Art News

Roy Lichtenstein’s Landscapes in the Chinese Style on view at Gagosian in New York

NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian Gallery presents an exhibition of Roy Lichtenstein’s Landscapes in the Chinese Style. Throughout his prodigious career Lichtenstein mined antecedent imagery, taking inspiration from a diverse array of sources, from comic strips and advertising slogans to classical architecture and the art of the European Modernists. Captivated by traditional Chinese painting, in particular from the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD), he considered how to craft the delicate, ethereal atmosphere so implicit to the Landscapes in the Chinese Style. The monochromatic prints of Edgar Degas, featured in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, New York in 1994, provided inspiration. He was struck by his predecessor’s ability to suggest the features of a landscape with just a few strategic swathes of gray, allowing a nebulous shape