Happy Tears (Roy Lichtenstein)

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Happy Tears
Happy Tears.jpg
Artist Roy Lichtenstein
Year1964 (1964)
Movement Pop art
Dimensions96.5 cm× 96.5 cm(38 in× 38 in)

Happy Tears is a 1964 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It formerly held the record for highest auction price for a Lichtenstein painting.

Pop art Art movement

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late-1950s. The movement presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, or combined with unrelated material.

Roy Lichtenstein 20th-century American pop artist

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the premise of pop art through parody. Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style. He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting". His paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.

Contents

History

Lichtenstein in 1967 Roy Lichtenstein.jpg
Lichtenstein in 1967

On November 13, 2002, Happy Tears surpassed Kiss II , which had sold for $6.0 million in May 1990, [1] by selling for $7.1 million at Christie's auction house in New York. [2] In November 2005, the 1963 work In the Car surpassed Happy Tears' Lichtenstein work record auction price, when it sold for $16.2 million. [3] [4]

<i>Kiss II</i> painting by Roy Lichtenstein

Kiss II is a 1962 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It formerly held the record for highest auction price for a Lichtenstein painting.

Christies British auction house

Christie's is a British auction house. It was founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's, in London and in the Rockefeller Center in New York City. The company is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François-Henri Pinault. Sales in 2018 totalled £5.3 billion. In 2017 the Salvator Mundi was sold for $450.3 million at Christie's, and which at that time was the highest price ever paid for a single painting at an auction. In 2018 the Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller realised the highest total for a Private Collection and became the most significant charitable auction ever, realising $835.1 million.

<i>In the Car</i> painting by Roy Lichtenstein

In the Car is a 1963 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. The smaller, older of the two versions of this painting formerly held the record for highest auction price for a Lichtenstein painting. The larger version has been in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh since 1980.

Happy Tears was acquired at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, in 1964. It did not change hands until it was sold again on November 13, 2002, at auction at Christie's in New York. [5] The owner lent this work for exhibition twice in the late 1960s. From November 1967 to May 1968, the exhibit made stops at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Tate Gallery (London), Kunsthalle Bern (Bern), and Kestner-Gesellschaft (Hannover). From September to November 1969, it was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. [5] It was then displayed at the Gagosian Gallery in New York City in 2008. [6] [7]

Kunsthalle Bern Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland

The Kunsthalle Bern is a Kunsthalle on the Helvetiaplatz in Bern, Switzerland.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Art museum in Manhattan, New York City

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, the artist Hilla von Rebay. It adopted its current name after the death of its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1952.

Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York; three in London; two in Paris; one each in Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong.

When the American independent comedy-drama film entitled Happy Tears , starring Parker Posey, Demi Moore, Rip Torn, Sebastian Roché, [8] and Ellen Barkin, which was written and directed by Roy Lichtenstein's son, Mitchell Lichtenstein, [9] was marketed, the film poster prominently included the image of his father's work. The film was named after this painting. [10]

An independent film, independent movie, indie film or indie movie, is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies. Independent films are sometimes distinguishable by their content and style and the way in which the filmmakers' personal artistic vision is realized. Usually, but not always, independent films are made with considerably lower budgets than major studio films.

Comedy-drama genre of theatre, film, and television

Comedy-drama or dramedy, is a genre in film and in television works in which plot elements are a combination of comedy and drama. It is a subgenre of contemporary tragicomedy. Comedy-drama is especially found in television programs and is considered a "hybrid genre".

<i>Happy Tears</i> 2009 film by Mitchell Lichtenstein

Happy Tears is an American independent comedy-drama film by Mitchell Lichtenstein. It stars Parker Posey, Demi Moore, Rip Torn, Sebastian Roché and Ellen Barkin. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival on 11 February 2009 and was released theatrically in the United States on 19 February 2010.

Details

After 1963, Lichtenstein's comics-based women "look hard, crisp, brittle, and uniformly modish in appearance, as if they all came out of the same pot of makeup." This particular example is one of several that is cropped so closely that the hair flows beyond the edges of the canvas. [11] The image is made more poignant by the cropping and positioning of the fingers. [12] The woman exudes a sense of relief over something that is outside the canvas. [13]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "$6 Million Is Paid For Lichtenstein" . Miami Herald . May 9, 1990. p. 5D. Retrieved May 17, 2012.
  2. ↑ "Auction record for pop artist". BBC News. November 15, 2002. Retrieved May 15, 2012.
  3. ↑ Melikian, Souren (November 10, 2005). "Record $22.4 million paid for a Rothko". The New York Times . Retrieved May 17, 2012.
  4. ↑ Kelly, Tara (November 11, 2010). "Lichtenstein Tops Warhol in Auction". Time . Retrieved May 17, 2012.
  5. 1 2 "Sale 1150 / Lot 30: Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997): Happy Tears". Christies. November 13, 2002. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  6. ↑ "Roy Lichtenstein at Gagosian: "Happy Tears" (1964)". The New York Times . June 10, 2008. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  7. ↑ Smith, Roberta (June 11, 2008). "The Painter Who Adored Women". The New York Times . Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  8. ↑ Leslie Felperin (February 11, 2009). "Happy Tears". Variety. Retrieved June 7, 2012.
  9. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (February 19, 2010). "The Many Shades of Family Dysfunction". The New York Times . Retrieved June 6, 2012.
  10. ↑ Anderson, Melissa (February 16, 2010). "Mitchell Lichtenstein Continues Bad Filmmaking with Happy Tears". Village Voice . Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  11. ↑ Coplans (ed.). p. 23. Very often a head is cropped to such an extent that the hair flows outside the borders of the format ...Missing or empty |title= (help)
  12. ↑ Coplans (ed.). p. 40. ... in Happy Tears (1964) the cropped fingers enhance the poignancy of the image.Missing or empty |title= (help)
  13. ↑ Tøjner, Poul Erik (2003). "I Know How You Must Feel ...". In Holm, Michael Juul; Poul Erik Tøjner; Martin Caiger-Smith (eds.). Roy Lichtenstein: All About Art. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. p. 19. ISBN   87-90029-85-2. There are close-up studies of melodramatic studies of melodramatic behavior like Frightened Girl or Happy Tears, both from 1964, but even here the narrative horizon is close at hand ... the happy girl radiates relief over something or someone that is no longer – or perhaps precisely is – out of the picture

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References

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