{"id":558,"date":"2008-06-10T23:50:59","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T06:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/06\/the-man-who-loved-women-with-technicolor-measles\/"},"modified":"2008-06-11T19:26:19","modified_gmt":"2008-06-12T02:26:19","slug":"the-man-who-loved-women-with-technicolor-measles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/10\/the-man-who-loved-women-with-technicolor-measles\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man Who Loved Women (With Technicolor Measles)"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the New York Times<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0The Painter Who Adored Women<\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0ROBERTA SMITH<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRoy Lichtenstein<\/a>: Girls,\u201d at the Gagosian Gallery, presents 12 of Lichtenstein\u2019s early paintings of the female creatures otherwise known as women. Based on \"HEADcartoons and mostly blond, they are anonymous, beautiful and often unhappily bothered, usually by men. Or, if you like, by boys.<\/p>\n

After all, as Dorothy Lichtenstein, the artist\u2019s widow, remarks in an interview in the show\u2019s catalog, \u201cRoy adored women.\u201d And the anonymity of his subjects has exceptions. The smiling woman in \u201cSound of Music\u201d is clearly\u00a0Julie Andrews<\/a>\u00a0about to burst into song as musical notes stream through the window \u2014 although her cheer is undercut by the sharp black shadow that divides her face into areas of red and blue, not unlike the stripe of green in\u00a0Matisse<\/a>\u2019s Fauve portrait of his wife in a hat.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Lichtenstein notes that Lichtenstein painted on an easel that allowed him to turn each canvas so he could be sure that its power operated in all orientations. It had to work abstractly, in other words, in a way that couldn\u2019t be missed.<\/p>\n

In the earliest works here \u2014 \u201cForget It! Forget Me!,\u201d \u201cLittle Aloha\u201d and even the classic \u201cMasterpiece\u201d (where the female lead speaks the prophetic words \u201cWhy, Brad darling, this painting is a masterpiece!\u201d) \u2014 the dots are faint and uneven, not quite pulling their weight. But they quickly gain size and substance and diversify. For example, women\u2019s lips are often rendered not in solid red but in Ben-Day stars, stripes or little bow-tie shapes that stand out from the Ben-Day dots of the faces.<\/p>\n

The Ben-Day dots allow Lichtenstein\u2019s painting to look both more and less artificial. They signify mechanical reproduction, but they also add suggestions of light and reflection, shifting colors and variations in touch. The reflections would eventually lead to Lichtenstein\u2019s many portrayals of mirrors, but first they seem to have spawned ceramic sculptures and works in porcelain enamel on steel, a small selection of which is included in the Gagosian show. On their shiny surfaces, fake reflections and shadows \u2014 like the aggressive, tattoolike scattering of Ben-Day dots on \u201cHead With Red Shadow\u201d \u2014 compete with real ones.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Lichtenstein\u2019s catalog interviewer is, perhaps appropriately, the latter-day Pop artist\u00a0Jeff Koons<\/a>, who as usual alternates a golly-gee robotic air with genuine \"Royperceptions. Sometimes he blends the two, as when he says: \u201cI always loved how Roy\u2019s work really challenges life force because it tries to compete with life force in the realm of the artificial. He would try to have the artificial keep up and challenge the power of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is another museum-quality show from Larry Gagosian\u2019s gallery, and, as is often the case here, everything has a double function, like serving up artists that any dealer would like to represent. Not only is there Mr. Koons\u2019s interview with Mrs. Lichtenstein; Richard Prince, who just left the Gladstone Gallery and is about to have a show at Mr. Gagosian\u2019s gallery in Rome, contributes a small inserted brochure. It juxtaposes each of 22 steamy pulp-fiction covers of books (all titled with female first names) with a Lichtenstein woman painting. The illustrations of scantily clad, curvaceous femme fatales would seem to be the last thing Lichtenstein had in mind.<\/p>\n

What he had in mind was form, a transformation of the terms of real and fake that, as Mr. Koons suggests, was beyond either, a thing in itself. This show makes especially clear how Lichtenstein\u2019s work functions as a kind of primer in looking at and understanding the grand fiction of painting: the thought it requires, its mechanics, its final simplicity and strangeness. These great paintings convey all this in a flash of pleasure, compounded by the thrill of understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoy Lichtenstein: Girls\u201d continues through June 28 at the Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, near 77th Street, (212) 744-2313, gagosian.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

[ click to read full review in the New York Times<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the New York Times \u00a0The Painter Who Adored Women By\u00a0ROBERTA SMITH \u201cRoy Lichtenstein: Girls,\u201d at the Gagosian Gallery, presents 12 of Lichtenstein\u2019s early paintings of the female creatures otherwise known as women. Based on cartoons and mostly blond, they are anonymous, beautiful and often unhappily bothered, usually by men. Or, if you like, by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}