Sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein are Simply fun!

Roy Lichtenstein's sculptures Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight 1996
Roy Lichtenstein’s sculptures Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight 1996 (left) and Galatea 1990 (right) during the press preview for Lichtenstein: A Retrospective at Tate Modern, London. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/PA Images via Getty Images)

America dozed off shortly after the end of World War II and slept for a very long period. America had a very nice dream when she slept. It was a vision of an ideal world free from hunger, affliction, peril, and want.

The dream’s surroundings were composed of graphic pictures that had been expertly constructed, including magazine ads, billboard displays, spotless bathrooms and kitchens, house floor plans, glossy trip brochures, television commercials, and comic book panels.

Lets Dream

Jackson Pollack is one example of an Abstract Expressionist who spent years fervently attempting to awaken America from this dream. Other artists, such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, believed that sleep wasn’t necessarily a terrible thing and that the dream that America was having, while it slept, was fascinating and beautiful.

Three Dimensional Sculptures

Roy Lichtenstein actually extracts three-dimensional sculptures from the comic book world, which is his most well-known medium as a painter. 

House I  sculpture by american artist Roy Lichtenstein
Visitors take in the fabricated and painted aluminum, House I sculpture by american artist Roy Lichtenstein at the National Gallery of Art sculpture garden on June 17, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

What appears absurd at first glance? After all, what could be funnier than a painted wood depiction of a stylised explosion like you might see in a comic book? It turns out to be unstoppable entertainment, especially when he applies the idea and its execution to harmless objects found in innocuous magazine and cartoon settings, such as desk lamps and their light cascades, coffee cups and their billows of steam, or other innocuous objects. The sculptures themselves are marvels of balance and design, of proper proportion and deft material handling.

Lichtenstein Mastery

Indeed, Lichtenstein possesses astounding mastery. Coming up with such silly ideas is one thing, but to design, sketch, cast, assemble, deconstruct, paint, and then create a finished object that is just as creative as the original thought is almost astounding.

Each piece seems to have been created, carried out, and completed without a hitch in only five minutes, although many of them took several months. The smeared, dogeared sketches that go with them are miniature works of art in and of themselves, demonstrating the amount of effort and planning that went into each one.

A brushstroke is possibly the last thing anyone would anticipate turning into a sculpture. After all, brush strokes are the two-dimensional building elements of painting, which is the sculpture’s exact opposite.

The truth is that a normal brush stroke is essentially a miniature three-dimensional relief item adhered to a canvas, as anyone who appreciates Van Gogh or Rembrandt will tell you. As a result, Lichtenstein provides a whole series of “Brush Stroke” sculptures, which are essentially primary-coloured daubs that have been multiplied by thousands and given depth and texture by the use of wood, metal, and, yes, paint.

Our reluctance to live in the past or outside of our thoroughly thought-out financial plans for living pleased Lichtenstein, who left all the judgement to us.

A picture was taken on June 30, 2013 shows the artwork “Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight” by late US artist Roy Lichtenstein on display at the Centre Georges Pompidou contemporary art museum in Paris, three days ahead of an exhibition running from July 3 to November 4 2013. (THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Sources

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing. https://amzn.to/3ElmSlL

Roy Lichtenstein – Newspapers.com. (1999, June 17). Newspapers.Com; http://www.newspapers.com. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/106628924/roy-lichtenstein/

Advertisements

Art books – Amazon

* This website may contain affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you click on links at no additional cost to you.  As an Amazon and Sovrn affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Advertisements

More Artist Designers

  • Sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein are Simply fun!

    Sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein are Simply fun!

    A selection of Roy Lichtenstein artwork contained in the MoMA collection. A key figure in the Pop art movement and beyond, Roy Lichtenstein grounded his profoundly inventive career in imitation—beginning by borrowing images from comic books and advertisements in the early 1960s, and eventually encompassing those of everyday objects, artistic styles, and art history itself.Read…

  • Starry Night by Van Gogh one of my favourite paintings

    Starry Night by Van Gogh one of my favourite paintings

    Van Gogh is one of my favourite artists. The painting “Starry Night” is one of his most beloved.   It is an authentic landscape and a projection of Van Gogh’s inner being.  Vortexes of deep azure spin around stars and a crescent moon.  A giant green, black cypress tree blows in the wind. Read More →

  • What Does Mark Tansey’s Innocent Eye Test Reveal?

    What Does Mark Tansey’s Innocent Eye Test Reveal?

    “The Innocent Eye Test” (1981) is perhaps the best-known work of Mark Tansey and one of his most successful. ItRead More →

  • Dada Art Movement – Making Mischief

    Dada Art Movement – Making Mischief

    As a designer, I am passionate about the history of art and their influence on ‘visual design.’  In art history, Dada is the artistic movement that preceded Surrealism, it began in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916 by a group of mostly painters and painters.  Dada artworks challenged the preconceived notions of what art meant.  Many Dadaists felt…

  • William Morris – Beauty of Practicality

    William Morris – Beauty of Practicality

    Morris believed his responsibility was “to revive a sense of beauty in home life, to restore the dignity of art to household decoration.Read More →

  • Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) – Symbolism and Metaphor

    Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) – Symbolism and Metaphor

    Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist that lived most of her life and physical pain, yet she continued to paint until her death, her artwork records her suffering and experiences as a woman. She was born to a Mexican mother and a German father.Read More →

  • Eric Ravilious (1903 – 1942) British wood engraver & ceramicist

    Eric Ravilious (1903 – 1942) British wood engraver & ceramicist

    Eric William Ravilious was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs and other English landscapes. He served as a war artist, and was the first British war artist to die on active service in World War II. Ravilious studied with Edward Bawden and…

  • Yoshitomo Nara (b.1959) Japanese Artist and Designer

    Yoshitomo Nara (b.1959) Japanese Artist and Designer

    Nara grew up in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, about 300 miles north of the Tochigi Prefecture. His exposure to Western music on the American military radio station Far East Network in Honshu influenced his artistic imagination early. Later, he would provide cover art for bands including Shonen Knife, R.E.M., and Bloodthirsty Butchers.Read More →

  • Roger Fry (1866 – 1934) British painter, writer, art critic and designer

    Roger Fry (1866 – 1934) British painter, writer, art critic and designer

    Roger Fry was a British painter, writer, art critic, designer, and lecturer. He was born in London. Between 1885 – 1890, he studied natural sciences, Cambridge University, and Académie Julian, Paris, 1892. Read More →

  • William Merritt Chase (1849 – 1916) American Artist and Teacher

    William Merritt Chase (1849 – 1916) American Artist and Teacher

    He settled in New York in 1878; subsequently, he taught at Art Students’ League, New York, in 1896. He established the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (sometimes referred to as Chase School of Art). Read More →

  • Charles Burchfield his early watercolours

    Charles Burchfield his early watercolours

    Burchfield was pegged, to some degree, as a regionalist; however, he was working with his personal form of realism.  He rejected the regionalist moniker; instead, he viewed himself as an American artist.Read More →

  • Javier Mariscal (b.1950) Spanish designer and Graphic Artist

    Javier Mariscal (b.1950) Spanish designer and Graphic Artist

    Javier Mariscal is a Spanish designer. He was born in Valencia. He is professionally active in Barcelona. He studied at the Escuela de Grafismo Elisava, Barcelona, to 1971.Read More →

  • Winold Reiss (1886-1953) German artist and designer

    Winold Reiss (1886-1953) German artist and designer

    Influenced by the international modern art movements that had recently swept across Europe, he blended cubism, which used geometric shapes to create abstract images, and fauvism, which favoured the use of bold colours to suggest shapes, with interest in ethnography to create a unique style of portraiture that sought to reveal the subject more thoroughly…

  • 6 Works That Explain Yayoi Kusama’s Rise to Art World Stardom

    6 Works That Explain Yayoi Kusama’s Rise to Art World Stardom

    In 1965, Kusama erected the first of her now-famous immersive environments. Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field (Floor Show) fused her interests in repetition, sexual exploration, psychology, and perception by filling a roughly 25-square-meter mirrored room with a thick carpet of soft, twisting phalluses camouflaged in the artist’s signature polka dots.Read More →

  • Elegantly Surreal Portraits Of Blue Women From Montreal

    Elegantly Surreal Portraits Of Blue Women From Montreal

    “Blue Gals” is a series by Montreal-based artist Etienne Dufresne featuring models with blue skin going about everyday activities. For this artist, shooting his strange portraits is a way to bring to life the characters he drew in school while growing up.Read More →

  • Emily LaBarge on Erin O’Keefe

    Emily LaBarge on Erin O’Keefe

    The wrongness of images, or our apperceptions of them: What appears to be a painting is actually a photograph. What appear to be two-dimensional painted lines, curves, rectangles, arabesques, planes of color, or abstract geometries with trompe l’oeil shadows are in fact three-dimensional objects carefully arranged, brightly illuminated, and flattened into a beguiling single plane…

  • Lust, heartbreak and suggestive sculpture: was this art’s greatest love triangle?

    Lust, heartbreak and suggestive sculpture: was this art’s greatest love triangle?

    The sensual American graffitist Cy Twombly, who lived in Italy from the late 1950s until his death in 2011, lushly inscribed his epic canvases with love poetry – Shelley and Keats, Cavafy and Catullus. The work was like an abstract expressionist Valentine’s card.Read More →

  • Painting by Other Means

    Painting by Other Means

    Painter James Bishop has died at age 93. His lyrical abstractions juxtapose fields of colour or expanses of primed and painted canvas. He often worked on found materials, displaying careful attention to his substrate’s surface. In an essay for our October 2008 issue, artist and critic Joe Fyfe responded to a retrospective at the Art…

  • Ida Ekblad Norwegian genre crossing artist

    Ida Ekblad Norwegian genre crossing artist

    Ida Ekblad’s practise incorporates painting and sculpture but also poetry, filmmaking and performance. The Norwegian artist has collaborated with multipleRead More →

  • Odilon Redon’s Classic paintings Capture Logic of Invisible

    Odilon Redon’s Classic paintings Capture Logic of Invisible

    Odilon Redon, the artist who at the age 73 outsold all but Marcel Duchamp at the 1913 Armory Show of “Modern French Art” in New York City.Read More →

  • Cracked Portraits by Taisuke Mohri

    Cracked Portraits by Taisuke Mohri

    ‘Cracked Portraits’ is an ongoing series of illustrations by Japanese artist Taisuke Mohri. The realistic hand-drawn portraits are overlaid with a pane of cracked glass, which contributes to the ethereal, surrealistic aspect of these artworks.Read More →

  • Retro-futuristic Illustrations by Tishk Barzanji

    Retro-futuristic Illustrations by Tishk Barzanji

    Tishk Barzanji is a visual artist based in London, United Kingdom. The work of Tishk Barzanji touches on the modernism movement, and surrealism. Inspired by his childhood in Kurdistan, and later moving to London in 1997. Read More →

  • Banksy version of iconic Monet painting expected to fetch $9m

    Banksy version of iconic Monet painting expected to fetch $9m

    A modern version of an Impressionist painting by guerilla artist Banksy is expected to fetch up to $9 million atRead More →

More design articles

❤️ Receive our newsletter

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.