ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
The Conversation, 1984
Painted and patinated bronze
48 1/4 x 42 x 10 inches (122.6 x 106.7 x 25.4 cm)
Edition: 6
There is a vital and inimitable thread of genius that runs through the most successful works of Roy Lichtenstein’s expansive career. Executed in 1984, The Conversation, captures the very heart of the artist’s long fascination with representing the manifold narratives of human relationships. Towards the end of the late 1970s, Lichtenstein began to translate forms and styles from his earlier paintings into painted bronze sculptures. His bronze sculptures typically started as sketches of imagined forms stimulated by both mass media and art history, before he created working models and maquettes. In the case of The Conversation this was certainly true with two documented preparatory drawings, the first one from as early as 1981, and a full scale maquette, which was subsequently used to create the casting mold for the sculpture. Indeed, The Conversation exists not only between a female and a male and between a cursive ideal of beauty and a reductive totem of angularity; but also between fundamental art historical idioms of representation. This intense narrative, thematic and conceptual poignancy is captured with a brilliant economy of form that truly stands as testament to Lichtenstein’s extraordinary genius.
The present work brings forth various themes and genres throughout art history into a new mode of expression that is unique to Lichtenstein’s visual vocabulary. Through his incorporation of reductive sculptural planes to define the angular head rendered with a heavily stylized wood-grain, Lichtenstein pays explicit homage to Analytic and Synthetic Cubism. Meanwhile, the sinuous linearity of the floating female head borrows its idiom from the vocabulary of the high Surrealism of Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. Finally, the starkly graphic hatching of the face cites the mechanical vernacular of mass reproduction printing methods that were the very template for Pop Art’s groundbreaking appropriation.
Pablo Picasso, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), 1910, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Ultimately, The Conversation is a poignant embodiment of Lichtenstein’s exceptional capacity to conflate spectacular innovations in thematic, conceptual, aesthetic and art historical ambitions. In her 1999 essay “Plane Talk: Notes on Lichtenstein’s Sculptures,” Naomi Spector succinctly describes the physicality of The Conversation, and how the surface of the sculpture informs its very narrative: “Along with ben-day dots, a standard graphic device for color and tone, is parallel lines, hatching. They are used to great effect in The Conversation, 1984, though now in the language of surrealism. Here the wavy outline of the woman’s face in profile is filled in with the conventional parallel red diagonal lines. When you see them head-on, the graphic device translated into three dimensions makes you smile. But as you step to the side of the nearly flat sculpture, the spaces between the lines disappear and the redness looks solid. Perhaps she is blushing! Then, as you get the reverse side, the interstices reappear. So, the viewer has it both ways. But for her partner in the conversation, the edges of the thick, dark “wood-grain” planks of his face shape up stiffly at the front edge of her outlined profile so that, two dimensionally speaking, she is invisible to him – not to mention her feelings. The possibility of chitchat between them seems unlikely. She seems all limp and wavy, with her head poised on the tip of her blond curl; and he is all stiffly angled dark bronze blocks. Amidst Lichtenstein’s general atmosphere of bright calm, this sculpture allows new readings of the phrase “side by side,” and intimates some of the tension we feel between the lines in Matisse’s painting of the same title.” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art (and traveling), Lichtenstein: Sculpture & Drawings, 1998-2000, pp. 34-35)
RENÉ MAGRITTE, LE DOUBLE SECRET, 1927. © ADAGP PARIS, 2016.
Lichtenstein’s singular ability to capture a split-second revelation or the shadow of an internal monologue as it flickers across the faces of his legendary cast of characters. Whether it is the unraveling of a truth through its hesitant utterance, from It’s…It’s not an engagement ring, is it? (1961) to Oh, Jeff…I love you, too…But… (1964) the dramatic tension of a sensational revelation is at the epicenter of Lichtenstein’s best output.
Auction Results
The Conversation, 1984
Sotheby’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 1,000,000
USD 720,000
The Conversation | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s
ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
The Conversation, 1984
Painted and patinated bronze
48 1/4 x 42 x 10 inches (122.6 x 106.7 x 25.4 cm)
This work is number 3 from an edition of 6