Yellow and Green Brushstrokes

Yellow and Green Brushstrokes
Artist Roy Lichtenstein
Year 1966
Type Pop art
Oil and Magna on canvas
Dimensions 213.4 cm × 457.2 cm (84 in × 180 in)
Location Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt

Yellow and Green Brushstrokes is a 1966 oil and Magna on canvas pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is part of the Brushstrokes series of artworks that includes several paintings and sculptures. It is located at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. As with all of his Brushstrokes works, it is in part a satirical response to the gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism.

Background

The source for the entire Brushstrokes series was Charlton Comics' Strange Suspense Stories "The Painting" #72 (October 1964) by Dick Giordano.

Yellow and Green Brushstrokes is located at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. The museum acquired the work from the collection of Karl Ströher in 1981.[1] The source for the entire Brushstrokes series was Charlton Comics' Strange Suspense Stories 72 (October 1964) by Dick Giordano.[2][3]

According to the Lichtenstein Foundation, Lichtenstein produced two distinct 1966 oil and Magna on canvases by the title Yellow and Green Brushstrokes.[4] The second one is smaller at 36 x 68 inches (91.4 x 172.7 cm). It involved much straighter brushstrokes.[5]

The painting depicts two brushstrokes magnified to cover the entire vast canvas. This is one of several such Brushstrokes series representations that seem "absurd".[2]

Details

Measuring 213.4 cm × 457.2 cm (84 in × 180 in), Yellow and Green Brushstrokes is regarded as quite notable for its ability to imply perceptible movement although his works is limited to a single image on a canvas with finite space. The movement is considered similar to the explosive actions evident in earlier works such as Whaam! and As I Opened Fire.[6] He uses overlapping forms rather than a single form or distinct adjacent forms, which seems to create a more dynamic feel to the shallow space.[7] However, since Lichtenstein does not uses shading or contrast, the monochromatic strokes with just bold black outlines are void of certain elements of depth.[8] Big Painting No. 6 and Yellow and Green Brushstrokes go one step further in terms of canvas size and dynamic activity that was presented earlier in Little Big Painting.[9] At 15 feet (4.57 m) wide, the magnitude of the work is exceptional for Lichtenstein.[10] Edward F. Fry described the work in the October 1969 ARTnews as "The heroic brushstroke of Abstract-Expressionism mocked by objective treatment in comic-strip idiom".[11] This work is regarded as a rare example of Lichtenstein performing as a "virtuoso painter" and using "bravura technique".[12]

Notes

  1. ↑ "Yellow and Green Brushstrokes, 1966". Museum für Moderne Kunst. Retrieved 2012-05-14.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Foster, Hal (2010). Francis, Mark, ed. Pop. Phaidon. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-7148-5663-6. Begun in the autumn of 1965, Lichtenstein's series of Brushstroke paintings was initiated after he saw a cartoon in Charlton Comics' Strange Suspense Stories. 72 (October 1964). One scene shows an exhausted yet relieved artist who has just completed a painting. This depicts two massive brushstrokes that take up the entire surface area. The absurdity of using a small paintbrush to create an image of two monumental brushstrokes was explored in many different variations. Transforming an expressive act that was mythologized for its immediacy and primal origins into a cartoon-like, mechanically produced-lookiing image. Lichtenstein created a reflexive commentary on gestural painting.
  3. ↑ "Strange Suspense Stories #72". Lichtenstein Foundation. Retrieved 2012-05-25.
  4. ↑ "String: Yellow and Green Brushstrokes". Lichtenstein Foundation. Retrieved 2012-05-14.
  5. ↑ "Yellow and Green Brushstrokes". Lichtenstein Foundation. Retrieved 2012-05-14.
  6. ↑ Waldman. p. 157. Lichtenstein's ability to convey the illusion of movement while containing his forms within the picture plane is particularly striking in Yellow and Green Brushstrokes, for example, where the activity of the brushstrokes is depicted much the way he had shown explosive action in some of his earlier large-scale paintings, such as Whaam! (fig. 90), 1963, and As I Opened Fire (fig. 91), 1964. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. ↑ Waldman. p. 161. Other works in this series, such as Little Big Painting concentrate even more strongly on the physical quality of the brushstroke. The extreme magnification of the brushstroke, similar to the close-up imagery of the comic strip paintings, gives it added impact. The powerful thrust of the brushstroke is reinforced by its compact form. As a result, this painting more nearly approaches the kind of glorious brushstroke of the most significant gestural painters among the Abstract Expressionists. Little Big Painting is one of several paintings—of which other examples are the large canvas of the same year, Big Painting No. 6 (fig. 130), and the aforementioned Yellow and Green Brushstrokes— in which Lichtenstein uses overlapping forms rather than centering one form or placing two side by side. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  8. ↑ Waldman. p. 161. This arrangement of dense, impacted forms creates the illusion of active shapes in a shallow space; but because they lack any sense of relief or depth and have been reduced to flat colors and a single bold outline, without any subtle contrasts between light and shade, they read as flat forms on a flat plane. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. ↑ Waldman. p. 161. In Big Painting No. 6 and Yellow and Green Brushstrokes, Lichtenstein dramatically enlarged the size of the canvas and increased the dynamic activity that was so much a part of Little Big Painting. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  10. ↑ Coplans, John, ed. (1972). Roy Lichtenstein. Praeger Publishers. p. 25. True, there are large paintings—...as well as a large brushstroke (Yellow and Green Brushstrokes, 1966)...—but on the whole, he only works at mural scale when the subjects are larger.
  11. ↑ Fry, Edward F. "Inside the Trojan Horse". ARTnews 68 (6). p. 36.
  12. ↑ Waldman. p. 271. In all four, Lichtenstein is once again the virtuoso painter, a luxury that he does not often allow himself (which he had earlier, on a grander scale, with Yellow and Green Brushstrokes [fig. 129], 1966), usually holding bravura technique in check with his sense of irony and detachment. Missing or empty |title= (help)

References

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