SFX: Bells

NARRATOR:

SFMOMA curators Janet Bishop and Gary Garrels discuss Roy Lichtenstein’s triptych Rouen Cathedral, made in 1969.

JANET BISHOP:

Lichtenstein is one of the artists most closely associated with the Pop Art movement. And his favorite subjects were images that had been reproduced. He’s well known for his paintings based on cartoon characters, comic strips. And another one of his favorite subjects was images from art history. This is based on the series that Monet, the Impressionist artist, did in the late 19^th century of the Rouen Cathedral, where he was utterly fascinated by the different ways in which the cathedral looked at different times of day, under different light conditions, in different weather, different seasons.

And so Lichtenstein in this case made these paintings using his signature ben-day dot technique, which amplifies the look of mechanically reproduced images, through pixilation. And the optical effects that come about as a result of these different color combinations.

GARY GARRELS:

Monet was calling attention to the intrinsic nature of sight being a reflection of light. Now, Lichtenstein is looking at a different kind of idea about perception. The dot pattern is the pattern that’s used for photomechanical reproductions. We are not conscious of it when we see a photograph. The dots are so small, that we can’t see them without magnification. So in this case, Lichtenstein has magnified those dots that had been invisible, just as Monet allowed us to see, to become conscious of the light across the landscape.