ROY LICHTENSTEIN   Classic of the New 13 I 06 I 05 - 04 I 09 I 05        
             
   
   
    Blonde Waiting, 1964
Oil and magna on canvas, 121,9 x 121,9 cm, Private Collection
Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York
Photo Robert McKeever
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005		  
   
       
KUB-Billboards
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Seestraße Bregenz 		 
     
 
       
   
First floor        Insatllation views
Kunsthaus Bregenz, First floor
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005, KUB
Photos: Markus Tretter		  
       
    Roy Lichtenstein (*1923 in New York, †1997 in New York) is one of the most influential figures in twentieth century post-war American art. For more than three decades, he managed to stay true to his artistic sources and at the same time to stylistically expand the different thematic groups, to interlink and vary them in multifarious ways. The fact that he once said of himself, “I try to make a commercial Picasso or Mondrian,” clearly sums up the whole range of his artistic intentions. He strove to subject both art historical works, as valuable objects of a high culture, and simple everyday objects, as part of a banalized mass culture, to the same visually striking image strategy. This is how he succeeded in making them confederates in the quest for the same beauty.  
             
     
   

Compositions II, 1964
Magna on canvas
142.2 x 121.9 cm
Sonnabend Collection, New York
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005

 Golf Ball, 1962
Oil on canvas
81.3 x 81.3 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005		 Large Spool, 1963
Magna on canvas
172.7 x 142.2 cm
Sonnabend Collection, New York
Photo: G.Rehsteiner
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005		  
       
    Like Picasso, Lichtenstein used the apparent conflict between high and quotidian culture as a stimulating artistic impetus for his work. He not only produced images of everyday objects, household items from the domestic culture and lifestyle of the normal American citizen, but also repeatedly paraphrased and reflected on works of classic modernism. This comprehensive practice made him the herald of a new, humane perspective of the world and a new classic of the beauty of everyday life.  
       
     
Second floor        Insatllation views
Kunsthaus Bregenz, Second floor
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005, KUB
Photos: Markus Tretter		  
       


  With 40 works from 1961–1995, the Kunsthaus Bregenz dedicates an extensive exhibition to this all-encompassing idea of a “Classic of the New.”The presentation is divided into three chapters. The first part of the exhibition on the ground floor of the Kunsthaus is devoted to the early icons of his œuvre, works with which Lichtenstein established his fundamental vocabulary of a new pictorial language and defined the European and American painting tradition of modernism as an unwavering parameter within his work. The early b/w works from 1961–1965 with their objects, household scenes, and reflections of artwork usher in a new chapter in art.  
       
     
  Female Head 1977
Oil and magna on canvas
152.4 x 127 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005

Little Aloha, 1962
Oil on canvas
112 x 107 cm
Sonnabend Collection, New York
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005

Paintings: Picasso Head, 1984
Oil and magna on canvas
162,6 x 177,8 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY,
USA/VBK, Wien, 2005		  
       
    Roy Lichtenstein’s early work of the 1960s is juxtaposed with his late work, the interiors of the 1990s, on the third floor. The largeformat paintings from 1990–1995 represent part of the American everyday culture of that period. Just as the series of countless artist’s studios might continue to be considered the ideal of reflected artistic creation, so too are the interiors perfect reflections of the social clichés of their day and a demonstration of artistic independence. They are the result of both an emotional and a cool and toned-down strategy of image and form. While these paintings seem to bring together the sum of all his previous works as well as to reiterate many earlier pictorial elements, their polychromy contrasts with the monochromy of his earlier paintings.

The second floor is dedicated to the artist’s work of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Tied together under the theme of the female portrait as one of Lichtenstein’s favorite motifs, this selection focuses on the famous “girl”paintings of the 1960s and a number of different adaptations of European painting on the same theme. Whereas the works on the first and third floors demonstrate the conceptual logic of a deliberate style intent on cultural reconciliation, the second floor mediates between the two, offering a more refined examination of the artistic-sensuous opulence of his work.		  
       

   
Third floor       

Insatllation views
Kunsthaus Bregenz, Third floor
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY, USA/VBK, Wien, 2005, KUB
Photos: Markus Tretter

  
       
   

With 34 paintings, five collages, and one sculpture – mostly key works from museums and private lenders in Europe and America – this exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz will be one of Austria’s most comprehensive solo shows of the work of one of the heroes and cofounders of Pop Art. It will also be the first European show to focus on the decisive dialogue between the artist’s early and late work with a stunning selection of masterpieces, thus enabling a profound examination of the pictorial language of the new classic of everyday life as juxtaposed with the classical painting motifs of modernism.

  
       
     
Interior with Shadow, 1993
Oil and magna on canvas 208,3 x 162,6 cm
Private Collection
Photo: Robert McKeever
© Roy Lichtenstein/VBK,
Wien, 2005 		  Interior: Perfect Pitcher, 1994
Oil and magna on canvas
304,8 x 492,1 cm
Private Collection,
Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York
Photo: Robert McKeever
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY,
USA/VBK, Wien, 2005		 Nude in Kitchen, 1995
Oil and magna on canvas
299,7 x 388,6 cm
Collection Charles Simonyi, Seattle
© Roy Lichtenstein/VBK, Wien, 2005		    
     
    For the Kunsthaus Bregenz – which for years has seen itself with its programming as a venue for art and discourse where the current aspect of the work of major contemporary artists plays a decisive role – this first historical look at an important force in contemporary art is a momentous occasion. As an artistic vision, the paradigm shift in art, as it also took place in Roy Lichtenstein’s work, is an impulse for the radical artistic positions presented at the Kunsthaus Bregenz. In particular one program focus of the Kunsthaus can be seen most propitiously in Roy Lichtenstein’s work, namely the theme of the transatlantic dialogue which strongly emphasizes the common roots of European and American art tradition.  
       
     
  Bathroom, 1961
Oil on canvas
116,2 x 175,9 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, NY,
USA/VBK, Wien, 2005 		Spray, 1962
Oil and magna on canvas
91,5 x 173,5 cm
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Photo © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/VBK, Wien, 2005		    
       
   

The exhibition is being organized in close cooperation with and with the support of the administrator of the Roy Lichtenstein estate and the Sonnabend and Gagosian galleries as the chief lenders of major work series.

  
       
   

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive publication with seminal texts by American and European authors on the main subjects of the exhibition.

 
               
       
               
  Roy Lichtenstein: Sculpture,”June 6 –August 6 2005

Parallel to the exhibition at the KUB, the Gagosian Gallery presents the exhibition “Roy Lichtenstein: Sculpture,” organized in collaboration with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. The show is a survey of sculpture throughout the artist’s career that highlights the artist’s head, glass and brushstroke motifs. A fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Hal Foster will accompany the exhibition.

Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia Street,
London WC1X 9JD, Tel. (+ 44-20) 78 4199 60		  
Roy Lichtenstein Galatea,1990
Painted bronze
226,1 x 81,3 x 48,3 cm
Private Collection, Greenpoint		            
             
             
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