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

[Romain]

 

The image definitly belongs to this thread !!!

[delekkerste]

Yeah, too bad it's factually incorrect. Lichtenstein sold Whaam! to the Tate museum in London in 1966, at which point no Lichtenstein would have been priced anywhere near $4 million (not to mention he likely would have discounted the piece significantly to get it into the museum). In fact, no work of art by a living artist sold for even $1 million until 1980 (by which point we had suffered huge price inflation from the late 1960s through the 1970s).

 

While I am saddened to hear of Mr. Heath falling on hard times, the fact is that his life would be no better off had Lichtenstein never existed, and he would have no more money in his pocket had Lichtenstein explicitly credited the source idea of the painting to him.

[delekkerste]

Exhibit defies artist’s claim that his work is empty of ideas

 

BY MARGARET HAWKINS

 

Last Modified: May 13, 2012 02:11AM

 

Andy Warhol famously said, “I like boring things.” Roy Lichtenstein, the world’s second most famous Pop artist but arguably the better one, painted boring things.

 

He did it in a way that made the whole world look, and therein lies the paradox of Pop — boring subject, riveting art.

 

“Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective” will open at the Art Institute of Chicago on Wednesday, May 16. The show will be the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work since his death in 1997, and its international scope confirms Lichtenstein’s place in 20th-century art. Organized jointly by the Art Institute and the Tate Modern, in London, and curated by James Rondeau and Sheena Wagstaff, of those two museums, respectively, the exhibition begins in Chicago but after that will travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Modern and, finally, the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the fall of 2013.

 

Rondeau and Wagstaff put the show together over a period of five years. They worked closely with Lichtenstein’s widow, Dorothy, and with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, in New York, which operates out of the artist’s home and studio in Manhattan’s West Village.

 

The curators began by reviewing nearly 2,000 documented works produced by Lichtenstein during a career that spanned almost 60 years. From that they narrowed the show down to a relatively spare selection of 130 paintings and about 30 additional objects, including drawings and even some sculpture.

 

“We tried to select the very best work from each moment in the career,” said Rondeau. He pointed out that while a good selection of Lichtenstein’s most famous work, his comic strip-based paintings, will be in the show, they represent only a small portion of the artist’s career and are not the exclusive focus of the exhibition.

 

‘Comic strip guy’

 

Still, ask the man on the street, or even the woman at the museum, about Roy Lichtenstein and nine times out of 10 you’ll get, “The comic strip guy? I love that stuff!”

 

“It’s not necessarily his best work,” said Rondeau, though he acknowledges the phenomenal place these paintings hold in the public imagination.

 

“They have the icy cool of scared icons,” he said, explaining their almost universal appeal. “They are defining images of our time. But Roy was so much more beyond the sensationalism of those early paintings.”

 

Lichtenstein was 40 and already an established artist when he suddenly became famous for painting huge, made-up comic strips, and after that he went on to do much else.

 

“After 1966, he applied that same style to a wide range of subject matter,” Rondeau said. “Using the same building blocks — heavy black outline, handpainted Ben-day dots — that language persists throughout his career. The style takes on a life of its own.”

 

The style is Lichtenstein’s painterly interpretation of mechanical printing, which it imitates so precisely as to be mistaken for it. In these often enormous, sometimes deceptive inventions, glamorous-looking girls speak and think their vacuous thoughts in big bubbles, and it’s all larger than life.

 

The monumentality of these works — in contrast to the 3-inch newspaper strips that inspired them — lends much to their seeming significance, despite glaringly and intentionally trivial plot lines. Five-foot-tall “M-Maybe” shows the head of a beautiful and perturbed looking blond whose thought bubble says, “M-Maybe he became ill and couldn’t leave the studio!” The head of the girl in “Drowning Girl” (“I Don’t Care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!”) is nearly 6 feet tall.

 

Lichtenstein used that contrast to subtle effect, playing with the public’s belief that comic art, and anything painted in that style, was lowbrow and trivial. The work forced viewers to rethink their assumptions, even while Lichtenstein claimed his work was not about ideas.

 

Lots of symbolism

 

Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation, warns viewers not to take this claim, or the apparent simplicity of Lichtenstein’s paintings, at face value. “Roy said his work was meant to be blank, and not about ideas, but his work was very complicated,” he said. “The paintings are loaded with symbolism, irony, parody and a synthesis of human emotions.

 

“Roy was trying to make it look ‘dumb.’ It allowed him to hide his thought and his process behind this perfect surface.” Cowart described Lichtenstein as a consummate craftsman and explained how painstaking he was in painting the irregular dots “to get them just perfect.” Likewise with the campy text he used. “It was very crafted,” Cowart said. “Sometimes he invented it, sometimes he found it and changed it.”

 

Like Warhol, Lichtenstein was all about exploring and exploiting the newly accessible world of mass reproduction for the purposes of high art. “He knew that the eye can sometimes tell the mind what to think, and he enjoyed that tension,” Cowart said. “He believed in the science of vision, and he probably read Scientific American more than he read Art Forum.”

 

“He’s giving you something you don’t think you’re getting,” Cowart said, explaining the layered satisfaction of looking at Lichtenstein paintings, the way at first they seem beautiful and deliciously trivial but then gain traction in the intellect over time.

 

Ordinary made fascinating

 

Exactly what Lichtenstein is giving the viewer is the subject of much scholarly analysis in the 300-plus-page catalog that accompanies the exhibition. The work speaks for itself, too, and the “dumb” objects may speak most clearly. Some of the “boring” objects Lichtenstein makes fascinating: coffee cups, washing machines, step-on garbage cans, spray cans, hot dogs, engagement rings, a ball of twine.

 

Comparisons to Warhol are inevitable, both professionally and personally. “They were polar opposites,” according to Rondeau. “They shared a pop sensibility, the embrace of the commonplace and the clichéd,” he says, but Lichtenstein “was not invested in boredom in the same provocative way that Warhol was.”

 

Cowart, who knew both men, agrees. Warhol’s celebrity and public persona were integral to his art, he says, while “Roy was more classical than Andy. He liked to stay in the studio and work.”

 

Work, he did.

 

Cowart described his routine. He lived “above the shop” and went to work downstairs every morning and out to lunch with his studio staff at 1 p.m., then back to work until dinner and later continued to draw through the evening. His Manhattan studio — he had two, the other on Long Island — was a large and airy light manufacturing space with 14-foot ceilings and big windows, that he acquired in the late ’80s and stripped back to bare floors.

 

After a brief few years making the paintings he’s most famous for, Lichtenstein moved on. Later work included his brushstroke paintings — absolutely flat paintings that resemble textured brushstrokes, and graphic representations of landscape, sometimes painted, sometimes collaged, but always composed of dots.

 

From the 1970s on, Lichtenstein riffed on art history. In paintings based on the work of Monet, Matisse, Mondrian, Picasso, Brancusi and De Kooning, he continued to challenge assumptions about low and high art. But it was at the very end of his life, Rondeau and Cowart agree, when Lichtenstein was possibly making his best work.

 

“He returned to the brushstroke for the first time in 50 years,” Rondeau said of this late work. “The exhibition is meant to show the arc of his career and it does. He started with the expressive use of paint and went back to it at the end.”

 

Margaret Hawkins is a local freelance writer.

[Mio]

I can't believe I just wasted 4 minutes of my life reading that garbage... damn, now I am wasting time complaining about it.

[Lebowski]

I can't believe I just wasted 4 minutes of my life reading that garbage... damn, now I am wasting time complaining about it.

 

Yeesh, very much agreed. The most laughable parts are when the author implies that it all came out of Roy's head.

 

Lichtenstein was 40 and already an established artist when he suddenly became famous for painting huge, made-up comic strips, and after that he went on to do much else.

 

...

 

The monumentality of these works — in contrast to the 3-inch newspaper strips that inspired them — lends much to their seeming significance, despite glaringly and intentionally trivial plot lines.

 

....

 

“Roy was trying to make it look ‘dumb.’ It allowed him to hide his thought and his process behind this perfect surface.” Cowart described Lichtenstein as a consummate craftsman and explained how painstaking he was in painting the irregular dots “to get them just perfect.” Likewise with the campy text he used. “It was very crafted,” Cowart said. “Sometimes he invented it, sometimes he found it and changed it.”

 

 

[pinupcartoonguy]

As a journalist, I can't stand it when other journalist are factually incorrect about something significant:

 

"Lichtenstein was 40 and already an established artist when he suddenly became famous for painting huge, made-up comic strips, and after that he went on to do much else."

[comix4fun]

Yeah, too bad it's factually incorrect. Lichtenstein sold Whaam! to the Tate museum in London in 1966, at which point no Lichtenstein would have been priced anywhere near $4 million (not to mention he likely would have discounted the piece significantly to get it into the museum). In fact, no work of art by a living artist sold for even $1 million until 1980 (by which point we had suffered huge price inflation from the late 1960s through the 1970s).

 

While I am saddened to hear of Mr. Heath falling on hard times, the fact is that his life would be no better off had Lichtenstein never existed, and he would have no more money in his pocket had Lichtenstein explicitly credited the source idea of the painting to him.

 

 

So you are saying that crediting the source material to Russ Heath, and Russ Heath being then known as the source of one of Lichtenstein's "Masterpieces" would have had no affect whatsoever on Russ' life, career, fame, and bottom line at all over the last 45 years?

 

None at all? We know for a fact that if Russ was properly credited as the original creator of the source material that some other gallery, patron, museum or school would not have taken notice and sought him out? Kind of a stretch to say Russ would not have gained at all if he had been properly and explicitly credited.

 

However, whether or not Russ' life would have been better or worse off if Lichtenstein never existed is immaterial to the appropriation of his work without proper notation and credit which should follow this piece wherever it travels and for whomever sees it. The dollars are one side to the point, the transparency of the process is key.

 

When you are standing on someone else's shoulders to become a giant, it's disingenuous to let people believe you were that tall all along.

[delekkerste]

So you are saying that crediting the source material to Russ Heath, and Russ Heath being then known as the source of one of Lichtenstein's "Masterpieces" would have had no affect whatsoever on Russ' life, career, fame, and bottom line at all over the last 45 years?

 

It's not like we didn't already know that Russ Heath was the artist of the source material. And, as such, it's not like he hasn't already benefited from the limited association with Lichtenstein already. How much more do you think he would have benefited had he been explicitly credited? Do you think he would have gotten more comic work? Do you think Leo Castelli would have signed him up to do fine art? I think it's highly probable that his life would have turned out pretty much exactly the same way, same for all the other artists whose material Lichtenstein appropriated. Do you think they'd all be living in mansions, rolling deep with their posses and poppin' Cris' in the back of their Bentleys had Roy mentioned their names in the liner notes? I'm with you that RL should have given credit where credit was due, but that Russ Heath has fallen on hard times has nothing to do with any lack of attribution on Lichtenstein's part.

 

And I'd really like to know where Russ got that $4 million number from. It may have been appraised at that level at some point, but Roy surely didn't see it when he sold it in 1966. Even Picassos weren't selling for 7-figures yet back then. :doh:

 

 

[comix4fun]

So you are saying that crediting the source material to Russ Heath, and Russ Heath being then known as the source of one of Lichtenstein's "Masterpieces" would have had no affect whatsoever on Russ' life, career, fame, and bottom line at all over the last 45 years?

 

It's not like we didn't already know that Russ Heath was the artist of the source material. And, as such, it's not like he hasn't already benefited from the limited association with Lichtenstein already. How much more do you think he would have benefited had he been explicitly credited? Do you think he would have gotten more comic work? Do you think Leo Castelli would have signed him up to do fine art? I think it's highly probable that his life would have turned out pretty much exactly the same way, same for all the other artists whose material Lichtenstein appropriated. Do you think they'd all be living in mansions, rolling deep with their posses and poppin' Cris' in the back of their Bentleys had Roy mentioned their names in the liner notes? I'm with you that RL should have given credit where credit was due, but that Russ Heath has fallen on hard times has nothing to do with any success Lichtenstein achieved.

 

 

 

 

I think that neither of us know what the affect would have been. To assume that Russ' life would have been exactly the same, with no deviation whatsoever, seems overly dismissive of what, by all accounts, is a gigantic variable added to the equation.

 

To completely discount the affect of having his name put right there next to Roy's name everywhere this painting hung, was displayed or was auctioned for the last 45 years would have had zero net impact on Russ whatsoever feels like an analysis to fit a conclusion already made instead of realizing the very real possibility that having that much notoriety and that bright a spotlight shown on your name has made very rich men out of much less talented people.

 

 

[comicartcom]

Comix4Fun.. I largely agree with Gene that excepting for accreditation, I do not believe it would have changed one thing about Russ and I do not believe it would have added much - if any - work to his career.

 

The number of comic artists ... let me rephrase, the number of artists who started in comic books and moved into fine art from the time frame 1933 to 1970 is a comparative grain of sand on a gigantic beach.

 

Here is the list of artists whose later works were exhibited in art galleries (and not connected to comic art)

 

1) Sam Savitt (did painted covers to among other things, Lone Ranger's Silver and Roy Rogers Trigger. later became a top portraitist and later again, a dog artist)

 

2) Everett Raymond Kintsler (worked for Fiction House, Avon and some others. Became a top portraitist and has several piantings in the White House)

 

can anyone come up with #3 ??

 

and no, I did not forget that Bob Kane had gallery shows in the 1960s & 70s, however there is considerable debate as to whether he himself created even one painting that he exhibited and I don't count him exhibiting large drawings of Batman.

 

so even if Russ was credited in real time (at the painting's creation), it's hard to imagine what benefit Russ might have achieved from Lichtenstein giving credit and I suspect that if he had, it would be very negligible.

Edited May 14, 2012 by comicartcom

[comix4fun]

Comix4Fun.. I largely agree with Gene that excepting for accreditation, I do not believe it would have changed one thing about Russ and I do not believe it would have added much - if any - work to his career.

 

The number of comic artists ... let me rephrase, the number of artists who started in comic books and moved into fine art from the time frame 1933 to 1970 is a comparative grain of sand on a gigantic beach.

 

Here is the list of artists whose later works were exhibited in art galleries (and not connected to comic art)

 

1) Sam Savitt (did painted covers to among other things, Lone Ranger's Silver and Roy Rogers Trigger. later became a top portraitist and later again, a dog artist)

 

2) Everett Raymond Kintsler (worked for Fiction House, Avon and some others. Became a top portraitist and has several piantings in the White House)

 

can anyone come up with #3 ??

 

and no, I did not forget that Bob Kane had gallery shows in the 1960s & 70s, however there is considerable debate as to whether he himself created even one painting that he exhibited and I don't count him exhibiting large drawings of Batman.

 

so even if Russ was credited in real time (at the painting's creation), it's hard to imagine what benefit Russ might have achieved from Lichtenstein giving credit and I suspect that if he had, it would be very negligible.

 

 

 

It's all supposition at this point I would wager.

 

But, for me, it's not hard to imagine the benefits of large gallery shows and museum showings displaying someone's name over and over again to the world.

 

Indeed the vast majority of the benefit received by Roy began with getting his pieces, with his name attached (as the sole artist) at those gallery shows in NYC. Given how he exploded in terms of popularity it seems illogical to assume that recognition and credit are not a commodity worth significant dollars.

 

Given how many talented artists are never heard from or seen in the world, and given that the difference between the wealthy and the destitute is sometimes nothing more than good marketing and exposure, I think we may be discounting the impact of Russ Heath's name being prominently displayed directly next to *gasp* (as in the video Gene posted) a masterpiece for the last 45 years.

 

 

[comicartcom]

I think we may be discounting the impact of Russ Heath's name being prominently displayed directly next to *gasp* (as in the video Gene posted) a masterpiece for the last 45 years.

 

 

or it could have equaled absolutely nothing.. It is an intangible of the most intangible.

 

also, you have to face certain facts: what went on in the world in 1960 or 1970 bears no comparison culturally, or businessway to today. Today you can make money from incredible nothings that would have been laughed at 30-40-50 years ago.

 

Russ and all the other artists should have received at least source credit.. But back in 1961, considering giving such to a comic book artist would have been easily dismissed

[comix4fun]

I think we may be discounting the impact of Russ Heath's name being prominently displayed directly next to *gasp* (as in the video Gene posted) a masterpiece for the last 45 years.

 

 

or it could have equaled absolutely nothing.. It is an intangible of the most intangible.

 

also, you have to face certain facts: what went on in the world in 1960 or 1970 bears no comparison culturally, or businessway to today. Today you can make money from incredible nothings that would have been laughed at 30-40-50 years ago.

 

Russ and all the other artists should have received at least source credit.. But back in 1961, considering giving such to a comic book artist would have been easily dismissed

 

 

The incredible nothings over run us today it seems.

 

I am going to paint soup cans with Kardashian faces on them. It will be the most glorious melding of marketing influences ever.

[Solar]

I think we may be discounting the impact of Russ Heath's name being prominently displayed directly next to *gasp* (as in the video Gene posted) a masterpiece for the last 45 years.

 

 

or it could have equaled absolutely nothing.. It is an intangible of the most intangible.

 

also, you have to face certain facts: what went on in the world in 1960 or 1970 bears no comparison culturally, or businessway to today. Today you can make money from incredible nothings that would have been laughed at 30-40-50 years ago.

 

Russ and all the other artists should have received at least source credit.. But back in 1961, considering giving such to a comic book artist would have been easily dismissed

 

 

The incredible nothings over run us today it seems.

 

I am going to paint soup cans with Kardashian faces on them. It will be the most glorious melding of marketing influences ever.

 

I'm sure some street artist has already beat you to it.

[comix4fun]

I think we may be discounting the impact of Russ Heath's name being prominently displayed directly next to *gasp* (as in the video Gene posted) a masterpiece for the last 45 years.

 

 

or it could have equaled absolutely nothing.. It is an intangible of the most intangible.

 

also, you have to face certain facts: what went on in the world in 1960 or 1970 bears no comparison culturally, or businessway to today. Today you can make money from incredible nothings that would have been laughed at 30-40-50 years ago.

 

Russ and all the other artists should have received at least source credit.. But back in 1961, considering giving such to a comic book artist would have been easily dismissed

 

 

The incredible nothings over run us today it seems.

 

I am going to paint soup cans with Kardashian faces on them. It will be the most glorious melding of marketing influences ever.

 

I'm sure some street artist has already beat you to it.

 

 

I'll just take it from him them, change the color or size a little, and call it mine.

 

 

That will be even more in keeping with the theme.

[Lebowski]

So you are saying that crediting the source material to Russ Heath, and Russ Heath being then known as the source of one of Lichtenstein's "Masterpieces" would have had no affect whatsoever on Russ' life, career, fame, and bottom line at all over the last 45 years?

 

It's not like we didn't already know that Russ Heath was the artist of the source material. And, as such, it's not like he hasn't already benefited from the limited association with Lichtenstein already. How much more do you think he would have benefited had he been explicitly credited?

 

 

Who knows that Russ Heath was the artist, exactly? 'Cause, apparently, even columnists quoted in the various Lichtenstein threads don't know that.

 

Also, what about the counterpoint to the "Russ Heath would've been richer" argument: namely, would Roy have been considered such a "genius" if people had known from the beginning that his pieces were just rips of other artists' works?

[AtlasFan]

So you are saying that crediting the source material to Russ Heath, and Russ Heath being then known as the source of one of Lichtenstein's "Masterpieces" would have had no affect whatsoever on Russ' life, career, fame, and bottom line at all over the last 45 years?

 

It's not like we didn't already know that Russ Heath was the artist of the source material. And, as such, it's not like he hasn't already benefited from the limited association with Lichtenstein already. How much more do you think he would have benefited had he been explicitly credited? Do you think he would have gotten more comic work? Do you think Leo Castelli would have signed him up to do fine art? I think it's highly probable that his life would have turned out pretty much exactly the same way, same for all the other artists whose material Lichtenstein appropriated. Do you think they'd all be living in mansions, rolling deep with their posses and poppin' Cris' in the back of their Bentleys had Roy mentioned their names in the liner notes? I'm with you that RL should have given credit where credit was due, but that Russ Heath has fallen on hard times has nothing to do with any lack of attribution on Lichtenstein's part.

 

 

 

Who is to say how things may have turned out for Russ if he was named as a source from the start - the point is we will never know because RoyBoy never publically gave credit where credit is due. He more or less traced Russ' panels, increased the size and called it his own? I wonder if I publish a book of Charles Dickens' works in large print, can I clain it as an original work of my own...

 

I guess it would have been beneath RL to acknowledge that his work could even remotely be influenced by some scribblings in a (oh dear!)...comic book.

 

 

 

[comicartcom]

would Roy have been considered such a "genius" if people had known from the beginning that his pieces were just rips of other artists' works?

 

the works weren't "ripped off". they were used as icons, which is a fair use practice.. I can appreciate that you think Roy was stealing from your sacred cows, but it just isn't really the case.. If you want to claim about thefts and credits.. or more to the point "influences", then you must know that it was only 25 years or more after Tec 27 that Bob Kane said (in conversations with Steranko for his History of Comics) that he was influenced by and copied the Shadow, the movie the Bat from 1929 and most specifically the Black Bat from Black Bat pulps in 1933 which has an uncanny visual comparison to Batman. I do not believe that Kane gave one ounce of credit to the creators, nor did he pass any of the millions he made from Batman to the authors.

 

Same goes for Shuster, who readily mentioned that Phillip Wylie's book "Gladiator" was a major influence in 1933 for him to create the fanzines which led to Superman.

 

For out-and-out swipes, how many comic artists have swiped Michaelangelos "Pieta" without notation, starting with Jim Starlin.

 

the comics business is rife with outright theft from other mediums without any credits what-so-ever to the original creators.

 

Lichtenstein didn't "steal" anything. He sourced images that he changed into canvasses, which has been the way of art for hundreds of years. You can't impose the mores of today's society on life of the past as the "rules" have changed, and this is what it means to be a historian.

Edited May 14, 2012 by comicartcom

[AtlasFan]

I also take note when RL is called a "comic book artist" - he is nothing of the kind. A comic book artist needs to have the "director's eye" with the ability to compose scenes, build suspense, etc. as the story requires - the comic book artist is a story teller.

 

RL never (to my knowledge) published a comic book story - he just reproduced panels representative from other's creativity.

 

[comix4fun]

 

For out-and-out swipes, how many comic artists have swiped Michaelangelos "Pieta" without notation, starting with Jim Starlin.

 

 

Are you sure that's an "out and out swipe"?

 

Other than a limp, dead body, almost everything else is different, the pose of the body, the position of the characters.

 

 

 

 

For one thing Mary is sitting and cradling Jesus' head, and Superman is standing. The body positions are totally different, the hand placement, limb placement, facial expression, almost everything is different.

 

It's certainly a reference, and perhaps a homage, but there are so many things different about it that calling it an out and out swipe, while letting Lichtenstein off the hook with euphemisms of "repurpose" "iconography" "sourced" etc. when you have a line for line copy with only size and color changed, is a blatant contradiction.

 

If Starlin made an out and out swipe of the Pieta with the only thing alike between the pieces is a live person holding a dead body, then how can you possibly reconcile letting Lichtenstein run so freely when he changed far less than any of the Pieta references you mention?