Word: dots
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...answers, we need only turn to any of the exhibition's 17 striking canvases, where tiny scholars and fishing boats cower under misty, mountains. In Yellow Cliffs, three Benday dot cliff faces drop steeply from the painting's upper left corner. At the bottom, Lichtenstein's fluid, black contour describes an undulating boulder. This black outline, originally taken from comic books, contains a small patch of red parallel lines, which were used to denote shading in the half-tone prints of newspapers and magazines...
...addition to these "organic" touches, no matter how sarcastic, Lichtenstein isolates atmosphere and ambiguous depth as two of the most salient characteristics of Chinese paintings. To capture these two linked qualities, Lichtenstein uses modulated dot screens which fade from larger, tightly-spaced dots to smaller, more thinly-spaced ones. Not since his series of mirrors executed in the '70s has Lichtenstein so deftly manipulated his most recognizable mark...
...Landscape with Philosopher, jagged peaks climb to over nine feet, as Lichtenstein vertically stacks over 10 different dot screens. The most captivating moments are the points where the screens overlap, intersect or dissolve into one another. Here Lichtenstein again demonstrates his masterful visual economy, using the exact same dots to signify mist, mountain or perhaps both at the same time. This ambiguity leads to a spatial confusion and mystery as convincing and sophisticated as any of the real Song Dynasty paintings hanging in the galleries upstairs...
Unlike the Chinese paintings upstairs, however, several of Lichtenstein's canvases become overwhelmed by these tangles of shifting dot screens. In these cases, the dots seem to be vibrating, creating an effect more dizzying then restful...
...always a liability, this frenetic motion sometimes creates a brilliant effect as in Landscape with Boat. Easily the most abstract and compositionally daring painting in the show, Landscape with Boat looks like a jagged collision of two blue dot screens leaving a gigantic gash across the canvas. Only upon closer inspection do we notice the prow of a tiny red boat jutting in from the lower left-hand edge of the painting. This careful cropping coupled with a horizonless point of view emphasizes the vast and perhaps overwhelming aspect of nature often captured in actual Chinese painting...