Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Little Landscape, 1979, Oil and Magna on Canvas, © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
via NYTimes:
Art Review | 'Roy Lichtenstein'
A Pop Artist's Fascination With the First Americans [excerpts]
By GRACE GLUECK
Published: December 23, 2005
Can there possibly be anything about the work of Roy Lichtenstein
(1923-1997) that isn't already well known? Well, yes: his interest in
the people of the Old West, particularly American Indians, which led
him to incorporate their motifs in his work.
That interest is explored in an engaging show at the Montclair Art
Museum, "Roy Lichtenstein: American Indian Encounters," which puts a
group of Indian-themed Lichtensteins together with Indian artifacts
from the museum's own holdings and a few of the books from the artist's
own collection that helped inspire him. The show was assembled by Gail
Stavitsky, the museum's chief curator, and Twig Johnson, its curator of
Native American Art, in conjunction with the Roy Lichtenstein
Foundation.
Lichtenstein's engagement with American Indian art
is reflected in two periods of his career: his earliest work, and his
Surrealist series of the late 1970's. The works on view range from a
Cubist-oriented early canvas, "The Death of Jane McCrea" (1951), based
on the 19th-century painting by John Vanderlyn about a young bride
scalped by Indians, to "Amerind Figure" (1981), a wittily stylized
life-size sculpture that's a kind of streamlined totem pole in
black-patinated bronze. They include a stunning wool tapestry, "Amerind
Landscape"(1979), a sophisticated composition with the design pizazz of
Lichtenstein's style in full bloom.[...]
The second phase of Lichtenstein's Indian-inspired work occurred
from 1979 to 1981, long after he had established his familiar Pop
style, as part of a lengthy series of "art about art" works that
included Surrealism. The "Indian" group of bright, hard-edged
paintings, works on paper and the above-mentioned sculpture took its
themes, like the other parts of the series, from contemporary art and
other sources, including books on American Indian design from
Lichtenstein's small library.
In their wall text, the curators
point out that Lichtenstein's return to Indian subject matter coincided
with the growth of Native American activism. Lichtenstein later said
that the works were "the cliché idea" of Indian, a mix of every kind of
Indian design from Northwest to Plains to Pueblo: "Anything that I
could think of that was 'Indian' got into them."
"Face and Feather" (1979), the most abstract painting of the group,
incorporates North and South American Indian symbols: a bright yellow
sawtooth face that takes up half the painting (a very modern feather
occupies the other half) has a black and white North American Indian
symbol for an eye; the rectangular mouth inlaid with small geometric
figures is a close copy of a mouth design for a mythical animal found
on pottery from the Peruvian site of Tiahuanaco. It was copied from a
book Lichtenstein owned on ancient art of the Andes.
A big,
complex pastiche titled "Indian Composition" (1979) mixes Cubist and
Surrealist imagery (woodgraining again) with Indian themes.
Geometrically abstracted male and female figures appear at the left and
right of the canvas, but they include eye and mouth motifs from
Peruvian textiles and ceramics, hatched lines from Southwestern
pottery, lightning-like zigzags, crosses symbolizing the four
directions and bear paw designs. It's a knockout. [read full article...]
via the Royal Ontario Museum web site:
