Roy Lichtenstein Chronology: the 1960s
1960
Jan. 5-30. Martha Jackson Gallery in New York (32 East 69th Street) shows
John Chamberlain's sculptures made from mangled car-body parts.
Jan. 30-March 17. Dine and Oldenburg present Ray-Gun and Spex, at Judson
Gallery in Manhattan, featuring Dine's installation The House and
Oldenburg's The Street, junk environments made out of torn cardboard, paint,
discarded objects, and fragments of newspapers and comic strips.
March 17. Jean Tinguely's self-destructing kinetic sculpture Homage to New
York is exhibited at MoMA.
April 16. Publication of Pierre Restany's "Les Nouveaux Réalistes" (The New
Realists), a manifesto stressing the importance of appropriation, in
catalogue for exhibition of works by Arman, Yves Klein, Tinguely, and others
at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan.
June. Rosenquist begins painting backdrops for window displays at Bonwit
Teller, Bloomingdale's, and Tiffany's in New York.
June 6-24. Martha Jackson Gallery presents New Media - New Forms: In
Painting and Sculpture, featuring works by Arp, Alberto Burri, Calder,
Chamberlain, Cornell, Dine, Jean Dubuffet, Follet, Indiana, Johns, Kaprow,
Klein, Louise Nevelson, Oldenburg, and others.
R.L. resigns from the State University of New York after accepting another
position as assistant professor of art at Douglass College.
Moves residence and studio to 66 South Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, New
Jersey.
Autumn. Through Kaprow, a fellow teacher at Rutgers, R.L. meets Oldenburg,
Lucas Samaras (a student of Kaprow's the previous year), Segal (then
completing his M.F.A. degree), and Robert Whitman; and through Robert Watts,
another professor in the department, he meets George Brecht, Geoffrey
Hendricks, Dick and Allison Higgins, and George Maciunas, all artists who
will be involved with the Fluxus group.
Sept. Begins to teach adult classes in painting and drawing on Saturday
mornings at the photography and art center in Princeton.
Attends some of Kaprow's informal Happenings at Rutgers.
Brings several of his abstract canvases to Leo Castelli Gallery (44 East
77th Street) and shows them to Castelli and his wife at the time, Ileana
Sonnabend.
Leaves John Heller Gallery.
Johns creates his trompe-l'oeil sculpture Painted Bronze, consisting of two
bronze cylinders painted to resemble Ballantine Ale cans.
Richard Bellamy opens the Green Gallery in New York (15 West
57th Street).
Sept. 27-Oct. 15. Frank Stella's first solo exhibition in New York, at Leo
Castelli Gallery.
Sept. 28-Oct. 22. Martha Jackson Gallery presents New Media - New Forms: In
Painting and Sculpture II, featuring works by Dine, Dan Flavin, Kaprow,
Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Samaras, and others.
Oct. 27. Les Nouveaux Réalistes group is officially formed by Restany at
Klein's home in Paris. Members will include Arman, César, Christo, Raymond
Hains, Klein, Martial Raysse, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel
Spoerri, and Tinguely.
1961
Jan. R.L. shows Kaprow his semi-abstract paintings with cartoon figures
embedded in paint.
Jan. 11-27. At Douglass College, R.L.exhibits 12 abstract pictures made by
applying ribbons of paint with a torn-up bedsheet. One work is painted on
several pieces of refrigerator-crate plywood nailed together.
April. Five of Warhol's advertising-image and comic-strip paintings are
displayed behind the mannequins in the windows of Bonwit Teller.
May. Publication of Restany's "A 40 au-dessus de Dada," the second
manifesto of Les Nouveaux Réalistes, as a preface to the catalogue for an
exhibition of their works.
ARTnews publishes Kaprow's first article on Happenings.
May 25-June 23. Martha Jackson Gallery, in association with David Anderson
Gallery, mounts Environments - Situations - Spaces, featuring items from
Oldenburg's The Store, Kaprow's The Yard, Dine's Spring Cabinet, and works
by Brecht, Walter Gaudnek, and Whitman.
Summer. R.L.paints Look Mickey, the first painting in which he directly
appropriates a cartoon or a panel from a comic strip. It contains his first
use of Benday dots (applied with a plastic-bristle dog-grooming brush dipped
in oil paint) and his first use of a dialogue balloon, as well as obvious
pencil marks.
Begins to stencil Benday dots onto canvas using a roller to distribute paint
over a handmade metal screen and then a small scrub brush to push paint
through.
Creates his first paintings depicting advertising images of consumer
products, such as Keds and Washing Machine.
Creates his first tondo painting, Laughing Cat.
Makes his first diptych paintings, such as Bread in Bag and Step-on-Can with Leg.
Creates his first works utilizing only black and white (or blue and white)
to emulate printed reproductions, such as Bathroom.
Autumn. Kaprow makes appointment for R.L. to see Ivan Karp, director of the
Leo Castelli Gallery. He brings The Engagement Ring, Girl with Ball, Look
Mickey, The Refrigerator, and Step-on-Can with Leg to the gallery. Karp
arranges for Castelli to see them (except for Look Mickey). Castelli finds
Girl with Ball interesting and, several weeks later, agrees to represent
R.L. While in the gallery, R.L. sees works by Rosenquist and Warhol for the
first time.
Warhol takes his paintings to Leo Castelli Gallery and shows them to Karp.
Karp shows Warhol R.L.'s painting Girl with Ball.
With Karp, visits Warhol's studio (at 1342 Lexington Avenue), where he sees
Warhol's comic-strip and consumer-goods paintings.
Begins a series of black-and-white drawings (which he continues until 1968),
using ink and Speedball pen, such as Couch.
Segal begins M.F.A program at Rutgers University, graduating in 1963.
Kienholz creates his first tableau piece, Roxy's, a re-creation of a Las
Vegas bordello out of discarded parts of an old theater.
Publication of Clement Greenberg's collection of essays Art and Culture.
Mel Ramos creates canvases based on comic-strip characters.
Oct. R.L.'s first works consigned to Leo Castelli Gallery. He begins to
receive a stipend of $400 a month from the gallery.
Oct. 1-Nov. 12. MoMA presents The Art of Assemblage, the first major
exhibition on the history of assemblage, organized by William Seitz,
featuring works by 142 artists; the show travels to two other U.S. museums.
Oct. 8. Hains, Klein, and Raysse dissolve Les Nouveaux Réalistes.
Nov. Castelli sells Girl with Ball -the first of R.L.'s Pop works to be sold
from the gallery-to architect Philip Johnson. Other sales quickly follow to
collectors Richard Brown Baker, Walter Netsch, Burton Tremaine, and others.
Through Leo Castelli Gallery, R.L.meets Rauschenberg and Johns.
Trial separation from Isabel. Moves residence and studio briefly to Broad
Street in New York.
Meets Youngerman and Indiana.
Dec. Using a Pond's cold-cream ad as his principal source, Rosenquist paints
his first Pop work, which, after much repainting, becomes Zone.
Dec. 1-Jan. 31, 1962. In association with the Green Gallery, Oldenburg
presents an expanded version of The Store in a former furniture warehouse,
which he names "Ray Gun Mfg. Co." (at 107 East 2nd Street, between First
Avenue and Avenue A).
1962
R.L. returns to live and work in Highland Park.
Begins to use an acrylic paint soluble in turpentine, called Magna, but
continues to use oil paint for his simulated Benday dots.
Creates his first close-up paintings of women's heads, such as The Refrigerator.
Creates paintings based on works by Cézanne, such as Man with Folded Arms,
and Mondrian,such as Non-Objective II. Paints isolated words on canvas, in Art
and In, but soon abandons the idea.
Creates his first paintings based on war comics, such as Blam, Takka Takka,
Brattata, Whaam, As I Opened Fire, and Live Ammo.
Artforum begins publishing on the West Coast.
Jan. 30-Feb. 17. First solo exhibition of Rosenquist's work, at the Green
Gallery.
Feb. 10-March 3. First show of R.L.'s paintings at Leo Castelli Gallery,
featuring Turkey, Washing Machine, The Engagement Ring, The Kiss,
The Refrigerator, Blam, and The Grip.
Feb. 23-May 26. Oldenburg presents a series of performances at Ray Gun Mfg.
Co. Performers include, in addition to Oldenburg and his wife Patty, Rachel
Drexler, Jackie Ferrara, Henry Geldzahler, Billy Klüver, Samaras, Carolee
Schneemann, and others.
Feb. 26. Newsweek magazine reviews R.L.'s show at Leo Castelli Gallery and
reproduces Girl with Ball.
March. Art International publishes Max Kozloff's article "'Pop' Culture,
Metaphysical Disgust, and the New Vulgarians," the first article to link
Dine, R.L., Oldenburg, and Rosenquist as a cohesive group (together with
Peter Saul and Robert Watts).
April. Donald Judd's review of R.L.'s show at Leo Castelli Gallery is
published in Arts magazine.
April 3-May 13. The Kiss is included in 1961, a group exhibition at the
Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, curated by Douglas MacAgy.
April 25-May 12. Picasso: An American Tribute, a multi-gallery exhibition of
more than 300 works, is held simultaneously at nine New York galleries, with
a catalogue written by John Richardson.
May 8-June 2. First solo exhibition of Segal's work, at the Green Gallery,
featuring paintings and his plaster figures in facsimiles of real-life
environments.
May 26-June 30. R.L.'s pen-and-ink drawings, such as Couch, shown publicly for the first
time, in Leo Castelli Gallery's group show Drawings: Lee Bontecou, Jasper
Johns, Roy Lichtenstein. He begins to use frottage (a rubbing technique) in
his drawings.
June. Pearlstein's comic-strip painting Superman, 1952 (the only one of his
comic-strip paintings he did not destroy), goes on view for the first time
at Tanager Gallery (90 East 10th Street), along with works by Wesselmann and
others.
June 15. R.L. is one of several featured artists in an article in Life
magazine on the new art.
Aug. 6-31. Art of Two Ages: The Hudson River School and Roy Lichtenstein
exhibition at Mi Chou Gallery in New York (801 Madison Avenue) features
works by Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Asher B.
Durand, and R.L.
Sept. ARTnews publishes critic Gene R. Swenson's "The new American 'Sign
Painters,'"an article about the work of Dine, Stephen Durkee, Indiana, R.L.,
Rosenquist, Richard Smith, and Warhol.
Sept.1-23. Maciunas stages a series of concerts called Fluxus internationale
Festspiele neuester Musik at Hoersaal des Städtischen Museums in Wiesbaden,
Germany.
Sept. 25-Oct. 19. R.L.'s comic-strip and consumer-goods paintings are shown
on the West Coast for the first time, in the Pasadena Art Museum's group
exhibition New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps.
Oct. 25-Nov. 7. Art 1963-A New Vocabulary exhibition at the Art Council of
the YM/YWHA in Philadelphia (401 S. Broad Street) features paintings,
collages, assemblages, combines, and machines by Brecht, Dine, Johns,
Kaprow, R.L., Marisol, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Segal, Tinguely,
and Watts. Exhibition brochure includes a dictionary of terms written by
some of the artists to describe the new art.
Oct. 31-Dec. 1. Sidney Janis Gallery presents International Exhibition of
the New Realists, featuring "factual paintings and sculpture" by American
and European artists, including Dine, Klein, R.L., Oldenburg, Rosenquist,
Rotella, Segal, Tinguely, and Warhol.
Nov. Warhol's illustrations are reproduced in McCall's and Good Housekeeping
magazines. He uses the technique of photo-silkscreening for the first time
in his work, and begins to use multiple imagery of Campbell's soup cans, S&H
green stamps, Coca-Cola bottles, and Marilyn Monroe's face in paintings.
Rauschenberg also creates his first silkscreen paintings.
Nov. 15. Ileana Sonnabend opens Galerie Sonnabend in Paris (37, quai des
Grands-Augustins) with a solo exhibition of works by Johns.
Nov. 18-Dec. 15. R.L.'s Takka Takka is included in group exhibition My
Country 'Tis of Thee at the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles (10846 Lindbrook
Drive), along with works by Indiana, Johns, Kienholz, Marisol, Oldenburg,
Rauschenberg, Rivers, Rosenquist, Warhol, and Wesselmann.
R.L.'s Head-Red and Yellow is acquired by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery
(Buffalo) for its permanent collection.
1963
R.L. is commissioned by Philip Johnson to create a mural, his first
large-scale work, for the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair
in Flushing Meadows, New York.
Separates from Isabel, who moves with the children to Princeton.
Takes leave of absence from Douglass College and moves residence and studio
to 36 West 26th Street in Manhattan.
Begins series of canvases depicting women from D.C. Comics' Girls' Romances
and Secret Hearts, such as Drowning Girl and Hopeless.
Replaces handmade metal screen with a manufactured metal screen to apply
Benday dots to canvas. Employs assistants to paint in Benday dots.
Dine begins his bathrobe works, based on an illustration of an empty robe in
an ad in the New York Times.
Warhol makes his first films, based primarily on banal activities filmed for
an exaggerated length of time.
March 14-June 2. The Guggenheim Museum presents Six Painters and the Object,
organized by Alloway, featuring works by Dine, Johns, R.L., Rauschenberg,
Rosenquist, and Warhol; the show travels throughout the U.S.
March 31-May 12. The Jewish Museum (New York) presents a major retrospective
of Rauschenberg's work, organized by Alan Solomon.
April. Three paintings by R.L., including Girl with Ball, are included in
Pop Goes! The Easel exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston),
organized by Douglas MacAgy.
April 1-27. R.L.'s first exhibition at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles,
featuring Sock, Masterpiece, Sponge, Sponge II, Portrait of Madame Cézanne,
Drowning Girl, and other works from 1962 and '63.
April 18-June 2. George Washington, Aloha, The Refrigerator, Electric Cord,
Handshake, and Femme d'Alger are included in The Popular Image Exhibition at
the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (Washington, D.C.), organized by Alice
Denney.
April 28-May 26. Leo Castelli Gallery lends Girl with Piano and Magnifying Glass
for Popular Art: Artistic Projections of Common American Symbols at
the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Atkins Museum of Fine Arts
(Kansas City).
May 1-31. Yam Festival, a series of Happenings, dance performances, and
music concerts organized by Brecht and Watts, is held at Segal's farm in New
Brunswick, New Jersey.
May 9. Rauschenberg stages his first performance piece, Pelican, in a
Washington, D.C. skating rink, in conjunction with the Washington Gallery of
Modern Art's The Popular Image Exhibition.
May 17. Time magazine publishes a letter by William Overgard stating that
R.L.'s I Can See the Whole Room . . . and There's Nobody in It!
is taken from the last panel of his
August 6, 1961 comic strip "Steve Roper." R.L.'s painting and Overgard's
panel are reproduced alongside each other in the magazine.
May 19-Sept. 15. The Jewish Museum presents Toward a New Abstraction,
organized by Alan Solomon, featuring works by Kelly, Kenneth Noland, and
others as a counterpoint to Pop art.
June 5-30. R.L.'s first solo exhibition in Europe, at Sonnabend's gallery in
Paris. He travels to Paris for the opening, his first trip back to the city
since the war.
Sept. Karp, in "Anti-Sensibility Painting," an article in Artforum, uses the
term "common-image artist" to refer to Lee Bontecou, Bruce Conner, R.L.,
Richard Lindner, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Samaras, Warhol, and Wesselmann.
Sept. 28-Oct. 24. R.L.'s second solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery,
including Drowning Girl, Baseball Manager, Torpedo . . . Los!, and Whaam!.
Autumn. R.L. begins to use opaque projector to render images. Pencil marks
disappear from his compositions.
Oct. 8-Nov. 3. Hopps organizes the first major American retrospective of
Duchamp's work on the West Coast, at the Pasadena Museum of Art. Hamilton,
invited to attend the opening in California, visits U.S. for the first time.
Oct. 11. Gerhard Richter and Konrad [Lueg] Fischer perform their
"Demonstration for Capitalist Realism" at Möbelhaus Berges, a furniture
store in Düsseldorf.
Oct. 24-Nov. 23. R.L.'s Pop works are shown for the first time in Britain in
The Popular Image, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London (17-18
Dover Street), organized by Alan Solomon.
Nov. 19-Dec. 15. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery presents Mixed Media and Pop
Art, organized by Gordon
M. Smith, featuring works by Dine, Johns, R.L., Oldenburg, Rauschenberg,
Rosenquist, and
Warhol, as well as lesser-known artists in the museum's collection.
Late Nov.-Early Dec. Warhol moves to 231 East 47th Street, which he refers
to as the Factory. It soon becomes an infamous meeting place for the
avant-garde.
Dec. 13. A symposium on Pop art is held at MoMA. Speakers include Dore
Ashton, Geldzahler, Hilton Kramer, Stanley Kutz, and Leo Steinberg, with
Peter Selz as moderator. Neo-Dada and New Realism are rejected as names for
the new movement in favor of the term "Pop art." Artists in the audience
include Duchamp, R.L., Maciunas, Rosenquist, and Warhol.
1964
Jan. 3. Sidney Janis Gallery presents Four Environments by Four New
Realists, featuring Oldenburg's Bedroom Ensemble (an installation of
larger-than-life furniture pieces, based on the interior of a Malibu motel)
and works by Dine, Rosenquist, and Segal.
Jan. 31. Life magazine publishes an article on R.L. asking "Is He the Worst
Artist in America?"
R.L.replaces store-bought metal screens (to apply Benday dots) with paper
screens-which he has made especially for him-and uses them exclusively from
then on.
Begins to make Benday dots larger, in proportion to size of his canvases.
Creates a series of frightened and crying women in close-up views,
such as Frightened Girl. Dialogue balloons begin to disappear from his paintings.
Begins series of landscapes, such as Sinking Sun,signaling a move toward inventing his own
subject matter.
Begins to incorporate plastic, Plexiglas, and metal into some of his
landscapes.
Inspired by New York's enameled metal subway signs, creates his first
enameled steel sculptures. Finds commercial firm in New Jersey called
Architectural Porcelain to fabricate the pieces.
March 2. Robert Morris and Schneemann perform Site at Stage 73 in New York
(321 East 73rd Street). Morris, dressed in white with a skin-colored mask,
moves plywood boards on and off the stage around Schneemann, who, playing
the role of Manet's Olympia, reclines nude in a transfixed state.
April. Cover of Art in America features R.L.'s "pop panorama" drawing of the
New York World's Fair, commissioned for this issue.
April 21-May 9. At the Stable Gallery in New York, Warhol exhibits almost
400 painted facsimiles of Brillo, Heinz ketchup, and Kellogg's cornflakes
boxes-wooden boxes silkscreened with the graphic designs of each brand's
packaging-which he stacked on top of each other and placed in rows
throughout the gallery.
April 22. Opening of New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadow, New York. The
Theaterama building of the New York State Pavilion features R.L.'s mural,
along with murals by nine other artists. After the fair closes in October
1965, the murals are deinstalled. Following repairs, R.L.'s mural is sent to
the University of Minnesota.
June 20-Oct. 19. Rauschenberg wins the grand prize for painting at the 32nd
Venice Biennale, which includes works by Chamberlain, Eduardo Chillida,
Dine, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Johns, Oldenburg, and Richard Stankiewicz.
June 22-July 26. Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) presents American Pop Art,
including several paintings by R.L.
June 30. R.L.resigns his teaching position at Douglass College.
Sept. 16-Oct. 10. Samaras moves the contents of his room intact to the Green
Gallery for his installation Room.
Autumn. R.L.meets Dorothy Herzka at Paul Bianchini Gallery in New York (16
East 78th Street) during the preparations for the show American Supermarket,
which opens in October.
Buys several plaster mannequin heads near his West 26th Street studio in the
hat-manufacturing district of New York and creates Head of Girl.
Partisan Review publishes Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on Camp."
British Pop artist Allen Jones moves from London to New York for one year,
staying at the Chelsea Hotel (222 West 23rd Street).
During a trip to Tokyo, Johns completes Souvenir and Souvenir 2, which
incorporate portions of frames, their stretcher side showing.
The term "Op art" is coined by sculptor George Rickey.
Oct. 24-Nov. 19. Temple of Apollo, R.L.'s first painting featuring a
reference to classical art, is shown at Leo Castelli Gallery along with
several landscapes and enamel works.
Nov. 24. Solo exhibition of his landscapes at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.
1965
R.L. divorced from Isabel, who receives custody of the children. Moves to
190 Bowery, where he sets up residence and studio in a nine-room warehouse,
a former German bank built in 1917. Adolph Gottlieb lives in the same
building, and others in the neighborhood include Malcolm Morley, Nevelson,
and Rothko.
Makes group of sculptures based on explosion images
depicted in comic books, such as Small Explosion.
Begins collaboration with the potter Hui Ka Kwong, a colleague from Rutgers,
creating a series of ceramic heads, such as Head with Red Shadow ,
Head with Blue Shadow and Head with Black Shadow .
Together they create another series of stacked cups and saucers as well as teapot sets,
such as 2 Stacked Cups and Ceramic Sculpture 5.
Experiments with Modern motifs in his poster of the World's Fair grounds for
the Cartoonists Association.
Publication of John Rublowsky's Pop Art, the first book devoted to the
movement, featuring the work of R.L., Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Warhol, and
Wesselmann.
Jan. Stedelijk Museum purchases As I Opened Fire for its permanent
collection.
Jan. 5-23. Tibor de Nagy Gallery presents Shape and Structure, one of the
first exhibitions devoted to Minimalist art, organized by Geldzahler,
featuring works by Carl Andre, Larry Bell, Donald Judd, and Morris.
Feb. 23-April 25. MoMA (in collaboration with four other U.S. museums)
presents The Responsive Eye, organized by William Seitz, featuring examples
of Op art by Yaacov Agam, Albers, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Kelly, Morris Louis,
Larry Poons, Ad Reinhardt, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, and others.
June. The Green Gallery closes.
Autumn. R.L. stops working with ceramic pieces. Creates his first
Brushstroke painting.
Nov. 20-Dec. 11. Leo Castelli Gallery presents Brushstroke series along with
recent ceramic pieces.
Dec. R.L. Interviewed for broadcast by the BBC Third Programme by David Sylvester
1966
R.L. stops including words in his canvases.
Creates several paintings featuring drips and blots of paint against a
graph-paper grid background, such as Yellow and White Drip on Graph
and White Drip on Red and Black Graph.
Publication of Kaprow's book Assemblages, Environments and Happenings.
April. Leo Castelli Gallery presents an exhibition by Warhol, in which he
covers the gallery's walls with his Cow Wallpaper and fills the interior
with silver Mylar balloons.
R.L. illustrates April 25th cover of Newsweek magazine. The entire issue is devoted to
"The Story of Pop." April 27-June 12. The Jewish Museum presents Primary Structures: Younger
American and British Sculptures, organized by Kynaston McShine, featuring
works by Andre, Richard Artschwager, Anthony Caro, Judd, Robert Smithson,
and others.
Summer. R.L.designs poster, based on 1930s Hollywood motifs, for 4th New
York Film Festival, which takes place September 12-22.
June 18-Oct. 16. The U.S. is represented at the 33rd Venice Biennale by an
exhibition of works by Helen Frankenthaler, Kelly, R.L., and Jules Olitski,
organized by Geldzahler.
Sept. 20-Oct. 8. Fischbach Gallery in New York (29 West 57th Street)
presents Eccentric Abstraction, organized by Lucy Lippard, featuring works
by Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, and Keith Sonnier and with an exhibition text in
which Lippard coins the term Process Art.
Sept. 27. The Whitney Museum moves to 945 Madison Avenue.
Autumn. RL's first experiments making collage paintings with vinyl and
Rowlux. He begins to use concealed motors and light fixtures in his Rowlux
collages.
Oct. 1. Leo Castelli Gallery offers for sale 800 signed black-and-white
china pieces designed by R.L. and produced by Durable Dish Co., at $40-50
per six-piece place setting.
Nov. 4-Dec. 1. The Cleveland Museum of Art presents R.L.'s first solo museum
exhibition, Works by Roy Lichtenstein, organized by Ed Henning.
1967
Italian art critic Germano Celant coins the term Arte Povera to refer to the
work of a group of international artists using common or "poor" materials
from everyday life, including Joseph Beuys, Hesse, Jannis Kounellis, Richard
Long, Mario Merz, and Gilberto Zorio. Later, the term is used primarily to
refer only to the Italians.
Jan. The Tate Gallery (London) purchases Whaam!
April. Arts magazine publishes an article by Dalí entitled "How an Elvis
Presley Becomes a Roy Lichtenstein."
April 18-May 28. The Pasadena Art Museum, in collaboration with the Walker
Art Center (Minneapolis), presents first traveling retrospective of R.L.'s
work, organized by John Coplans. First solo-exhibition catalogue devoted to
his work is published.
Summer. R.L.rents Rivers's house in Southampton with friends.
Sol LeWitt publishes "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" in Artforum, in which he
proclaims the preeminence of the idea over the object.
Sept. Artforum relocates to New York.
Autumn. In collaboration with Guild Hall in Paramus, New Jersey, R.L.
creates a series of sculptures made of brass, mirror, tinted glass, marble,
aluminum, and other materials, such as Modern Sculpture with Glass Wave.
Nov. 4-Dec. 17. Stedelijk Museum presents R.L.'s first retrospective in
Europe, organized by director E.L.L. de Wilde and chief curator W.A.L.
Beeren; the show travels to three other museums.
1968
R.L.makes first Stretcher Frame paintings, such as Stretcher Frame with Cross Bars III.
Makes his first modular paintings featuring repeated design imagery,
such as Modular Painting with Four Panels #1 and Modular Painting with Nine Panels.
Jan. 6-Feb. 4. The Tate Gallery presents Roy Lichtenstein (a version of the
Stedelijk Museum's show), the museum's first show dedicated to a living
American artist, organized by Richard Morphet.
May 24. The cover of Time features 's R.L. painting of Robert F. Kennedy that
the magazine commissioned for this issue.
June 3. Warhol is shot at the Factory by Valerie Solanis, the founder of
S.C.U.M (Society for Cutting Up Men).
June. Maurice Tuchman, curator of the L.A. County Museum of Art, invites R.L.
to participate in his Art and Technology exhibition, to be held in
1971. R.L. proposes creating a film based on a series of shots of a woman's
face exposed to alternating light sources. The proposal is altered during
his residence in Los Angeles the next year.
June 21. Cover of Time features R.L.'s rendering of a gun (based on his 1964
felt banner Pistol) for its cover story "The Gun in America."
Summer. Visits the Pasadena Art Museum with curator John Coplans and sees
Constructivist paintings of heads by German Expressionist artist Alexei
Jawlensky. Coplans also discusses his ideas with R.L. for an exhibition on
serial paintings.
Shares house on Wooley Street in Southampton with friends.
Sept. 17-Oct. 27. R.L. sees Coplans's exhibition Serial Imagery at the
Pasadena Art Museum, and, inspired by the works by Claude Monet included in
the show, begins making his Haystack and Rouen Cathedral lithographs.
Nov. 1. Marries Dorothy Herzka.
1969
Jan.-July. Completes his first serial prints (six Haystack and seven Rouen
Cathedral lithographs) at Gemini G.E.L. in collaboration with master printer
Kenneth Tyler.
Feb. 3. Starts two-week stay at Universal City Studios, at which time he
begins works on films for the Art and Technology exhibition.
May 19-July 16. The Whitney Museum presents Anti-Illusion:
Procedures/Materials, organized by Marcia Tucker and James Monte, featuring
works by Andre, Morris, Nauman, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Sonnier, and
others.
May 24-June 29. The Guggenheim Museum presents Nine Young Artists, Theodoron
Awards, organized by Diane Waldman with the assistance of Edward F. Fry,
featuring sculptures, paintings, and audio tapes by Nauman, Richter, Serra,
Zorio, and others.
June. Oldenburg's first monumental outdoor sculpture (a gigantic lipstick on
caterpillar tracks) is installed at Yale University.
Summer. R.L.shares house on Wooley Street in Southampton again with friends.
Films clouds, the ocean, and tropical fish in a tank in both color and black
and white. Returns to Universal with his film footage and adds several shots
from their archive. Returns to Southampton to complete the three seascape
films for the Art and Technology exhibition.
Sept. An article by David Sylvester published in American Vogue, under the title
'The ironic Lichtenstein who takes soulful subjects and paints them with cool'.
Sept. 19-Nov. 16. First New York retrospective of R.L.'s paintings and
sculptures, at the Guggenheim Museum, organized by Waldman; the show travels
to three other U.S. museums. The Guggenheim Museum purchases Preparedness,
the first work by R.L. to enter the museum's collection.
Autumn. Creates his first Mirror paintings, such as Mirror #1, and begins series of Pyramid
works, such as Three Pyramids.
Publication of first monograph on R.L.'s drawings and prints, by Waldman.