POA
This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
Lithograph, 1963
Signed Print Edition of 100
H 40cm x W 40cm
Originally created as the cover of an invitation to the 1963 exhibition entitled “Drawings”, Foot Medication Poster is one of Roy Lichtenstein’s earliest monochrome object prints. The show, organised by Lichtenstein’s proponent art dealer Leo Castelli, featured works by several pioneering contemporary printmakers.
Foot Medication Poster adopts the visual vocabulary of consumer and popular culture to counteract idealised artistic legacies. In this minimalist offset lithograph, we see a scaled-back illustration of a foot being cared for by a simplified hand holding a cotton wad. Similar to On from one year prior and Spray Can of the same year, the artist here contrasts the trivial and the serious; the mechanical versus the handmade.
Conceptually, Lichtenstein plays on the beholder’s preconditioned understanding of art. The limbs shown have been magnified and are situated in the middle of the canvas, taking on the emblematic authority of icons. Formally, the print utilises an old-fashioned pictorial organisation devoid of colour fillers. As a result, Foot Medication Poster achieves an impact depending on its graphic and detailed rendering of a generic object. Ultimately, the radical flatness and the sketch-like qualities of the print offer an impeccable parody of fine art and other classical genres.