#lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923 - 1997)

Sandwich and Soda, 1964 Screenprint on transparent rhodoid,  31.5 x 37.5 cm

Milestone Monday: Roy Lichtenstein

On October 27th, 1923, Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York City. On his birthday, we celebrate the pop artist with images from two titles in our collection. The first, Pop Art One, was released by the Publishing Institute of American Art in New York City in 1965. Dorothy Herzka – who would later marry Lichtenstein, and run his foundation after his death – edited this collection of loose leaf plates by Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, and Andy Warhol.

The color images featured are from, Roy Lichtenstein: Drawing First: 50 Years of Works on Paper, edited by Danilo Eccher, and published by Skira in Milan, Italy, 2015. The book features studies, sketches, and drafts showing Lichtenstein’s meticulous process. A 2011 article by Kevin Conley details the precision of his craft:

During World War II he’d served as a draftsman, drawing maps in an engineering battalion, and after leaving Ohio State he again found work as a draftsman, at Republic Steel; those experiences contributed to his pragmatism and mechanical wizardry in the studio…. He made a floor-to-ceiling wall easel that tilted ever so slightly forward, so that any excess paint would drip onto the floor and not down the meticulously clean surface of his canvas. He worked in waves of activity, sketching in notebooks and transferring his drawings onto canvas by means of an overhead projector, refining the original ideas freehand, filling in blank spaces with test patches of colored or patterned paper, taping and applying paint in solid sections or with the aid of various tools of his own devising. He invented a standing easel that allowed him to rotate the canvas 360 degrees, so he could view a work in progress in a new light.

See more Milestone Monday posts!

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern