141: ROY LICHTENSTEIN, Spray Can (from the One Cent Life portfolio) < Prints + Multiples, 12 October 2023 < Auctions

Prints + Multiples

12 October 2023

Prints + Multiples

141

Roy Lichtenstein 1923–1997
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Spray Can (from the One Cent Life portfolio)

1964
offset lithograph in colors sight: 12½ h × 10½ w in (32 × 27 cm)

estimate: $2,000–3,000

result: $2,268

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One Cent Life was an avant-garde publication that combined written works by Walasse Ting with contributed artworks by Pop and Abstract artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Joan Mitchell, Mel Ramos, Sam Francis and Andy Warhol, among others. This work, along with the Girl print from the same publication, was Lichtenstein's first use of benday dots, which would become his trademark.
This work is from the edition of 2000 printed by Maurice Beaudet, Paris and published by Kornfeld, Bern.
literature: Corlett 34

This work will ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.

My work isn't about form. It's about seeing. I'm excited about seeing things, and I'm interested in the way I think other people see things.

Roy Lichtenstein

One Cent Life

Art and Poetry in the 1960s

One Cent Life was a revolutionary anthology imagined by Walasse Ting in the early 1960s as a way to showcase contemporary artists alongside Ting’s poetry. A collaborative work with his good friend, Sam Francis, the portfolio brings together artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Mitchell and Andy Warhol during the transitional phase between abstract expressionism and pop art. The joyous and ambitious text, which appears alongside the bold work of the contributors, provided an apt zeitgeist for the evolving art world in New York City at the time of the work’s realization in 1964. It has since been hailed as a landmark publication and Ting’s most well-known work.

Roy Lichtenstein 1923–1997

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Roy Lichtenstein is one of the originators of the Pop Art movement, famed for paintings that take kitsch and transform it into culture. Lichtenstein was born in New York City in 1923. Growing up, he took art classes at the Art Student League where he created realist paintings. Lichtenstein continued his study of art at Ohio State University but, with the advent of World War II, he enlisted in the army in 1943. Lichtenstein returned to Ohio State after the war to finish his master’s degree in studio art. While Lichtenstein was teaching art at Rutgers University, he became close with fellow artist Allan Kaprow, who introduced him to Claes Oldenburg. It was during the 1960s that Lichtenstein began experimenting with what would become his signature style of taking images from comic books and newspapers and reproducing them on a large scale, calling attention to the flatness of the imagery with his Ben-Day technique of painting dots. In 1962, Lichtenstein got his first break with a one-man show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, which sold out before it opened.

Later in his career, Lichtenstein began to cleverly re-appropriate the work of fellow modern masters like Warhol, Picasso, and Mondrian, either by overtly miming the imagery or by placing these works of art into his Interiors series of paintings. The public alternatively lauded and reviled Lichtenstein for his quiet commitment to painting popular culture, and was often met with mixed feeling; in 1964 Life magazine published an article about him entitled “Is He the Worst Artist in America?” Regardless, Lichtenstein’s place in the canon of modern art is firmly established, and his works are found in major museums across the world. Lichtenstein passed away in 1997.

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