International Art News

Roy Lichtenstein. Masterpiece, 1962. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Gund Collection

May 16–September 3, 2012 – The Art Institute of Chicago
This exhibition, the first presentation of the full scope and breadth of Roy Lichtenstein’s career since his death in 1997, aims to offer a new, scholarly assessment of the work of this foremost Pop artist. Lichtenstein is an artist whose work is widely known, reproduced, copied, and parodied—he is an artist that we seem to know well but in fact the true diversity and complexity of his oeuvre is little understood.

Roy Lichtenstein – Girl With Hair Ribbon – Oil and magna on canvas – 48 x 48 inches; 121.9 x 121.9 cm – 1965 The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation

Presenting over 130 paintings and sculptures, as well as over 30 little- or never-before-seen drawings and collages, this exhibition gives full consideration to all periods of Lichtenstein’s career, including but not limited to, pre-Pop expressionist work, classic Pop Romance and War cartoon paintings, Mirrors, Brushstrokes, Explosions, Artist’s Studio paintings, late nudes, and Chinese Landscapes. Special consideration is given to Lichtenstein’s relationship to art historical sources, ranging from Picasso and Cubism through Surrealism, Futurism, German Expressionism, and the American West.

Roy Lichtenstein. Ohhh…Alright…, 1964. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Private Collection.

Finally, the exhibition offers an examination of the artist’s use of alternative media like Plexiglas, Rowlux, and perforated steel in an attempt to broaden the understanding of his art beyond the strictly canonical early Pop paintings.

Art Institute of Chicago

Roy Lichtenstein - Crak!, 1963-4 Silkscreen © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein - Private Collection

From January 28 to April 8, 2012 – Museum of Comtemporary Art – Jacksonville
ReFocus: Art of the 1960s delves into one of the seminal and radical periods of contemporary art. The arts—literature, art, dance, and theater—went through a fascinating period of growth and change during the 1960s. New, experimental art forms like pop art and happenings drew new public attention to artistic expression. Trends in the arts reflected both the turbulent social and political trends of the time and the influence of artists and writers of an earlier generation.

Jack Wolfe -Havana, 1961, Oil on canvas Collection of Jon and Molly Ott.

By the 1960s, America had been involved in some sort of military conflict for nearly three decades, and it affected how artists saw the world. The civil rights movement and the sexual revolution helped to expand participation in the arts, and these new participants brought fresh insights to the art they practiced. Join MOCA as it explores major movements of the decade: Pop Art, Op Art, Performance Art, Minimalism, Color Field Painting, Action Painting and Post-Painterly Abstraction. Experience master works by artists that defined a generation: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Museum Hours

Roy Lichtenstein, Woman in Bath, 1963

Until May 15 2011 – Albertina Vienna
The 1960s marked a dramatic change of direction in the art of Roy Lichtenstein: while his earlier works consisted mainly of paintings of American history and the American West, in 1961 he turned to black-and-white drawings. Inspired by advertising and media illustrations as well as by comic strips, Lichtenstein created about seventy impressive black-and-white drawings between 1961 and 1968. These were completely new in terms of subject and style. In the same period, the artist also made numerous black-and-white paintings, whose subjects were very close to those of the drawings. The latter, however, are not to be understood as preparatory studies for the works on canvas; they much rather form a separate, individual group of artworks. The Albertina presents the black-and-white drawings in conjunction with selected black-and-white paintings for the first time in this special exhibition.

Museum Hours

Martini Miss #2, 2004 88x58,5 cm

From the 11th of November 2010 to the 7th of January 2011- Galerie Hafenrichter
Mel Ramos (born July 24, 1935) is a U.S. figurative painter, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Born in Sacramento, California, he gained his greatest popularity in association with the Pop Art movement of the 1960′s.

Mel Ramos received his first important recognition in the early 1960s; since 1959 he has participated in more than 120 group shows. Along with other artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist, Ramos produced art works that celebrated aspects of popular culture as represented in mass media. His paintings have been shown in major exhibitions of Pop Art in the U.S. and in Europe, and reproduced in books, catalogs, and periodicals throughout the world.

The classification of Ramos within any particular school of art is disputed. Some critical observers of the “art scene” classify Mel Ramos as a pop artist. However, others believe identification of Ramos’ work within the Pop movement of the 1960s implies a satirical or parodic bent which does not reflect the broader context of his paintings, and instead defend his “parodies” as respectful, affectionate tributes, a celebration of images with personal meaning.

Galerie Hours

Moment in July, 1962-1963 Oil on gesso 128.2 x 62.2 cm The Novak/O’Doherty Collection

8 September to 27 January 2011 – Irish Museum of Modern Art
An exhibition of 76 artworks by many of America’s leading post-war artists gifted to the IMMA Collection by art historian Barbara Novak and artist Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 8 September 2010. Post-War American Art: The Novak/O’Doherty Collection, donated in association with the American Ireland Fund, comprises paintings and sculpture and an extensive range of works on paper, including watercolours, drawings, photographs and limited edition prints and multiples. Works by Joseph Cornell, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and a host of other celebrated artists are included in the exhibition.

The donation is particularly rich in works from New York of the 1960s and ‘70s; many the result of friendships with outstanding artists from that milieu. We can imagine the lives of Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty over 50 years – they married in 1960 – through these paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and prints.  Many works were swops with other artists or tokens of friendship, inscribed with dedications or personal notes; others reflect their ongoing exchanges and correspondence through postcards and letters, such as the postcards sent by Sol LeWitt over the years incorporating sketches. Still other works were gifts, while some were purchased.  Through them we see that Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty were central figures in the art community of the 1960s and ‘70s and beyond.

Four important works, by Edward Hopper, Marcel Duchamp, George Segal and Jasper Johns, were gifted in 2009. The forthcoming exhibition celebrates the arrival of the balance of their collection to IMMA. Other artists represented in the collection include  Christo, Mel Bochner, William Scharf, Peter Hutchinson, Les Levine, Sonja Sekula,  John Coplans, Arnold Newman, and Elise Asher. Some works were included in the recent exhibition Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts – appropriate since the composer Morton Feldman was a close of friend of the donors.

Born in New York, Barbara Novak is an enormously influential art historian as well as artist and novelist.  She is the author of American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Nature and Culture and Voyages of the Self, recently published as a trilogy on American art and culture by Oxford University Press. She joined the art history department of Barnard College and Columbia University in 1958 and retired as Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor Emerita in 1998. A chaired professorship at Barnard College was named in her honour.

Born in Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon, Brian O’Doherty variously exhibited in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and in the RHA and Oireachtas exhibitions from 1950 to 1956. He moved to the United States in 1957, where he became a pioneer in the development of Conceptual Art and also a renowned writer and critic. He has had several retrospectives, most recently in New York University’s Grey Gallery. His work has been seen in Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and Rosc. He is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The influence of his ground-breaking collection of essays Inside the White Cube continues.

Museum Hours

From the 1st of September to the 15th of October 2010 – Levy Galerie
The American artist Mel Ramos (actually Melvin John Ramos) was born in Sacramento, California on July 24, 1935. In 1954 he begins to study art and art history at the Junior College. A year later he changes to the Sacramento State College where his teacher Wayne Thiebaud has decisive influence on him. Just as his teacher, Mel Ramos picks up the style of Pop-Art, in his paintings he depicts super heroes from comic strips. In the 1960s he more and more uses Pin-up-Girls as the motif of his works, which makes him famous. His art is critical and an ironic reaction to the cliches conveyed by advertising in the media. The nudes and objects on which the Pin-ups are draped appear in cool neon light, as it is typical for this type of Pop-Art.
His first one-man show takes place at the Bianchini Gallery in New York in 1964. In 1967 he has an important exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Numerous exhibitions in the USA and Europe follow. Mel Ramos soon counts among the most important representatives of Pop-Art, along with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
In 1966 Mel Ramos is appointed professor at the California State University in Hayward, a post he holds until 1997. As of 1972 Mel Ramos works on a series of paintings in which he inserts his Pin-up-Girls into famous nude paintings by artist colleagues such as Willem de Kooning or Amedeo Modigliani. As of around 1980 he increasingly turns to landscape paintings, additionally he makes a number of self portraits.
Since 1992 Mel Ramos has been living and working alternately in Oakland, California and in Horta de San Juan in Spain

Gallery Hours