Yellow Vase © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990
Inspired by everyday furniture advertisements and Lichtenstein's own photographs, the Interiors series is the artist at his most recognisable.
Lichtenstein was inspired by consumerism and American pop culture.
Red Lamps © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990Lichtenstein in these prints offers a culturally relevant aesthetic, evoking images, lettering and figures appropriated from comic strips.
This series of prints is inspired by clippings from furniture advertisements.
The Den © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990The printed sequence was inspired by clippings and images collected from everyday furniture advertisements by the artist himself. Cribbed from visuals of quotidian domesticity, these interiors are rendered in characteristically bold primary colours, and delineated outlines.
The Interior series uses Lichtenstein’s characteristic Ben Day dots.
Yellow Vase © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990Lichtenstein created his signature Benday dots using an aluminium mesh as a template, pushing oil paint through the holes using a toothbrush. Benday dots (also called Ben-Day or Ben Day dots) are named after the 19th-century illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day, who introduced the use of small, coloured dots in industrial printing to create gradual shading and block colours.
Lichtenstein’s cartoonish works have a deeper meaning than you might at first think.
Wallpaper With Blue Floor Interior © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990Whilst Lichtenstein's work derives from the visual vocabulary of popular culture, cartoon-like and mass-produced, his approach was in fact highly sophisticated and meaningful. His work was not only a satirical mirror to the society in which he worked but also remains decidedly relevant today.
The series primarily reflects the artist’s fascination with the paradoxical relationship between fine art and design.
Modern Room © Roy Lichtenstein, 1991The sequence is characterised by a highly stylised aesthetic of mundane domestic spaces, transformed through contrasting contouring, regimented patterns, and block colouring. The familiarity of Lichtenstein’s Interiors is further enhanced and reinvented through flat picture planes and distorted perspectives.
This series was created in the latter stages of Lichtenstein’s career.
Living Room © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990Lichtenstein’s Interior series was created at the beginning of the 1990s and towards the end of the artist’s career. The series features a variety of conceptual ideas and skills that Lichtenstein acquired in the preceding years culminating in this body of work.
Some of the prints in the Interiors series references contemporaries of Lichtenstein.
La Sortie © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990A recurring theme in the series is the inclusion of works by many of Lichtenstein’s fellow contemporary artists. In Red Lamps (1990), for example, a painting that references Jackson Pollock seemingly half appears hanging on the wall on the right-hand side of the composition. Meanwhile, in Yellow Vase (1992) and Modern Room (1991) both, subtle Andy Warhol-inspired paintings hang prominently on the portrayed walls.
One of the Interiors prints includes a reference to Lichtenstein’s own work.
Bedroom © Roy Lichtenstein, 1990Living Room (1992) incorporates a reference to Lichtenstein’s own work, featuring his distinctive brushstroke motif on the left-hand side of the image.
This series indicates that Lichtenstein was well aware of his position in art history and popular culture.
Interior With Chair © Roy Lichtenstein, 1997These iconographical placements of famous artworks rightfully establish Lichtenstein alongside his contemporaries within an aesthetic tradition that recognises the artistic potential of popular culture. They also demonstrate the awareness Lichtenstein had of art history and his position within it. The series additionally serves as an overt reminder of the artist’s own presence within his work.
The record price of an Interiors original artwork is £15.3 million.
Two Paintings: Green Lamp © Roy Lichtenstein, 1984Lichtenstein’s Interior: Perfect Pitcher painting from 1994 sold for a total of £15.3 million at Christie’s New York on the 13th May 2021. This is the record price for an Interiors painting.
