Ten Dollar Bill | |
---|---|
Artist | Roy Lichtenstein |
Year | 1956 |
Type | Proto-Pop art |
Dimensions | 14 cm× 28.6 cm(5.5 in× 11.3 in) |
Location | 25 editions |
Ten Dollar Bill (also referred to as The Dollar Bill) is a 1956 proto-pop art lithographic drawing by Roy Lichtenstein. Considered to be a combination of Americana art and cubism, the work is referred to as the beginning of Lichtenstein's work on pop art. Twenty-five editions of the lithograph were made by Lichtenstein, which were exhibited at several galleries. The piece is based on the design for the ten-dollar bill and has influenced several of Lichtenstein's later works. The picture has received generally favorable reception from critics, and is considered to be one of the best artistic portrayals of currency.
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.
Lithography is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by German author and actor Alois Senefelder as a cheap method of publishing theatrical works. Lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or other suitable material.
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.
Roy Lichtenstein began experimentation with printmaking in the late 1940s, well before its rise in popularity in the early 1960s. Lichtenstein created his first lithograph and woodcut artwork in 1948 while he was working on receiving his graduate degree in fine arts from Ohio State University. [1] [2] During the late 1940s, he created abstract paintings influenced by several artists, especially Pablo Picasso. From 1951 through early 1956, Lichtenstein painted what were considered by Gianni Mercurio to be "jagged, post-cubist" designs of famous American artworks. Many of his pieces reflected portraits of the American west, especially Native Americans and cowboys, as well as other themes, such as images of president George Washington. Lichtenstein referred to the period as his "American" series, and it was generally negatively received by critics. [3] [4] Lichtenstein also began experimenting in abstract expressionism, using the technique on several of his western painting designs. These were poorly received, however, being compared by one critic to "the doodling of a five-year old". [5]
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints that have an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print produced is considered an "original" work of art, and is correctly referred to as an "impression", not a "copy". Often impressions vary considerably, whether intentionally or not. The images on most prints are created for that purpose, perhaps with a preparatory study such as a drawing. A print that copies another work of art, especially a painting, is known as a "reproductive print".
The Ohio State University is a public research university in Columbus, Ohio. Founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and the ninth university in Ohio with the Morrill Act of 1862, the university was originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The college originally focused on various agricultural and mechanical disciplines but it developed into a comprehensive university under the direction of then-Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and in 1878 the Ohio General Assembly passed a law changing the name to "The Ohio State University". The main campus in Columbus, Ohio, has since grown into the third-largest university campus in the United States. The university also operates regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark, and Wooster.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces during the Spanish Civil War.
In 1956, Lichtenstein created twenty-five editions of Ten Dollar Bill and gave them to several private collectors and museums. [6] Starting in late October 1994, Ten Dollar Bill went on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., along with 89 of Lichtenstein's print artworks. [7] As a part of "The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein", the piece was displayed in Washington until January 8, 1995, before it was moved to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and put on display as part of that city's WinterFest '95, starting in mid-February of that year. [8] The tour moved in May to the Dallas Museum of Art, the final place it was displayed. [9] In December 1996, Lichtenstein and his wife donated 154 prints of his artwork to the National Gallery of Art for permanent keeping. This donation included several famous pieces, including Crying Girl , along with one of the editions of Ten Dollar Bill. [10]
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington; D.C.; the district or simply Washington, is the capital of the United States. Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, the first president of the United States and a Founding Father. As the seat of the United States federal government and several international organizations, Washington is an important world political capital. The city, located on the Potomac River bordering Maryland and Virginia, is one of the most visited cities in the world, with more than 20 million tourists annually.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits.
Another edition of Ten Dollar Bill was a part of the showcase opening exhibit "$how Me the Money: The Dollar As Art" for the American Numismatic Association Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This exhibit ran from October 4, 2002, until December 1. The lithograph was shown alongside work from Andy Warhol, Robert Dowd, and others. [11] Later, the work was made a part of the "Roy Lichtenstein Prints 1956-1997" collection, created entirely from the family gallery of Jordan Schnitzer. This tour began in June 2006 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and traveled across the country, [12] exhibiting in Las Vegas and Austin, Texas, among other places. The collection tour ended in 2008. [13] [14]
The American Numismatic Association (ANA) is a Colorado Springs, Colorado organization founded in 1891 by Dr. George F. Heath. It was formed to advance the knowledge of numismatics along educational, historical, and scientific lines, as well as to enhance interest in the hobby.
Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality that is the largest city by area in Colorado as well as the county seat and the most populous municipality of El Paso County, Colorado, United States. Colorado Springs is located in the east central portion of the state. It is situated on Fountain Creek and is located 60 miles (97 km) south of the Colorado State Capitol, Denver.
Andy Warhol was an American artist, director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Based on the design for the United States ten-dollar bill, Ten Dollar Bill measures 14 by 28.6 centimetres (5.5 by 11.3 in), and is drawn on sheets of paper with dimensions of 42.8 by 57.6 centimetres (16.9 by 22.7 in). [15] Classified as a proto-pop art work, the lithograph is considered by Janis Hendrickson to be "a Picasso-esque vision of what currency could look like", [12] as well as a "humorous" combination of "established art forms and Americana". [16] The drawing has the dimensions and shape of the ten-dollar bill, and completely covers the space needed, which has led to Lichtenstein being considered by Hendrickson as "almost seeming to be forging money". Hendrickson also describes the picture as being a "brand-new bill of tender and not a picture of one". [16] Mary Lee Corlett and Hendrickson noted that the "schematic head" of the medallion portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the prominent feature of the print, [17] "shows him as a planar, anteater-like being" with a "hair-do of the young Picasso" and eyes similar to a "figure by Francis Picabia". [18] According to Hendrickson, the exterior framing for The Dollar Bill was "simplified" from the original dollar design, appearing in "an imbalanced, drunken fashion". [4] The lithograph has full margins surrounding the main design, as well as the signature "rf Lichtenstein" and a number between one and 25, followed by /25, reflecting the print number of the specific work, as well as the years 1956/79. [19]
The United States ten-dollar bill ($10) is a denomination of U.S. currency. The obverse of the bill features the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, who served as the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. The reverse features the U.S. Treasury Building. All $10 bills issued today are Federal Reserve Notes.
Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman, politician, legal scholar, military commander, lawyer, banker and economist. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was an influential interpreter and promoter of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the founder of the nation's financial system, the Federalist Party, the United States Coast Guard, and the New York Post newspaper. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the main author of the economic policies of George Washington's administration. He took the lead in the Federal government's funding of the states' debts, as well as establishing a national bank, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. His vision included a strong central government led by a vigorous executive branch, a strong commercial economy, a national bank and support for manufacturing, and a strong military. Thomas Jefferson was his leading opponent, arguing for agrarianism and smaller government.
Francis Picabia was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the early major figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France. He was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.
Stephen Goode, a critic for Insight on the News , considered the piece to be the beginning of the Pop Art movement, labeling the work "a sign of things to come as other artists tackled common yet sacrosanct items, including the American flag". Lichtenstein, reflecting on his work, told reporters, "The idea of counterfeiting money always occurs to you when you do lithography". [20] Despite the assessments of critics, Lichtenstein, in an interview with Joan Marter, considered the work to be "a kind of Cubist dollar bill, not a Pop one". [21] He continued, "The fact it was a ten-dollar-bill at all [suggests that] there was some kind of Pop influence on me that I wasn't aware of so much. They're really not Pop at all. They're more funny, or humorous, or something". [21]
Insight on the News was an American conservative print and online news magazine. It was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate founded by Unification movement founder Sun Myung Moon, which at the time owned The Washington Times, United Press International, and several newspapers in Japan, South Korea, Africa, and South America. Insight's reporting sometimes resulted in journalistic controversy.
Joan Marter is an American academic, art critic and author. A 1968 graduate of Temple University, Marter is the "Distinguished Professor of Art History" at Rutgers University. Marter is the co-editor of the Woman's Art Journal, and the editor of The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art.
In the book Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-garde, 1957-1963, the piece was described as a "humorous, Cubist abstraction of the currency". [21] Discussing the piece after edition 10 was given to the National Gallery of Australia, critic Jaklyn Babington considered Lichtenstein's early works, including Ten Dollar Bill, to be "intriguing precursors to the artist’s subsequent development". She called it a "finely hand-drawn lithograph", and considered the work to be "the only hint of Lichtenstein’s imminent obsession with American popular culture". Babington finished by noting, "we see Lichtenstein first taking an everyday object, symbolic of the growing American consumer culture, as his subject matter". [22]
The year 1956 in art involved some significant events and new works.
Whaam! is a 1963 diptych painting by the American artist Roy Lichtenstein. It is one of the best-known works of pop art, and among Lichtenstein's most important paintings. Whaam! was first exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City in 1963, and purchased by the Tate Gallery, London, in 1966. It has been on permanent display at Tate Modern since 2006.
Mr. Bellamy is a 1961 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein in his comic book style of using Ben-Day dots and a text balloon. The work is regarded as one of the better examples of Lichtenstein's sense of humor. The work is held in the collection at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Girl with Ball is a 1961 painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is an oil on canvas Pop art work that is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, after being owned for several decades by Philip Johnson. It is one of Lichtenstein's earliest Pop art works and is known for its source, which is a newspaper ad that ran for several decades and which was among Lichtenstein's earliest works sourced from pop culture.
Torpedo...Los! is a 1963 pop art oil on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. When it was last sold in 1989, The New York Times described the work as "a comic-strip image of sea warfare". It formerly held the record for the highest auction price for a Lichtenstein work. Its 1989 sale helped finance the construction of the current home of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 1991.
Look Mickey is a 1961 oil on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Widely regarded as the bridge between his abstract expressionism and pop art works, it is notable for its ironic humor and aesthetic value as well as being the first example of the artist's employment of Ben-Day dots, speech balloons and comic imagery as a source for a painting. The painting was bequeathed to the Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art upon Lichtenstein's death.
Expressionist Head by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein is the name associated with several 1980s works of art. It is widely associated with a set of six identical sculptures but is also associated with a series of paintings.
Mural with Blue Brushstroke is a 1986 mural painting by Roy Lichtenstein that is located in the atrium of the Equitable Tower in New York City. The mural was the subject of the book Roy Lichtenstein: Mural With Blue Brushstroke. The mural includes highlights of Lichtenstein's earlier works.
Drowning Girl is a 1963 painting in oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas by Roy Lichtenstein. Using the conventions of comic book art, a thought bubble conveys the thoughts of the figure, while Ben-Day dots echo the effect of the mechanized printing process. It is one of the most representative paintings of the pop art movement, and part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection since 1971. The painting is considered among Lichtenstein's most significant works, perhaps on a par with his acclaimed 1963 diptych Whaam!. Drowning Girl has been described as a "masterpiece of melodrama", and is one of the artist's earliest images depicting women in tragic situations, a theme to which he often returned in the mid-1960s.
Brushstrokes series is the name for a series of paintings produced in 1965–66 by Roy Lichtenstein. It also refers to derivative sculptural representations of these paintings that were first made in the 1980s. In the series, the theme is art as a subject, but rather than reproduce masterpieces as he had starting in 1962, Lichtenstein depicted the gestural expressions of the painting brushstroke itself. The works in this series are linked to those produced by artists who use the gestural painting style of abstract expressionism made famous by Jackson Pollock, but differ from them due to their mechanically produced appearance. The series is considered a satire or parody of gestural painting by both Lichtenstein and his critics. After 1966, Lichtenstein incorporated this series into later motifs and themes of his work.
Artist's Studio—Look Mickey is a 1973 painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is one of five large-scale studio interior paintings in a series. The series is either referred to as the Artist's Studio series or more colloquially as the Studios and sometimes is described as excluding the other 1973 painting, reducing the series to four.
As I Opened Fire is a 1964 oil and magna on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. The work is hosted at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The source of the subject matter is Jerry Grandenetti's panels from "Wingmate of Doom," in All American Men of War, no. 90, DC Comics.
Portrait of Madame Cézanne is a 1962 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is a quotation of Erle Loran's diagram of one of Paul Cézanne's 27 portraits of his wife Marie-Hortense Fiquet, now in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. It was one of the works exhibited at Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. The work became controversial in that it led to a reconsideration of what constitutes art.
Blam is a 1962 painting by Roy Lichtenstein falling within the pop art idiom. It is one of his military comic book derivatives and was one of the works presented at his first solo exhibition. The work is in the collection at the Yale University Art Gallery.
Golf Ball is a 1962 painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is considered to fall within the art movement known as Pop art. It depicts "a single sphere with patterned, variously directional semi-circular grooves." The work is commonly associated with black-and-white Piet Mondrian works. It is one of the works that was presented at Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition and one that was critical to his early association with pop art. The work is commonly critiqued for its tension involving a three-dimensional representation in two dimensions with much discussion revolving around the choice of a background nearly without any perspective.
M-Maybe is a 1965 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is one of his romance comics-based works.
I Can See the Whole Room...and There's Nobody in It! is a 1961 painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is a painting of a man looking through a peephole. It formerly held the record for highest auction price for a Lichtenstein painting.
Crying Girl is the name of two different works by Roy Lichtenstein: a 1963 offset lithograph on lightweight, off-white wove paper and a 1964 porcelain enamel on steel.
A lithograph of a ten-dollar bill (p. 9) that he made in 1956 shows just how humorous this marriage of established art forms and Americana could become. Lichtenstein almost seems to be forging money; his lithograph is a brand-new bill of tender and not a picture of one. The rectangular shape of the paper upon which the image is printed has about the same proportions as the currency
However, the medallion portrait of President Hamilton shows him as a planar, anteater-like being with the hair-do of the young Picasso and a row of eyes like a figure by Francis Picabia