The Melody Haunts My Reverie
The Melody Haunts My Reverie
Signed Print
Roy Lichtenstein
75 x 60cm, Edition of 200, Screenprint, 1965
£90,000-£130,000
$170,000-$250,000 Market Value Indicator
$170,000-$240,000 Market Value Indicator
¥800,000-¥1,160,000 Market Value Indicator
€110,000-€160,000 Market Value Indicator
$940,000-$1,360,000 Market Value Indicator
¥19,000,000-¥27,440,000 Market Value Indicator
$120,000-$170,000 Market Value Indicator
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Meaning & Analysis
11 Pop Artists was a three part portfolio commissioned in 1965, compiling prints by emerging artists of the time who engaged in printmaking. The artworks featured in the collaboration experiment with the serial qualities and saturated colour scheme of commercial design. Roy Lichtenstein’s vibrant pop debut appears in all three volumes, signaling his meteoric rise into the realms of Post-War American art.
Reverie references Mitchell Parish's lyrics, written for the 1927 love ballad "Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael. Accordingly, Lichtenstein presents a melancholy cartoon portrait of a blonde crooner, midsong. Reverie applies a simple, yet disruptive visual vocabulary, one characteristic of advertisements and comic strips. The print is scaled dramatically, informing the viewer about the precise techniques employed in its making.
It’s slick mass-produced aesthetic challenges the traditional artistic legacies of the 19th century, reintroducing discredited perspectives into contemporary artistic dialogue. There are no obscure meanings in this work to decode. Nonetheless, Lichtenstein’s Reverie is a conceptually complex work. Firstly, the print manifests social changes domineering 1960s America in the aftermath of the war. Moreover, Lichtenstein also stages the work as an affectionate tribute to music.Reverie is asking questions about the assumed status of jazz, as well the respective places of fine art and comics.
