Modern Art II
Modern Art II
Signed Print
Roy Lichtenstein
Screenprint, 1996
Signed Print Edition of 50
H 103cm x W 79cm
Critical Review
Roy Lichtenstein’s Modern Art II manifests a clever printed montage of the most recent creative trends defining modern art. Published in 1996, alongside another work entitled Modern Art I, the print was executed by the artist merely a year before his death in 1997. In his usual sardonic manner, Lichtenstein’s Modern Art prints concoct a parody of art history.
Modern Art II assembles iconic styles abstracted from different artistic movements and modern masters in particular. The print therefore reduces its source materials to essential aesthetic parts, examining the deconstructed features one by one. Lichtenstein then fuses these parts into assorted arrangements of lines, geometric shapes and figurative elements.
In the artist’s hands the condensed characteristics of the modernists are transformed into slick contemporary cartoons. Using his Benday dots, blocks of colour and stark black outlines, Lichtenstein allows the subject matter to take on a story of its own.
At last, Modern Art II exhibits a multifaceted composition containing traces of Cubism and Constructivism. However, contrary to Modern Art I, Modern Art II relies heaviest on Surrealism. The illustrative elements are here exchanged for bizarre colourful abstractions alluding to facial components and the like.
