words when trying to express simple ideas (that pollock spoof terry posted being a great example), but it is also a singularly poor and imprecise way to convey a complex idea (try doing a thorough analysis of macbeth or a detailed description of how a jet engine works on a 24 by 36 canvas with no written element, I dare you).

 

You end up with a bunch of people trying to express little witticisms through their canvas and/or dead animals and the whole process ends up being a collective participation in mental masturbation

 

In other words, pretty pictures is where its at.

 

Funny you should mention Macbeth, as I actually saw "Sleep No More", the near-wordless.... version of "Macbeth" during its run in NYC this summer. Was it "singularly poor and imprecise"? Perhaps; I did not really enjoy it very much myself

 

trying to improve a play written by the best wordsmith in history by...... taking out the words....... doesn't strike me as a real bright idea

 

Its a little bit like removing the gold from a gold watch