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Still Life in Yellow and Black

Artist Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923 - 1997)
Date1972
MediumOil and Magna on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 56 × 40 inches (142.24 × 101.6 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Friends of Art
Object numberF73-15
Signedverso: "rf Lichtenstein 72"
On View
On view
Gallery Location
  • L3
Collections
DescriptionYellow glass containing several paint brushes sits on portion of white cloth draped from upper right corner of canvas partially across yellow background. Starfish and shell lie on cloth in front of glass. Shadows in cloth and volumes indicated by exaggerated dot pattern. All objects heavily outlined in black.Exhibition History

Fifth Anniversary Exhibition, Jack Glenn Gallery, New York, 1975, no cat.
Icons of Pop, University of Missouri, Museum of Art and Archaeology, January 23-June 27, 1999, no cat.

Gallery Label
Roy Lichtenstein was one of the leading painters of the Pop Art movement. During the 1960s he translated banal advertisements and adventure comic strips into large-scale paintings, using bright, flat colors and hard-edge, precise drawing. Benday dots, integral to the photo-mechanical printing process, are exaggerated to the point of becoming design elements in the art.

Still Life with Brushes, Shell and Star Fish belongs to a series of paintings by Lichtenstein that investigates the styles and subjects of art history. In this painting, Lichtenstein defies our expectations for the still life by rendering it in the visual language of the comic strip. He reminds us that the process of mechanical reproduction reduces all works of art to simple arrangements of dots.

Published References
“Friends of Art” The Kansas City Star (November 25, 1973): 8E, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collection, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City: William R. Nelson Trust, 1973), 211, (repro.).
“Art in Mid-America” The Wichita Eagle and Beacon (August 3, 1974): 58, (repro.).
Copyright© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
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