Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral Set V

we're in SFMOMA and we're looking at a hilarious triptych it's called Rouen Cathedral set five and it was painted in 1969 by Roy Lichtenstein the pop artist so this is just say seven or eight years after pop has really established itself in the United States but pop is also really run its course there's a sort of difference that's taking place here there's a real thoughtfulness about the implications they've done yeah if you think about earlier work by the density or Warhol they've been steam blowing up comic book frames like the drowning girl at MoMA or Warhol soup cans so those are sort of more classically pop and drawing from pop culture but here Lukens Dean is obviously as you said being more thoughtful about his place in our history and redoing Monet's series of Rouen Cathedral so he's doing a series based on a series that it looks like just a magnification of a reproduction we've got those bhende dots exactly which are meant to replicate of course bad printing in say a comic book in the early 60s so let's talk about those dots those circles those are coming from a kind of color reproduction that we still use today they're called bhende dots and usually they're so small we can't see them but Lichtenstein has enlarged them and interestingly this sort of takes on the look of that bad reproduction that you just refer to but actually these are painted so he's still painting them but the individuality of that mark-making that happens when Monet paints the short beautiful brushstrokes is not here anymore when we're up close like this I can't really see anything but colored dots it really has been de dots move back so that the paintings by Monet that this triptych is based on can come into focus a little bit well you'd say the same thing about a Monet painting wouldn't you that it dissolves into brushstrokes for your up clothes I think it's so funny though that it has in a sense the same visual quality as a Monet in its allege ability but this is a mechanized structure which is an expression of the 20th century as opposed to Monet's individual brushwork and so you have Monet's interest in his own subjective vision and his own subjective application of paint on the canvas and he painted wrong Cathedral at different times of the day and so each moment is unique each painting is unique and yet they're part of a series the irony is that Lichtenstein painted these by hand it's not to say he didn't use a stencil but they're still hand painted and so there is this funny play in both sets that reliefs were just brought to the fore about this conflict between mechanization and ham painting and the subjective vision and uniqueness they're just hilarious and wonderful art that they very fun