Whaam!
A forthcoming Tate Modern exhibition will aim to reassess Roy Lichtenstein’s legacy by presenting some of his most definitive works in the context of less well-known pieces.
The Tate Modern and The Art Institute of Chicago have co-organised the exhibition, which will be the first major retrospective of the artist for 20 years, bringing together 125 paintings and sculptures.
It’s being billed as ‘the most comprehensive exhibition ever’ of the American Pop artist and does promise to look at areas we might not be familiar with.
Lichtenstein, born in 1923, was a key figure in the American Pop Art of the 1960s and beyond, and became known for using the imagery of comic strips and advertising, executed with his hand-painted Benday dot technique, to examine the representation of mass media culture. This much we know.
Lichtenstein: A Retrospective will give us the heroines and war imagery we are familiar with, yet look beyond to early Pop works of everyday objects in black and white.
Other deviations into landscapes, mirrors and what are known as his ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ paintings will also be represented.
The exhibition hopes to show how Lichtenstein engaged with art history, revealing responses to Futurism, Surrealism and German Expressionism.
At the end of his career, prior to his death in 1997, he was painting female nudes and Chinese landscapes, which to date haven’t been shown in the context of his other work, but will be shown at the Tate Modern.
Lichtenstein: A Retrospective runs from 21 February – 27 May 2013 at Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1
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Washington D.C.’s National Gallery has the exact same exhibition on now and it is amazing. Whether you’re in London on Feb 21 or in DC now, you must go see this.