Mirror #3
Mirror #3
Signed Mixed Media
Roy Lichtenstein
Mixed Media, 1972
Signed Mixed Media Edition of 80
H 71cm x W 71cm
Critical Review
Roy Lichtenstein’s Mirrors revise the historic iconography of mirrors. The series was first launched in the late 1960s and concluded in the early 1990s. In art and mythology, mirrors have been used to reveal the hidden and the unconscious. Lichtenstein’s enigmatic Mirrors honour the traditions of object painting, keeping the formal characteristics of the motif intact. However, the prints dismiss the item’s symbolic and functional purpose entirely.
Mirror #3, executed in 1972, presents an increasingly minimalistic take on Mirror #2 of the same series. The work has a densely dotted backdrop, overlaid with a dark blue semicircle. The added geometric layer is positioned slightly off centre. Yellow and light blue jagged lines demarcate the edges of its frame. Lichtenstein uses these regularised patterns to allude to the reflective attributes of glass. Simultaneously, he also applies the dots and streaks to obscure his subject matter. Presented frontally, Mirror #3 displays the complete absence of reflections. As such, the print is as much a parody, as it is an illustration of a mirror.
Over the course of his career, Lichtenstein embarked on several other series dealing with vision and representation. His Water Liliesand Reflections, for instance, explore various perceptions of light and reflection. Meanwhile, Lichtenstein’s Entablatures delve further into object painting, reproducing enlarged architectural fragments as their main composition.
