New York City - Photography

Marilyn Monroe, New York City, USA, 1956 1956/2023 Signature stamp, verso Archival pigment print 6 x 6 inches, sheet 3.75 x 5.5 inches, image This work is offered by CLAMP in New...

ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Madeleine Gross is a Toronto-based artist who customizes her photographs with paint in a way designed to abstract landscapes but without completely abstracting rea...

Untitled 1983 Signed, titled, dated, and inscribed “A/P” in blue ink, verso Gelatin silver print 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm) This work is offered by CLAMP in New York City.

An 11 x 14 black and white print of Buzz Aldrin from the original negative before Nasa added “more” space on the top of the image, which is a more common version of Visor. The 11 x 1...

Kate Moss is photographed during a night out at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden in London on the 16th of January in 2007. The British supermodel and businesswoman rose to fame ...

These extraordinary photographs are part of the the Hotel Chelsea series. The Hotel Chelsea closed its doors for the first time in its iconic history of over one hundred years. Amer...

THIS PIECE IS AVAILABLE FRAMED. Please reach out to the gallery for additional information. ABOUT THIS PIECE: French photographer Ludwig Favre recently road tripped to California....

Kate #2, 2002 by Leonard Freed is an 8" x 10" hand printed, signed by the photographer black and white photograph, stamped "vintage" by the Freed estate on verso (back of print).. Mo...

Apres Ski 1963 (printed later) Chromogenic Lambda Print Estate edition of 150 A group of women reclining on the snow in Gstaad with rugs covering their knees, 1963. Estate stamped ...

Sunbathing in Capri, Catherine Wilke 1980 Chromogenic Lambda print Estate stamped and hand numbered edition of 150 with certificate of authenticity from the estate. Catherine Wilke...

A 20" x 16" (18.5” x 12.5” image size) gelatin silver print of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and Chuck Wein, 1965 by Burt Glinn with the photographer's blind stamp on recto (front left...

Leonard Freed's stamped vintage (verso), 14" x 11," gelatin silver signed print, Kate Bending, is from the Kate series, 2002. A photographer herself, model Kate remains complicit in ...

Francesca Woodman, Providence, Rhode Island (1976) photographed by George Lange. 11 x 14" archival pigment print 17 x 21 x 2" frame with UV plexgia...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: Let's not pretend that we don't enjoy 80's music. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Floyd P. Stanley is an LA based photographer creating product shot photographs of mixed tapes....

THIS PIECE IS AVAILABLE FRAMED. Please reach out to the gallery for additional information. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Minjin Kang and Mijoo Kim are a creative duo, who have been inspirin...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: Freeforms : Exploring form and color combinations in a series of freestanding paper foil sculptures. Using natural light I arranged foiled shapes in different posit...

Untitled (Ben) Puerto Vallarta, Mexico 2017-2020 Signed and numbered, verso 40 x 30 inches, sheet 38 x 28 inches, image (Edition of 3) $4,500 28 x 22 inches, sheet 24 x 20 inches,...

Andy Warhol Nicola (Nicky) Weymouth, ca. 1976 Acetate positive, acquired directly from Chromacomp, Inc. Andy Warhol's printer in the 1970s. Accompanied by a Letter of Provenance from the representative of Chromacomp Unique Frame included: Elegantly framed in a museum quality white wood frame with UV plexiglass: Measurements: Frame: 18 x 15.5 x 1.5 inches Acetate: 11 x 8 inches This is the original, unique photographic acetate positive taken by Andy Warhol as the basis for his portrait of Nicky Weymouth, that came from Andy Warhol's studio, The Factory to his printer. It was acquired directly from Chromacomp, Inc. Andy Warhol's printer in the 1970s. It is accompanied by a Letter of Provenance from the representative of Chromacomp. This is one of the images used by Andy Warhol to create his iconic portrait of the socialite Nicola Samuel Weymouth, also called Nicky Weymouth, Nicky Waymouth, Nicky Lane Weymouth or Nicky Samuel. Weymouth (nee Samuel) was a British socialite, who went on to briefly marry the jewelry designer Kenneth Lane, whom she met through Warhol. This acetate positive is unique, and was sent to Chromacomp because Warhol was considering making a silkscreen out of this portrait. As Bob Colacello, former Editor in Chief of Interview magazine (and right hand man to Andy Warhol), explained, "many hands were involved in the rather mechanical silkscreening process... but only Andy in all the years I knew him, worked on the acetates." An acetate is a photographic negative or positive transferred to a transparency, allowing an image to be magnified and projected onto a screen. As only Andy worked on the acetates, it was the last original step prior to the screenprinting of an image, and the most important element in Warhol's creative process for silkscreening. Warhol realized the value of his unique original acetates like this one, and is known to have traded the acetates for valuable services. This acetate was brought by Warhol to Eunice and Jackson Lowell, owners of Chromacomp, a fine art printing studio in NYC, and was acquired directly from the Lowell's private collection. During the 1970s and 80s, Chromacomp was the premier atelier for fine art limited edition silkscreen prints; indeed, Chromacomp was the largest studio producing fine art prints in the world for artists such as Andy Warhol, Leroy Neiman, Erte, Robert Natkin, Larry Zox, David Hockney and many more. All of the plates were done by hand and in some cases photographically. Famed printer Alexander Heinrici worked for Eunice Jackson Lowell at Chromacomp and brought Andy Warhol in as an account. Shortly after, Warhol or his workers brought in several boxes of photographs, paper and/or acetates and asked Jackson Lowell to use his equipment to enlarge certain images or portions of images. Warhol made comments and or changes and asked the Lowells to print some editions; others were printed elsewhere. Chromacomp Inc. ended up printing Warhol's Mick Jagger Suite and the Ladies Gentlemen Suite, as well as other works, based on the box of photographic acetates that Warhol brought to them. The Lowell's allowed the printer to be named as Alexander Heinrici rather than Chromacomp, since Heinrici was the one who brought the account in. Other images were never printed by Chromacomp- they were simply being considered by Warhol. Warhol left the remaining acetates with Eunice and Jackson Lowell. After the Lowells closed the shop, the photographs were packed away where they remained for nearly a quarter of a century. This work is exactly as it was delivered from the factory. Unevenly cut by Warhol himself. This work is accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from the representative of Chromacomp, Andy Warhol's printer for many of his works in the 1970s. About Andy Warhol: Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves? —Andy Warhol Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) art encapsulates the 1960s through the 1980s in New York. By imitating the familiar aesthetics of mass media, advertising, and celebrity culture, Warhol blurred the boundaries between his work and the world that inspired it, producing images that have become as pervasive as their sources. Warhol grew up in a working-class suburb of Pittsburgh. His parents were Slovak immigrants, and he was the only member of his family to attend college. He entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1945, where he majored in pictorial design. After graduation, he moved to New York with fellow student Philip Pearlstein and found steady work as a commercial illustrator at several magazines, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and the New Yorker. Throughout the 1950s Warhol enjoyed a successful career as a commercial artist, winning several commendations from the Art Directors Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. He had his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in 1952, showing drawings based on the writings of Truman Capote; three years later his work was included in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art for the first time. The year 1960 marked a turning point in Warhol’s prolific career. He painted his first works based on comics and advertisements, enlarging and transferring the source images onto canvas using a projector. In 1961 Warhol showed these hand-painted works, including Little King (1961) and Saturday’s Popeye (1961), in a window display at the department store Bonwit Teller; in 1962 he painted his famous Campbell’s Soup Cans, thirty-two separate canvases, each depicting a canned soup of a different flavor. Soon after, Warhol began to borrow not only the subject matter of printed media, but the technology as well. Incorporating the silkscreen technique, he created grids of stamps, Coca-Cola bottles, shipping and handling labels, dollar bills, coffee labels...

David Hamilton, American (1933 - 2016) - Souvenirs de Vacances Par David Hamilton, Year: 1974, Medium: Incomplete Portfolio of 61 unbound reproduction prints with cloth bound cov...

Dale Bessire Winter Landscape Signed lower right Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches A founding member of the Brown County Art Gallery Association, Dale Bessire was a native of Indianapol...

Digital C-print Stamped and numbered, verso 20 x 24 inches (Edition of 10) 30 x 40 inches (Edition of 5 + 1 AP) 50 x 60 inches (Edition of 3) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Please note that prices increase as editions sell. Luke Smalley was an American artist known for his photographic work, which pairs a coolly minimalist aesthetic with a retro nostalgia. Images from his early in his career were inspired by fitness manuals and yearbooks c. 1910. This is not surprising since Smalley graduated with a degree in sports medicine from Pepperdine University and worked for a number of years as a model and personal trainer. Smalley shot the bulk of his photographs in his home state of Pennsylvania, using real high school athletes as models. “Exercise at Home” is Luke Smalley’s second major body of work. Shot in and around the tiny Pennsylvania town the artist called home, Smalley revisits themes of adolescent growing pains acted out under the guise of earnest athleticism. Teenagers engage in simple yet strange competitions meant to establish their standings amongst one another. Two youths practice boating safety...

Selenium-toned gelatin silver print Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in pencil, verso Also blindstamped with artist's name and edition number, recto 8 x 8 inches, image size (Ed...

Digital C-print (Edition of 25) Signed, dated, and numbered, verso 28 x 24 inches, sheet 22 x 18 inches, image This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Edwar...

Vintage silver print Western Photography Guild studio stamp in purple ink, verso Numbered "N14-4" in purple ink, verso Also inscribed in pencil, v...

In 1986 African-American musician Dee Dee Bridgewater left the United States and moved to Paris, France where she lived for the next fifteen years with her family, two daughters and ...

American model Jean Patchett photographed in Paris wearing a Jean Dessès evening gown. American Vogue magazine April 1, 1950. Paris Drama, 1950 C print Estate stamped and numbered e...

Gelatin silver print (Edition of 15) Stamped and numbered, verso 14 x 11 inches, sheet 7 x 5 inches, image From the series, "Gymnasium" This photograph is offered by ClampArt, loca...

Joshua II 1990 Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in ink, recto Gelatin silver print (Edition of 5) 9 x 13 inches (22.9 x 33 cm), image 11 x 14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm), sheet Th...

Tanned bodies on the deck of Dino Pecci Blunt's yacht in Marbella, 1967. Slim Aarons Yacht Holiday 1967 C print (Printed later) Estate signature stamped and hand numbered edition of...

This work is offered by CLAMP in New York City. Edwardo 1992 Signed, titled, and dated in ink, recto Gelatin silver print 8.5 x 6 inches (21.6 x 15.2 cm), image 10 x 8 inches (25...

American photographer Burt Glinn photographed the Hollywood star in conversation with Mike Todd and film director John Huston for a “Stop Arthritis” event which took place in New Yor...

Comic Book Readers, West Village, NYC by Ruth Orkin is a black and white gelatin silver print of four children standing outside of a bookstore, flipping through their recent purchase...

Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat boxing pictorial, 1985. Rare vintage 1985 large sized magazine advertisement for the historic Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat collaborations sh...

Gelatin silver print Signed in pencil, verso 11 x 14 inches, sheet size 9.75 x 12.5 inches, image size This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Lillian Bassm...

ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Carla Sutera Sardo was born in Agrigento in 1983. She studied law and graduated in 2011. During her university career, she became interested in photography, thus s...

Archival pigment print Signed, titled, numbered, and dated, verso 22 x 17 inches, sheet (Edition of 15) 44 x 32 inches, sheet (Edition of 9) This photograph is offered by ClampArt...

Raymond Pettibon, "No Mag,'" 1981: A rare late 70's/early 80's Los Angeles Punk scene publication featuring several stand out illustrations by Raymond Pettibon Medium: Newspaper mag...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: Let's not pretend that we don't enjoy 80's music. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Floyd P. Stanley is an LA based photographer creating product shot photographs of mixed tapes....

Office Party by Leonard Freed is a 13" x 19" limited-edition photograph. The print 4/5 is signed verso (back of photo) by Brigitte Freed (wife of the phot...

Fashion Show, Brooklyn, New York, USA 1963 by Leonard Freed is a 19" x 13" signed and numbered archival pigment print in an edition of 10. Signed by the estate, Freed's widow Brigitte Freed, on back of photograph. Available: 3/10. Provenance: Freed Estate *** Artist’s Bio: Leonard Freed (1929-2006) was an American photographer from Brooklyn, New York. His "Black in White America" series made him known as a documentarian, a social documentary photographer. Freed worked as a freelance photographer from 1961 onwards and as a Magnum photographer Freed traveled widely abroad and, in the US, photographing African Americans (1964-65), events in Israel (1967-68, 1973), and the New York City police department...

American Photographer Leonard Freed travelled extensively and enjoyed Italy - a country he returned to often and photographed throughout his long photographic career. Cats, Naples, I...

Children, Harlem, New York, USA 1963 by Leonard Freed is a 19" x 13" signed and numbered archival pigment print in an edition of 10. Signed by the estate, Freed's widow Brigitte Freed, on back of photograph. Available: 7/10. Provenance: Freed archive. Provenance: Freed Estate *** Artist’s Bio: Leonard Freed (1929-2006) was an American photographer from Brooklyn, New York. His "Black in White America" series made him known as a documentarian. Freed worked as a freelance photographer from 1961 onwards and as a Magnum photographer Freed traveled widely abroad and, in the US, photographing African Americans (1964-65), events in Israel (1967-68, 1973), and the New York City police department...

"Repairing the hull of the Graf Zeppelin during the flight over the Atlantic, 1934 by Alfred Eisenstaedt" The Graf Zeppelin Alfred Eisenstaedt, German (1898–1995) Date: 1934 (Printe...

Untitled (Phone Call) Mike Tyson speaking with Camille Ewald after winning his first title, WBC World Championship, Las Vegas, 1986 Signed and numbered, verso Archival pigment prin...

Kate #10, 2002 by Leonard Freed is an 8" x 10" hand printed. Signed by the photographer black and white photograph, stamped "vintage" by the Freed estate. Model and yogini Kate remai...

Willy Nelson, 1993 by American photographer Leonard Freed is a series of (3) photographs, gelatin silver press RC prints, which are each signed verso (bac...

THIS PIECE IS AVAILABLE FRAMED. Please reach out to the gallery for additional information. ABOUT THIS PIECE: French photographer Ludwig Favre recently road tripped to California....

Archival pigment print Signed and numbered, recto 20 x 24 inches, sheet (Edition of 7) 11 x 14 inches, sheet (Edition of 20) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. About the artist: Rick Day is an American photographer based in New York City, who names Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, and Victor Skrebneski as influences. His work concentrates on fashion advertising photography and video—his fashion spreads and images have been published in numerous publications across the world including “ELLE,” “Details,” “Vogue Italia,” “Männer,” “DNA,” and “GQ.” Day has produced four photography books since 2008, with BelAmi being the most recent (all published through Bruno Gmünder...

I Am the Spirit That Hovers Above the Shapeless Mass of Dreams 1991 Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in ink, recto Gelatin silver print (Edition of 5) 12.5 x 8.5 inches (31.8 x...

THIS PIECE IS AVAILABLE FRAMED. Please reach out to the gallery for additional information. ABOUT THIS PIECE: French photographer Ludwig Favre recently road tripped to California. ...

THIS PIECE IS AVAILABLE FRAMED. Please reach out to the gallery for more information. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Tom Fabia is a french artist living in the south of France. His parents are...

Cy Twombly Earle and Carolyn Brown at the Stevenson's in Brewster, 1955 Identified and inscribed on the reverse by the sitter Carolyn Brown Photograph on paper 8 x 8 inches Provenance Gift of the artist Estate of Carolyn Brown, New York 2025. Cy Twombly gained fame for his art that combined cultural, historical, and poetic elements—particularly those from classical antiquity—with abstract shapes and his distinctive script. Born Edwin Parker Twombly, Jr. on April 25, 1928, in Lexington, Virginia, he began his artistic journey under the guidance of Pierre Daura and Marion Junkin at Washington and Lee University. This initial training was complemented by his formative experiences at the Arts Students League of New York and Black Mountain College, where he established enduring friendships with influential figures like Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham. A pivotal moment for Twombly was his 1952 trip to Italy and North Africa with Rauschenberg, funded by a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. This journey allowed Twombly to engage deeply with the rich cultural history that would inform his future artistic endeavors, leading to the creation of significant early pieces. Twombly made his way back to Italy in 1957 and 1958, during which he presented his first solo exhibition in Italy at Galleria La Tartaruga, owned by Plinio De Martiis. In 1959, he married Luisa Tatiana...

Archival pigment print Signed and numbered on label, verso 12 x 18 inches (Edition of 10) 24 x 35.5 inches (Edition of 8) From the series, "Him" This artwork is offered by ClampAr...

Listing includes framing with UV plexi, free shipping to the continental US and a 14-day return policy. One 4.5 x 3.25 inch unique vintage Kodak print of Tina Chow (1975). Prints ar...

This archival pigment print on Canson paper comes directly from the publisher, Lincoln Center Editions. It is signed and numbered en verso by the artist. It is in excellent condition and has never been framed. Note: The image of the framed print is for reference purposes only. Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953) is an American artist whose extensive body of work investigates cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Weems is widely recognized for her revolutionary approach to the expression of narratives about women, people of color and working-class communities, “conjuring lush art...

Gelatin silver print Signed, dated, and numbered, verso 10 x 8 inches, sheet 7 x 7 inches, image (Edition of 10) 14 x 11 inches, sheet 10 x 10 inches, image (Edition of 10) 20 x 1...

Fashion model Pamela Minchin photographed on the Isle of Wight wearing Fortnum and Mason’s dark burgundy Lastex satin swimsuit with ballet skirt, Harper’s Bazaar, July 1939. 'For ba...

Sunbathing in Capri, Catherine Wilke 1980 Chromogenic Lambda print Estate stamped and hand numbered edition of 150 with certificate of authenticity from the estate. Catherine Wilke...

Andy Warhol Portrait of Roy Lichtenstein, 1975 Polaroid dye-diffusion print Authenticated by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, bears the Foundation stamp verso Frame included: Framed in white wood frame with UV plexiglass; with die-cut window in the back to show official Warhol Foundation authentication stamp and text Measurements: 9 9/16 x 8 9/16 x 9/16 inches (frame) 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (window) 4.16 x 3.15 inches (Artwork) Authenticated and stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol/Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts An impressive piece of Pop Art history! A must-have for fans and collectors of both Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein: This is a unique, authenticated color Polaroid taken by one Pop Art legend, Andy Warhol, of his most formidable contemporary and, in many respects, rival, Roy Lichtenstein. One of only a few portraits Andy Warhol took of Roy Lichtenstein, during one tense photo shoot. Both iconic artists, colleagues and, perhaps lesser known to the public, rivals, would be represented at the time by the renowned Leo Castelli Gallery. The truth is - they were really more rivals than friends. (the rivalry intensified when Warhol, who was working with Walt Disney, discovered that Lichtenstein painted Mickey Mouse before he did!!) Leo Castelli was committed to Roy Lichtenstein, and, it's easy to forget today, wasn't that interested in Warhol as he considered Lichtenstein the greater talent and he could relate better with Roy on a personal level. However, Ivan Karp, who worked at Castelli, was very interested in Warhol, as were some powerful European dealers, as well as many wealthy and influential American and European collectors. That was the start of Warhol's bypassing the traditional gallery model - so that dealers like Castelli could re-discover him after everybody else had. Warhol is known to have taken hundreds of self-portrait polaroid photographs - shoe boxes full - and he took many dozens of images of celebrities like Blondie and Farrah Fawcett. But only a small number of photographic portraits of fellow Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein -- each unique,- are known to have appeared on the market over the past half a century - all from the same photo session. This is one of them. There is another Polaroid - from this same (and only) sitting, in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum in California. There really weren't any other collaborations between these two titans, making the resulting portrait from this photo session extraordinary. It is fascinating to study Roy Lichtenstein's face and demeanor in this photograph, in the context of the great sense of competition, but perhaps even greater, albeit uneasy respect, these two larger than life Pop art titans had for each other: Like Leo Castelli, Roy Lichtenstein was Jewish of European descent; whereas Warhol was Catholic and quintessentially American, though also of European (Polish) descent. They were never going to be good friends, but this portrait, perhaps even arranged by Leo Castelli, represents an uneasy acknowledgement there would be room at the top for both of them. Floated, framed with die cut back revealing authentication details, and ready to hang. Measurements: 9 9/16 x 8 9/16 x 9/16 inches (frame) 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (window) 4.16 x 3.15 inches (sheet) Authenticated by the Estate of Andy Warhol/The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Estate Stamped: Stamped with the Andy Warhol Estate, Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts stamp, numbered "B 512536P", with the Estate of Andy Warhol stamp and inscribed UP on the reverse. Bears the Warhol Foundation unique inventory number. Roy Lichtenstein Biography Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is preeminently identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein’s success was matched by his focus and energy, and after his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create an oeuvre of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention. Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923, in New York City, the first of two children born to Milton and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein. Milton Lichtenstein (1893–1946) was a successful real estate broker, and Beatrice Lichtenstein (1896–1991), a homemaker, had trained as a pianist, and she exposed Roy and his sister Rénee to museums, concerts and other aspects of New York culture. Roy showed artistic and musical ability early on: he drew, painted and sculpted as a teenager, and spent many hours in the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art. He played piano and clarinet, and developed an enduring love of jazz, frequenting the nightspots in Midtown to hear it. Lichtenstein attended the Franklin School for Boys, a private junior high and high school, and was graduated in 1940. That summer he studied painting and drawing from the model at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh. In September he entered Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in the College of Education. His early artistic idols were Rembrandt, Daumier and Picasso, and he often said that Guernica (1937; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), then on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art, was his favorite painting. Even as an undergraduate, Lichtenstein objected to the notion that one set of lines (one person’s drawings) “was considered brilliant, and somebody’s else’s, that may have looked better to you, was considered nothing by almost everyone.”i Lichtenstein’s questioning of accepted canons of taste was encouraged by Hoyt L. Sherman, a teacher whom he maintained was the person who showed him how to see and whose perception-based approach to art shaped his own. In February 1943, Lichtenstein was drafted, and he was sent to Europe in 1945. As part of the infantry, he saw action in France, Belgium and Germany. He made sketches throughout his time in Europe and, after peace was declared there, he intended to study at the Sorbonne. Lichtenstein arrived in Paris in October 1945 and enrolled in classes in French language and civilization, but soon learned that his father was gravely ill. He returned to New York in January 1946, a few weeks before Milton Lichtenstein died. In the spring of that year, Lichtenstein went back to OSU to complete his BFA and in the fall he was invited to join the faculty as an instructor. In June 1949, he married Isabel Wilson Sarisky (1921–80), who worked in a cooperative art gallery in Cleveland where Lichtenstein had exhibited his work. While he was teaching, Lichtenstein worked on his master’s degree, which he received in 1949. During his second stint at OSU, Lichtenstein became closer to Sherman, and began teaching his method on how to organize and unify a composition. Lichtenstein remained appreciative of Sherman’s impact on him. He gave his first son the middle name of “Hoyt,” and in 1994 he donated funds to endow the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center at OSU. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lichtenstein began working in series and his iconography was drawn from printed images. His first sustained theme, intimate paintings and prints in the vein of Paul Klee that poked lyrical fun at medieval knights, castles and maidens, may well have been inspired by a book about the Bayeux Tapestry. Lichtenstein then took an ironic look at nineteenth-century American genre paintings he saw in history books, creating Cubist interpretations of cowboys and Indians spiked with a faux-primitive whimsy. As with his most celebrated Pop paintings of the 1960s, Lichtenstein gravitated toward what he would characterize as the “dumbest” or “worst” visual item he could find and then went on to alter or improve it. In the 1960s, commercial art was considered beneath contempt by the art world; in the early 1950s, with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, nineteenth-century American narrative and genre paintings were at the nadir of their reputation among critics and collectors. Paraphrasing, particularly the paraphrasing of despised images, became a paramount feature of Lichtenstein’s art. Well before finding his signature mode of expression in 1961, Lichtenstein called attention to the artifice of conventions and taste that permeated art and society. What others dismissed as trivial fascinated him as classic and idealized—in his words, “a purely American mythological subject matter.”ii Lichtenstein’s teaching contract at OSU was not renewed for the 1951–52 academic year, and in the autumn of 1951 he and Isabel moved to Cleveland. Isabel Lichtenstein became an interior decorator specializing in modern design, with a clientele drawn from wealthy Cleveland families. Whereas her career blossomed, Lichtenstein did not continue to teach at the university level. He had a series of part-time jobs, including industrial draftsman, furniture designer, window dresser and rendering mechanical dials for an electrical instrument company. In response to these experiences, he introduced quirkily rendered motors, valves and other mechanical elements into his paintings and prints. In 1954, the Lichtensteins’ first son, David, was born; two years later, their second child, Mitchell, followed. Despite the relative lack of interest in his work in Cleveland, Lichtenstein did place his work with New York dealers, which always mattered immensely to him. He had his first solo show at the Carlebach Gallery in New York in 1951, followed by representation with the John Heller Gallery from 1952 to 1957. To reclaim his academic career and get closer to New York, Lichtenstein accepted a position as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, in the northern reaches of the state. He was hired to teach industrial design, beginning in September 1957. Oswego turned out to be more geographically and aesthetically isolated than Cleveland ever was, but the move was propitious, for both his art and his career. Lichtenstein broke away from representation to a fully abstract style, applying broad swaths of pigment to the canvas by dragging the paint across its surface with a rag wrapped around his arm. At the same time, Lichtenstein was embedding comic-book characters figures such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in brushy, expressionistic backgrounds. None of the proto-cartoon paintings from this period survive, but several pencil and pastel studies from that time, which he kept, document his intentions. Finally, when he was in Oswego, Lichtenstein met Reginald Neal, the new head of the art department at Douglass College, the women’s college of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The school was strengthening and expanding its studio art program, and when Neal needed to add a faculty member to his department, Lichtenstein was invited to apply for the job. Lichtenstein was offered the position of assistant professor, and he began teaching at Douglass in September 1960. At Douglass, Lichtenstein was thrown into a maelstrom of artistic ferment. With New York museums and galleries an hour away, and colleagues Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts at Douglass and Allan Kaprow and George Segal at Rutgers, the environment could not help but galvanize him. In June 1961, Lichtenstein returned to the idea he had fooled around with in Oswego, which was to combine cartoon characters from comic books with abstract backgrounds. But, as Lichtenstein said, “[I]t occurred to me to do it by mimicking the cartoon style without the paint texture, calligraphic line, modulation—all the things involved in expressionism.”iii Most famously, Lichtenstein appropriated the Benday dots, the minute mechanical patterning used in commercial engraving, to convey texture and gradations of color—a stylistic language synonymous with his subject matter. The dots became a trademark device forever identified with Lichtenstein and Pop Art. Lichtenstein may not have calibrated the depth of his breakthrough immediately but he did realize that the flat affect and deadpan presentation of the comic-strip panel blown up and reorganized in the Sherman-inflected way “was just so much more compelling”iv than the gestural abstraction he had been practicing. Among the first extant paintings in this new mode—based on comic strips and illustrations from advertisements—were Popeye and Look Mickey, which were swiftly followed by The Engagement Ring, Girl with Ball and Step-on Can with Leg. Kaprow recognized the energy and radicalism of these canvases and arranged for Lichtenstein to show them to Ivan Karp, director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Castelli was New York’s leading dealer in contemporary art, and he had staged landmark exhibitions of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in 1958 and Frank Stella in 1960. Karp was immediately attracted to Lichtenstein’s paintings, but Castelli was slower to make a decision, partly on account of the paintings’ plebeian roots in commercial art, but also because, unknown to Lichtenstein, two other artists had recently come to his attention—Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist—and Castelli was only ready for one of them. After some deliberation, Castelli chose to represent Lichtenstein, and the first exhibition of the comic-book paintings was held at the gallery from February 10 to March 3, 1962. The show sold out and made Lichtenstein notorious. By the time of Lichtenstein’s second solo exhibition at Castelli in September 1963, his work had been showcased in museums and galleries around the country. He was usually grouped with Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Rosenquist, Segal, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana and Tom Wesselmann. Taken together, their work was viewed as a slap in the face to Abstract Expressionism and, indeed, the Pop artists shifted attention away from many members of the New York School. With the advent of critical and commercial success, Lichtenstein made significant changes in his life and continued to investigate new possibilities in his art. After separating from his wife, he moved from New Jersey to Manhattan in 1963; in 1964, he resigned from his teaching position at Douglass to concentrate exclusively on his work. The artist also ventured beyond comic book subjects, essaying paintings based on oils by Cézanne, Mondrian and Picasso, as well as still lifes and landscapes. Lichtenstein became a prolific printmaker and expanded into sculpture, which he had not attempted since the mid-1950s, and in both two- and three-dimensional pieces, he employed a host of industrial or “non-art” materials, and designed mass-produced editioned objects that were less expensive than traditional paintings and sculpture. Participating in one such project—the American Supermarket show in 1964 at the Paul Bianchini Gallery, for which he designed a shopping bag—Lichtenstein met Dorothy Herzka (b. 1939), a gallery employee, whom he married in 1968. The late 1960s also saw Lichtenstein’s first museum surveys: in 1967 the Pasadena Art Museum initiated a traveling retrospective, in 1968 the Stedelijk Musem in Amsterdam presented his first European retrospective, and in 1969 he had his first New York retrospective, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Wanting to grow, Lichtenstein turned away from the comic book subjects that had brought him prominence. In the late 1960s his work became less narrative and more abstract, as he continued to meditate on the nature of the art enterprise itself. He began to explore and deconstruct the notion of brushstrokes—the building blocks of Western painting. Brushstrokes are conventionally conceived as vehicles of expression, but Lichtenstein made them into a subject. Modern artists have typically maintained that the subject of a painting is painting itself. Lichtenstein took this idea one imaginative step further: a compositional element could serve as the subject matter of a work and make that bromide ring true. The search for new forms and sources was even more emphatic after 1970, when Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein bought property in Southampton, New York, and made it their primary residence. During the fertile decade of the 1970s, Lichtenstein probed an aspect of perception that had steadily preoccupied him: how easily the unreal is validated as the real because viewers have accepted so many visual conceptions that they don’t analyze what they see. In the Mirror series, he dealt with light and shadow upon glass, and in the Entablature series, he considered the same phenomena by abstracting such Beaux-Art architectural elements as cornices, dentils, capitals and columns. Similarly, Lichtenstein created pioneering painted bronze sculpture that subverted the medium’s conventional three-dimensionality and permanence. The bronze forms were as flat and thin as possible, more related to line than volume, and they portrayed the most fugitive sensations—curls of steam, rays of light and reflections on glass. The steam, the reflections and the shadow were signs for themselves that would immediately be recognized as such by any viewer. Another entire panoply of works produced during the 1970s were complex encounters with Cubism, Futurism, Purism, Surrealism and Expressionism. Lichtenstein expanded his palette beyond red, blue, yellow, black, white and green, and invented and combined forms. He was not merely isolating found images, but juxtaposing, overlapping, fragmenting and recomposing them. In the words of art historian Jack Cowart, Lichtenstein’s virtuosic compositions were “a rich dialogue of forms—all intuitively modified and released from their nominal sources.”v In the early 1980s, which coincided with re-establishing a studio in New York City, Lichtenstein was also at the apex of a busy mural career. In the 1960s and 1970s, he had completed four murals; between 1983 and 1990, he created five. He also completed major commissions for public sculptures in Miami Beach, Columbus, Minneapolis, Paris, Barcelona and Singapore. Lichtenstein created three major series in the 1990s, each emblematic of his ongoing interest in solving pictorial problems. The Interiors, mural-sized canvases inspired by a miniscule advertisement in an Italian telephone...

THIS PIECE IS AVAILABLE FRAMED. Please reach out to the gallery for more information. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Natasha Martin is an LA-based photographer who loves color and infusing dre...