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Lichtenstein Girls

May 12–June 28, 2008
980 Madison Avenue, New York

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Works Exhibited

Roy Lichtenstein, Happy Tears, 1964 Oil and Magna on canvas, 38 × 38 inches (97 × 97 cm)© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein, Happy Tears, 1964

Oil and Magna on canvas, 38 × 38 inches (97 × 97 cm)
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein, Blonde Waiting, 1964 Oil and Magna on canvas, 48 × 48 inches (121.9 × 121.9 cm)© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein, Blonde Waiting, 1964

Oil and Magna on canvas, 48 × 48 inches (121.9 × 121.9 cm)
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein, Good Morning. . . Darling!, 1964 Oil and Magna on canvas, 27 × 36 inches (68.6 × 91.4 cm)© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein, Good Morning. . . Darling!, 1964

Oil and Magna on canvas, 27 × 36 inches (68.6 × 91.4 cm)
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein, Oh, Jeff. . . I Love You, Too. . . But. . . , 1964 Oil and Magna on canvas, 48 × 48 inches (121.9 × 121.9 cm)© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein, Oh, Jeff. . . I Love You, Too. . . But. . . , 1964

Oil and Magna on canvas, 48 × 48 inches (121.9 × 121.9 cm)
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

About

[The kind of girls I painted were] really made up of black lines and red dots. I see it that abstractly, that it’s very hard to fall for one of these creatures, to me, because they’re not really reality to me. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a clichéd ideal, a fantasy ideal, of a woman that I would be interested in. But I think I have in mind what they should look like for other people.
—Roy Lichtenstein

Gagosian is pleased to present Girls, a seminal group of paintings by Roy Lichtenstein.

In the summer of 1961 Lichtenstein embarked on a series of iconic images of women, taken directly from newspaper clippings and the romance comic books so prevalent in postwar America. The anonymity of the mass-produced, cheap comic book helped him to capture specific impressions of real things while maintaining the necessary degree of aesthetic distance afforded by what he understood to be the “high restrictive quality of art.” He scrutinized his female subjects, editing and re-presenting the crux of their trials and tribulations in paint on canvas on a greatly enlarged scale. The Girl paintings, together with the war images (or Boy paintings), established him as a major protagonist of American Pop art. In all of Lichtenstein’s art there remains a particular, unmistakably American quality: a knowing and laconic examination of the world that separated him from his Capitalist Realist contemporaries in Europe, who also borrowed from pop cultural sources. His mixing of text and image, and of high and low culture, as well as his strategies involving the appropriated image, continues to be a rich source of inspiration for subsequent generations of artists, from Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, and Raymond Pettibon to John Currin and Elizabeth Peyton.

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Dorothy Lichtenstein and Irving Blum stand next to each other in front of Roy Lichtenstein's studio in Southampton, New York

In Conversation
Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein

In celebration of the centenary of Roy Lichtenstein’s birth, Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein sat down to discuss the artist’s life and legacy, and the exhibition Lichtenstein Remembered curated by Blum at Gagosian, New York.

Alison McDonald, Daniel Belasco, and Scott Rothkopf next to each other in front of a live audience

In Conversation
Daniel Belasco and Scott Rothkopf on Roy Lichtenstein

Gagosian and the Art Students League of New York hosted a conversation on Roy Lichtenstein with Daniel Belasco, executive director of the Al Held Foundation, and Scott Rothkopf, senior deputy director and chief curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Organized in celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth and moderated by Alison McDonald, chief creative officer at Gagosian, the discussion highlights multiple perspectives on Lichtenstein’s decades-long career, during which he helped originate the Pop art movement. The talk coincides with Lichtenstein Remembered, curated by Irving Blum and on view at Gagosian, New York, through October 21.

Steve Martin playing a banjo

Roy and Irving

Actor and art collector Steve Martin reflects on the friendship and professional partnership between Roy Lichtenstein and art dealer Irving Blum.

Black-and-white photograph: Donald Marron, c. 1984.

Donald Marron

Jacoba Urist profiles the legendary collector.

Alexander Calder poster for McGovern, 1972, lithograph

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.

Dorothy Lichtenstein in Roy Lichtenstein’s Southampton studio. Photo by Kasia Wandycz/Paris Match via Getty Images

In Conversation
Dorothy Lichtenstein

Dorothy Lichtenstein sits down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the changes underway at the Lichtenstein Foundation, life in the 1960s, and what brought her to—and kept her in—the Hamptons.