Image: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The exhibition runs in conjunction with the major exhibition 'Roy Lichtenstein: Like New,' opening October 11 on the Museum’s 5th floor. [F2] The presentation offers insight into the range of Lichtenstein’s late experimentation and illustrates his ongoing interest in new technologies and their effects on image making. [F3] Many of the materials in 'Roy Lichtenstein: 1997' come from the Whitney’s collection. [F10]
In 1997, at the age of seventy-three, Lichtenstein was as innovative and productive as ever. [F4] He fell ill in August 1997 and died unexpectedly the following month due to complications from pneumonia, leaving a number of works unfinished. [F5]
Some of those works were fabricated or completed posthumously, while others exist only as sketches. [F6]
At the same time, Lichtenstein continued to reuse images from his own work, including pyramids and brushstrokes, and to quote an array of visual references, including iconic works by Leonardo da Vinci and Henri Matisse, as he had done throughout his career. [F8]
The exhibition brings together roughly 130 works made from the early 1940s through the 1990s. [F9] It traces how Lichtenstein’s early interest in perception and visual recognition shaped a career-long investigation into duplication, simulation, and image culture. [F9]
