Titled
Titled
Signed Print
Roy Lichtenstein
Screenprint, 1996
Signed Print Edition of 175
H 61cm x W 83cm
Critical Review
Roy Lichtenstein regularly mined art historical imagery, taking inspiration from a diverse array of genres and styles. His Landscapes, Moonscapes and Seascapes move away from appropriating comic strips to examining classical paintings. Titled from 1996 is predicated on the tenets of Pointillism, as well as the traditions of Chinese works of art. The print crafts a delicate and ethereal atmosphere, similar to Lichtenstein’s concurrent Landscapes in the Chinese Style portfolio of the mid-1990s.
Titled is constituted by simple figurative and minimalist elements. The composition is anchored in the illustration of lush green foliage on the left. The branches lean subtly into view, framing a body of water composed of blue Ben Day dots. A bright yellow sun sits high up in the skies, hovering above a bold blue horizon line. This calm fictitious nature scene was executed with mechanical precision, carefully stylised and meticulously stenciled.
In this print, Lichtenstein doesn’t retort to mimicking the techniques of commercial illustration exclusively. As a matter of fact, Titled submits to the serenity of its painterly source materials. Nature appears in its colourful cloud-like patches and the calculated patterns, all meant to express organic space and form. Still, the work reflects the harmony and balance of traditional painting through an unmistakably Lichtensteinian visual lexicon.
