Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior

Medium: Screen-print in colors, on five rolled panels of Paper Technologies, Inc. Waterleaf paper
Year: 1992
Overall (approximately): 102×150 inches (250.2 x 382 cm)
Edition: 300
Artist’s Proofs: 50 AP
Printer: La Paloma, Los Angeles
Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Literature: Corlett 260, Gemini 1558, RLCR 4160

Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior, 1992 (RLCR 4160) | Catalogue entry | Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné

Signed, dated and numbered in felt-tip pen with the blindstamp of the publisher

Created towards the end of his career, Roy Lichtenstein’s Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior of 1992 is a vision of quotidian domesticity rendered in the artist’s signature syntax of bold primary colors, heavy black outlining and Ben-Day dots. Over two and a half meters long, the monumental work invites the viewer into a fully furnished modern living room. The tightly constructed composition is elongated by the use of a mirror, reflecting the rest of the room back into the picture plane. The formal elements are structured around the two diagonal lines running along the sofa and the lower edge of the mirror. Following the rules of linear perspective, they create the illusion of depth among the composition’s flat forms. Nonetheless, Lichtenstein does not attempt to convey anything other than a two-dimensional simulation, using blocks of color and graphic patterns of dots, lines and swirls to insistently remind the viewer of the two-dimensional nature of the scene.

Mid-Century motel postcards from The Continental Inn, Lexington, Kentucky (left) and the Stadium Motor Lodge, 65 Deluxe Fireproof Rooms, New York (right).

Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior is the last in Lichtenstein’s Interiors series of the early 1990s, which presents modern, impersonal interior scenes reminiscent of motel rooms – anonymous and unlived in. The series was inspired by a billboard advertisement that Lichtenstein saw in Rome in 1989. Upon returning to New York, he began to experiment with similar motifs that he found in Yellow Pages catalogues. Alike the endless advertisements in the Yellow Pages, the style and furniture of Lichtenstein’s pictorial compositions are also varied throughout the series; something for everyone, as our consumer society mandates. The ease of access and choice of pick recalls the notion of the Yellow Pages slogan: “Let your fingers do the walking”, which Lichtenstein quite literally adopts. Appropriating advertisement clippings in the comic-strip spirit of Pop, Lichtenstein creates new composite forms served up as large-scale dreams, bringing to life the idyllic domestic fantasy sold in the Yellow Pages.

“Everything I do is a comment on something. It’s ironic or humorous. When I do a still life, it’s a comment on the act of doing a still life… It’s meant to make the spectator wonder about it.”

In the Interiors series, Lichtenstein enlivens the simple, graphic room with whimsical touches of realism, such as the picture hanging on the wall in the present lot, which stands out in the composition for showing some illusion of naturalism, owing to the shading in the leaves. Similarly, Lichtenstein’s early works and other iconic images by his Pop Art contemporaries – Andy Warhol’s Mao, for example – appear hanging on the walls of scenes from the Interiors series. Although the domestic compositions are devoid of human presence, by referencing art by both the artist and his peers, Lichtenstein connected the works to contemporary reality – almost a “hint to the real world” – as opposed to an aloof abstract simulation comprised of dots and lines. Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior is a masterful example of Lichtenstein breaking the barriers of art and everyday life. Utilizing the catchy iconography of advertisements that alluded to middle-class consumer culture, Lichtenstein neither pays homage to nor denigrates contemporary culture. Instead, Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior and the other works of the Interiors series act to rebrand banal, familiar imagery with the potent artistic locution that Lichtenstein is so renowned for.

Auction Results

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior (Corlett 260, Gemini 1558), 1992
Screenprint in colors on 5 sheets of Paper Technologies Inc. Waterleaf paper
Signed in silver ink on the fourth panel
Dated and numbered 130/300 (there were also 50 artist’s proofs)
With the blindstamp of the publisher, Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
CONDITION NOTE: 3 losses due to installation, the largest measuring 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches

LA Modern: 3 September 2025
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 44,450

Christie’s New-York: 16 April 2025
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 50,400

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior (Corlett 260), 1992
Screenprint in colors, on five panels of Paper Technologies, Inc. Waterleaf paper (as issued)
Signed and dated in silver felt-tip pen
Numbered 33⁄300 (there were also 50 artist’s proofs)

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Phillips London: 19 September 2024
Estimated: GBP 30,000 – 50,000
GBP 35,560 / USD 46,192

Dorotheum Vienna: 25 May 2023
Estimated: EUR 30,000 – 50,000
EUR 91,000 / USD 97,875
AUCTION RECORD FOR WALLPAPER WITH BLUE FLOOR INTERIOR

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior, 1992
Screen-print in colors, on five rolled panels of Paper Technologies, Inc. Waterleaf paper
Signed and dated in silver felt-tip pen
Numbered 91/300 (there were also 50 artist’s proofs)

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Swann Auctions: 17 November 2022
Estimated: USD 25,000 – 35,000
USD 25,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior, 1992
Color screenprint on Paper Technologies, Inc., Waterleaf paper, in five panels
Signed, dated and numbered 79/300 in silver metallic felt-tip pen and ink, lower right of the fourth panel

Christie’s New-York: 27 October 2022
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 50,000
USD 44,100

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior, 1992
Screen-print in colors, on five rolled panels of Paper Technologies, Inc. Waterleaf paper
Signed and dated in silver felt-tip pen
Numbered 89/300 (there were also 50 artist’s proofs)

Heritage Auctions: 26 October 2022
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 50,000
USD 57,500

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior, 1992
Screen-print in colors on five panels
Signed, numbered ’74/300′  and dated in silver ink on panel four

Christie’s London: 28 September 2022
Estimated: GBP 40,000 – 60,000
GBP 63,000 / USD 67,580

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior, 1992
Screen-print in colors on five sheets of Paper Technologies Inc. Waterleaf paper
Signed and dated in silver ink on the fourth panel, numbered 223/300

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Abell: 5 December 2021
Estimated: USD 15,000 – 20,000
USD 27,500

ROY LICHTENSTEIN
WALL PAPER WITH BLUE FLOOR INTERIOR, 1992
Screenprint in colors on five paper panels
Signed, dated, and numbered 96/300 (on fourth panel)

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Koller Zurich: 5 December 2020
Estimated: CHF 12,000 – 18,000
CHF 35,680 / USD 40,090

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 New York 1997)
Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior (5-part), 1992
Color screenprint on firm wove paper by Paper
Signed, numbered 50/300 and dated in silver felt-tip pen lower right on the fourth panel: rf Lichtenstein 92
With the copyright stamp bottom right: © 1992 RL & II

Sotheby’s London: 19 March 2020
Estimated: GBP 20,000 – 30,000
GBP 30,000 / USD 34,845

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
WALLPAPER WITH BLUE FLOOR INTERIOR (C. 260), 1992
Screenprint in colors, on five panels on Paper Technologies, Inc., Waterleaf paper
Signed in silver felt-tip pen, dated, numbered 221/300