The exhibition “Roy Lichtenstein. Multiple Visions” will be open to the public at Milan’s MUDEC Museum until Sunday 8th September 2019. For the great American artist’s fans and for Pop Art lovers this event is not to be missed.
In order to create this great exhibition in Milan, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, Washington’s National Gallery of Art, Minneapolis Walker Art Center, the Carmignac and Ryonbi Foundations, and the Gemini G.E.L. Collection shipped almost 100 artworks, among which large-format prints, sculptures, tapestries, videos and pictures developed in the Fifties.
“The exhibition highlights, through Roy Lichtenstein’s insight, how the elements of different cultures converge in his work of demolition, reconstruction and elaboration of the image in the pop art way, through his very personal language: from the history of the birth of the United States to the Far West adventures. From the vernacular expressions and the ethnographic art of the Native Americans to the pop culture exploded after the growth of world economy during the Second World War’s aftermath. From the European art culture to the avant-gardes of the eastern landscapes contemplative spirit”.
For Roy Lichtenstein, the press and the mechanical reproduction are valuable sources of inspiration: the copies of an original idea become themselves the aesthetic extension of his own work and genius.
The exhibition develops different formal interpretations of the subject matter, the “visions”, and shows the artist’s evolution towards the mechanical reproducibility of the artwork: from the first projects where he linked the European abstraction to the works of literature and the American culture to the interpretation of Native American’s decorations and patterns, reinterpreted in a pop way. From the objects where colour is dominant such as in “Still Life” pictures, to the mirror’s reflection as object non-object in “Mirrors”. From action comics to the representation of the female figure in the society of the 60s and 90s.
An important stress is given to the project “Interiors”, created thanks to the combination of different printing techniques such as lithography, xylography and serigraphy: “All my subjects are two-dimensional – remembers Lichtenstein – or at least they result from two-dimensional sources. In other words, even when I portray a room, it will be the image of a room I took from an advertising in a phone book, which is a two-dimensional source”.
The attention is then drawn by the “Landscapes”, where the experimentation of innovative materials for the reproduction begins. Such materials include for example Rowlux, a lenticular plastic used for its peculiar capacity of giving the observer the idea of mouvement: “These plastic sheets were perfect for depicting the sky and the water, two moving elements constantly changing on front of our eyes”.
The exhibition finds its conclusion with some artistic reinterpretations of the XXth century’s avant-gardist themes and artworks and the three-dimensional evolution of the archetypical brushstrokes of the 60s: “The idea is that a line can begin everywhere and then draw all the shapes of a picture. I was very attracted to this idea because it looked like a way to create an absolutely purposeless abstract picture”.
The exhibition is curated by Gianni Mercurio, a scholar of Lichtenstein and author of the book “Roy Lichtenstein”.
“Meditations on Art”, Milan, La Triennale Foundation, 2010 – promoted by Milan’s municipality Milano-Cultura and by 24 ORE Cultura-Gruppo 24 ORE, which is also its producer, for the conception of MADEINART.