June 14–August 15, 2022
At the age of 38, Roy Lichtenstein showed up in a New York gallery one day in 1961 with his brand-new collection of prints. He had no idea that, along with Pop Art, he would soon come to dominate the art world and mark a significant turning point in the development of art. We still bring him up sixty years later.
The world had undergone a significant transformation following World War II. Grand values were declining, and television and advertising were exploding with an overabundance of images. Meanwhile, the dominating abstract expressionism of the 1950s was poised to undergo an unparalleled upheaval. The wave of aesthetic democratization was about to arise and usher art into a new era as illusionism and elitism lost their authoritative persuasive power in the 1960s.
Pop artists applied copying, collage and flatness to unleash the potential for change, on both heteronomy and autonomy levels. Lichtenstein was one of the flag bearers of this campaign. The artist, who is known as the “father of Pop Art” along with Andy Warhol, first made his name with his Ben Day dots comic drawings, and later extended his work to reflect on the history of the images and art itself.
This exhibition, which aims to examine the meaning of Lichtenstein’s art in the historical context of today, is his first significant exhibition in China. The in-depth examination of Lichtenstein enables us to examine Pop Art and its era, which we are still living through and experiencing now.
