Word: lichtensteins
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...Lichtenstein is a master of the economic image. During World War II, he made maps from aerial photographs, a job that required a kind of graphic distillation. This visual training has served him well, especially in his many paintings that have tersely targeted various artistic styles, including Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and now his new Chinese landscapes. These paintings exemplify visual frugality and can be read almost as mathematical equations, the sum of two disparate styles based on the following questions. First, how little information is required to make a Chinese landscape? And second, how little information is required...
...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...
...this repertoire of three signature stylistic elements, Lichtenstein adds a new technique, sponge-painting, used for the gently sloping tree in Yellow Cliffs. The lack of control inherent in painting with a sponge risks undermining the impossibly clean finish that has long been a hall-mark of Lichtenstein's canvases. Yet on closer look, the organic matter seems just as mechanical, as if it had been painted with a commercial "do it yourself" home decorating...
...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...