Roy Lichtenstein – Path to fame and records in the art market

Roy Lichtenstein, along with Andy Warhol, one of those artists whose works are recognized by everyone, (almost) everywhere in the world. He has been producing his distinctive art since the 1960s, and quickly became one of the leading figures of modern art.

And thus, of course, one of the central protagonists of Pop Art ; his work is considered the art that parodically defined the basic requirements of Pop Art better than the work of any other artist.

Lichtenstein himself described Pop Art as “not ‘American’ painting, but actually industrial painting ”, but a look at the artist’s career and rise shows that the price of his artworks developed in a way that is reminiscent not of industrial mass production, but rather of plant construction in large-scale industry.

Lichtenstein's comfortable start in the art world

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born in 1923 in New York City to an upper-middle-class Jewish family, with a real estate agent for a father and a mother in the traditional housewife role. He grew up on the Upper West Side, the exclusive part of Manhattan located between Central Park and the banks of the Hudson River, and after attending public elementary school, he went to the private Franklin School for Boys.

Lichtenstein had already been drawing since childhood, but because this hobby was not taught at Franklin, he enrolled at the Parsons School of Design to paint watercolors on Saturdays.

The young Lichtenstein was also interested in anthropology and natural sciences; he spent a lot of time in the American Museum of Natural History, which was located very close to his parents' home.

It is also known that Lichtenstein, as a teenager, passionately listened to the then highly popular radio plays. He is said to have particularly favored those whose stories revolved around sometimes dark (anti-)heroes, who were also known from comics, such as "The Shadow" , "Flash Gordon" or "Buck Rogers" .

Later, this playful observation was interpreted as follows: the young Roy had unconsciously absorbed heroic and mystical clichés. The versatile and receptive teenager then frequently attended jazz concerts at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where he devotedly sketched the musicians.

In his final year of high school, Lichtenstein, formerly of Parsons School of Design, found his way to its former parent organization, the Art Students League of New York , where he enrolled in the summer class.

Here he worked under the supervision of Reginald Marsh , an artist of American Regionalism , in which, besides a realistic depiction of rural life, little space was given to an understanding of the development of new technologies and thus also to an understanding of new art.

the “realistic regionalists” from his high school days; they were highly regarded in the USA in the 1930s. During this time of the Great Depression, the idyllic images of American rural life served a similar compensatory purpose as our Heimat films did after World War II.

Lichtenstein was probably thrilled to be drawing under a celebrity he had read about in his very first art book, “Thomas Craven's Modern Art” from 1934.

Although Marsh certainly depicted a social realism that was not limited to pretty landscapes, his student was soon disappointed by Marsh's demand for realistic artistic practice, which neglected both the rapid development of technology and considered the development of one's own artistic style superfluous.

Perhaps Lichtenstein had also taken away a completely different inspiration from regionalism; in any case, after high school he decided to explore more of his country and opted to study at Ohio State University (from 1940).

According to tradition, this was a real stroke of luck for the aspiring artist, even though at the request of his parents he initially aimed for a teaching qualification: He studied under artist and professor Hoyt L. Sherman , who was to significantly broaden his artistic horizons.

Sherman, a devotee and master of modern art , introduced Lichtenstein to the most important influences on art at that time: Cézanne and van Gogh , Mondrian and Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso , and many more. Above all, Sherman's encouragement to seek his own approach and his concept of the unity of perception would have a lifelong influence on Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein now began to delve more deeply into the history of art; one could even say he wanted to know everything about art since the earliest cave paintings. As a reminder of this period, the Lichtenstein Foundation houses a copy of Elizabeth Gardner's "Art Through the Ages" (1936), with Lichtenstein's address in Columbus (capital of Ohio and home to the university) printed inside the cover.

Lichtenstein's artistic self-discovery is abruptly interrupted

In 1943, World War II up with Lichtenstein; he served in the Army until 1945, which deployed him to Europe. After the war, Lichtenstein took courses in history and French in Paris and tried to visit his idol Picasso – which he was unable to do because he was called back home after only six weeks: his father was dying.

Lichtenstein completed his teacher training in the summer of 1946 and began a Master of Fine Arts program , which he finished in 1950. At the same time, he was offered an art teaching position , which he held regularly until 1951 and occasionally thereafter.

In the meantime, he had married Isabell Wilson, with whom he moved to Cleveland because she had found a job there. Unlike Lichtenstein, who took on all sorts of jobs, as a draftsman and as a can designer, he was able to exhibit solo for the first time in Cleveland and even had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1951, but the expected wave of enthusiasm for his half-heartedly abstract paintings failed to materialize initially.

Lichtenstein now traveled back and forth between Cleveland and New York, worked as a design draftsman and as a window dresser, had his first son in 1954 and his second in 1956, and also painted a little in between.

Not much happened artistically during this time: Lichtenstein still wavered between Expressionism and Cubism and self-determined abstraction , he distorted some typical American paintings and painted wooden constructions, tried his hand at sculptures made of wood and metal , and exhibited a total of three times in New York until 1955, but hardly anything was sold.

These were not good conditions for contributing to the livelihood of a family of four, so in 1957 he resumed his teaching activities, and in 1958 he was offered a position at the New State University in Oswego as an assistant professor of art, where he taught for the next few years.

Finally! – Lichtenstein's rise to fame

In 1960, Lichtenstein transferred to Rutgers University in the state of New Jersey. Here he met Allan Kaprow , the inventor of the “Happenings” , and through him important contemporary artists such as Robert Watts, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg , Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns , i.e. the pioneers of Pop Art in concentrated form.

All these encounters with their influences are said to have triggered a kind of initial spark in Lichtenstein; in 1961 he painted his first Pop Art pictures, first experimenting with chewing gum pictures, then publishing them in large format, then breaking with all the traditions of his previous artistic work, incorporating the comic speech bubble into his pictures and enthusiastically using industrial printing techniques.

His first large-format work, in which he used hard-edged figures and Ben Day dots (special halftone dots whose printing technique was invented by Ben Day), was the work “Look Mickey” from 1961, which now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

This picture was taken when one of his sons tapped his finger in the middle of a Mickey Mouse book and said:

I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, Dad?” (“I bet you can't paint that well, can you, Daddy?”).

In the same year, Lichtenstein produced six other works of art depicting well-known characters from chewing gum wrappers and cartoons; he had found his style.

The following year, he also found someone in Leo Castelli who guaranteed his rent through ongoing payments if Lichtenstein worked exclusively for his gallery, a common form of support for Castelli, which he extended to promising artists.

Castelli had exhibited Lichtenstein's work before, but had not been willing to offer this kind of scholarship. This changed abruptly, as Lichtenstein's reinvented art was a resounding success, so much so that the 1962 solo exhibition at the Castelli Gallery sold out before it even opened.

How Lichtenstein is really bringing the international art market up to scratch

What follows is a digression regarding the artist Lichtenstein; however, Lichtenstein's representation by well-known gallery owners and the rising sales prices of his paintings constitute a highly interesting little history of the New York gallery business and at the same time a report on how this gallery business is losing its business to the international art auction trade .

As already mentioned, Lichtenstein was able to exhibit in New York for the first time in 1951, at the Julius Carlebach Gallery . Around this time, he also had the good fortune to attract the interest of the progressive art patron Leo Castelli, who also exhibited Lichtenstein's works in his New York gallery from the 1950s onwards, and then, after the astonishing solo exhibition in 1962, took over the exclusive representation of the artist. From this time onwards, Castelli organized regular exhibitions with Lichtenstein's works.

Before and after this year, many galleries dedicated to modern art were established in New York, and works by Lichtenstein eventually hung in every one of these galleries: initially often at John Heller, in the Pace Gallery and the Brooke Alexander Gallery , at Mary Boone and Rosa Esman, at Marilyn Pearl and James Goodman, at Blum Helman, Phyllis Kind, Hirschl & Adler, Getler Pall, at Holly Solomon and Condon Riley, the Sperone Westwater Galleries and at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

Towards the end of his life, his art also came under the influence of the powerful Gagosian Galleries – one could say that Lichtenstein accompanied the history of New York galleries with his artworks.

Also starting in the 1960s, Lichtenstein's work was presented by Ileana Sonnabend (formerly Ileana Castelli) and her gallery in Paris; it is thanks to her that a European market emerged for Andy Warhol , Roy Lichtenstein, and other Pop Art artists. Other galleries exhibited his art in other parts of the USA, such as the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, founded in 1957.

Thanks to the dedicated sales efforts of all these gallery owners, Lichtenstein's fame steadily grew, but the artist owed his real financial success to a different form of distribution: Very early on, Lichtenstein's works achieved outstanding results at art auctions . For example, in 1970, "Big Painting No. 6" (created in 1965) sold for $75,000 at an auction held by Sotheby's to the German art dealer and gallery owner Rudolf Zwirner.

Such meager records were not to remain; “Torpedo…Los!” from 1963 was sold for $5.5 million at Christie’s American November auction in 1989, propelling Lichtenstein into the triumvirate of artists paid the highest prices for individual works of art.

Wherever it remained, in the next November auction by Christie's in New York, the 1962 “Kiss II” sold for $6.0 million, surpassed by “Happy Tears” in Christie's November 2002 auction, which fetched $7.1 million.

Then followed a large and gratifying leap: in 2005, “In the Car” (1963) was sold for $16.25 million; in 2010, “Ohhh…Alright…” from 1964 was auctioned for $42.6 million; in 2011, Lichtenstein’s keyhole painting “I Can See the Whole Room!…and There's Nobody in It!” from 1961 was sold for $43 million, bringing the widow of Time Warner CEO Steve Ross a profit of just over 2000 percent (Ross had bought the painting in 1988 for $2.1 million).

Everything was featured again in Christie's New York November auction, except that in 2012 Sotheby's took its turn, as Christie's wanted to focus on abstract expressionists – a good idea, as a painting by Mark Rothko sold for almost $87 million. Sotheby's, on the other hand, only managed to fetch $44.8 million for Lichtenstein "Sleeping Girl," but it was still a new Lichtenstein record.

In the spring auction of 2013, Lichtenstein's art returned to Christie's, and on May 15, 2013, the "Woman with Flowered Hat" a new record price of $56.1 million in the usual manner.

Unfortunately, Lichtenstein himself only lived to see some of the multi-million dollar successes; he died in 1997 .

It will be interesting to see how high the price spiral of his artworks will reach, especially before the H

Auction records in the 21st century

The highest price ever paid for a Roy Lichtenstein painting was achieved at Christie's in New York in November 2015. The work “Nurse 1964” changed hands for US$95,365,000 (approximately €85 million). Originally titled “Frightenedness,” it was part of the collections of several renowned art lovers, including Leon Kraushar and Karl Ströher.

The square painting from 1964 measures one meter in height and width and was estimated at over $80 million. “Nurse” was auctioned at Christie's special “The Artist's Muse” , which includes works by painters and sculptors created between the 1860s and 2000s.

The most expensive painting Lichtenstein ever created could be his 1962 work “Masterpiece,” formerly owned by Agnes Gund. Steven Cohen reportedly bought it from her in a private sale in 2017 for $165 million. Public auctions of Lichtenstein's artwork have not yet reached this sum. Nevertheless, with his ten highest-selling results at public auctions, the artist is among the best-selling artists and is considered a pioneer in the art market.

The second most expensive work is considered to be “Sleeping Girl” by the pop artist, which fetched almost $45 million in New York in 2012. The 1964 painting was sold at a Sotheby's auction for $44,882,500 (almost €35 million).

The signed lithographs and original screen prints are highly sought after by art collectors worldwide, despite being mass-produced. Among the most famous original prints are “Shipboard Girl” , “Crying Girl” , and “Nude Reading” .

ALBERTINA celebrated the 100th birthday of the Pop Art master

To mark his 100th birthday, the Vienna ALBERTINA the master of Pop Art this summer with a comprehensive retrospective , which included over 90 paintings, sculptures and prints by the artist who combined Low Art and High Art in such a unique way.

Through generous loans from 30 renowned museums worldwide, the most important works of his extensive artistic output are brought to Vienna, including exhibits from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery in Washington, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

The exhibition was conceived in cooperation with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and was based on a generous donation of around 100 works to the ALBERTINA.

The exhibition presented early works from the 1960s, including the Pop Art masterpiece of that era: “Look Mickey” . Also on display were iconic black and white paintings of advertising materials, enamel landscapes, and artworks inspired by Picasso, Dalí, Kirchner, and Pollock.

A particularly impressive highlight was a monumental brushstroke sculpture that detached itself from the canvas and dominated the room.