Roy Lichtenstein - Mirror I (1976)
â„–1? Again? How comes?, one might ask. We've seen the â„–1 already, back in 1969!
But we've seen it again, too, in 1970; though it was different:
And then again in 1971, and again a different one (and it's a print, not a painting):
What's going on here? And what's the true â„–1 Mirror of Lichtenstein?
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Roy Lichtenstein was apparently obsessed with mirrors, he painted them, and compositions with them, all his life. I once wrote an overview of the 'art mirrors' he produced - or rather I tried: I have a fairly good understanding of different stages of his artistic evolution, and his 'other mirrors', but I remember being confused with these 'numbered mirrors'.
Worth adding that when I was writing that piece, his Catalogue Raisonné was not available online, and I was trying to stitch different fragmented pieces from multiple collections into one more or less coherent picture myself. I failed, of course; it's a mess, and it's a mess which is difficult to sort out even with the Catalogue Raisonné at your hand (it's now online, do visit it - it's very well done and presents more than 5,000 of his works and many other interesting materials).
But back to the numbered mirrors: Lichtenstein started painting them at the end of 1969 and, over the next three years, produced almost fifty of these paintings. The issue is that he did not number them consecutively. He treated them as separate series defined by the size and format of the work - circular, oval, and so on - and then assigned individual numbers within each series.
So, in more serious and accurate description you will find not only the number, but also the size and format, like Mirror # 1 (Oval 60" x 48"). Below is a complete structure of his finished numbered mirrors:
So, if we talk about Mirror#1s, we can end up with something like that (and it's not even the complete set):
As usual, the life is more complex that any neat structure, or rather we complicate it tremendously. In addition to these paintings (or rather as a follow-up of this long mirror streak that became very popular among collectors) Lichtenstein also produced a series of prints. These prints recycled some of the 'numbered mirrors/paintings', but were assigned with their own 'new' numbers. A mess, as said.
And then, on top of all this numeric salad the artist also made a few sculptures with mirrors. The one I started this post is one of those - it's quite large in reality, almost 120 cm tall bronze structure:
These sculptures got their own - Roman, not Arabic - numbers, so this one is Mirror I, not Mirror 1.
And the next twist is that these sculptures were made in a few copies, so there is a version called Mirror I (1)! Total bliss.
