VISUAL ART
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ROY LICHTENSTEIN New exhibition traces the iconic pop artist’s career
When the National Galleries of Scotland paid £100,000 in 1980 for Roy Lichtenstein’s painting ‘In the Car’, some in Edinburgh society were less than impressed that such an immense sum be spent on a cartoonish piece of pop art. Some 35 years on, it’s one of the most popular works in the Modern collection.
Now, visitors can see it in a new context, placed within three rooms of Lichtenstein’s work, most of it on long-term loan from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in New York. ‘In the Car’ is an early work, made in the 1960s when Lichtenstein was a pop art pioneer, but his aesthetic remained relatively unchanged: imagery borrowed from cartoons and advertising, deft lines, bright colours, flat planes. His pursuit of that aesthetic, and his struggle with its limits, provides the focus on his art. How, for example, do you create a reflection
with only panels of flat colour? In his 1980s ‘Reflections’ series of prints, Lichtenstein breaks images up with panels of Ben-Day dots to make narratives ambiguous and images semi-abstract. Though he used mass-produced imagery for much of his career, he was also engaged with the history of art. Prints explore the female nude, an interest in cubism and – perhaps most strangely of all – his version of Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’.
These works retain an ambivalent relationship to the original, somewhere between homage and send-up. Above all, they are a reminder that ‘Water Lilies’ have become as ubiquitous as a cartoon or advertising slogan. Indeed, this may be pop art’s greatest legacy to the world of contemporary art: at the end of the day, it’s all material. (Susan Mansfield) ■ Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 10 Jan 2016 ●●●●●
112 THE LIST 2 Apr–4 Jun 2015
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