“Roy Lichtenstein Prints 1956-97,” the large survey at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, is a splendid show that will be enjoyed for reasons other than those prospective viewers might initially give.
The more than 75 works from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation indicate that Lichtenstein was much more than the ironist or parodist that early audiences of Pop Art conceived him to be. He created works in almost every historical genre of art, from portraits to still lifes and landscapes, interiors and abstractions, and he approached them in prints as well as paintings, having made more than 350 print editions over the course of 50 years.
Moreover, printmaking was ideal for communicating a vision that was itself based on cartoons and commercial reproductions. The flat, bold color along with enlarged Ben-Day dots actually have as great an impact in Lichtenstein’s prints as in his paintings, so there is never a sense of a come-down or of an artist working in a commercially viable but secondary medium.
In fact, Lichtenstein produced more than 30 print editions in a style influenced by Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee more than a decade before his Pop Art. So he had greater technical knowledge of printmaking than most of his contemporaries, and the complexity of his graphics continued to increase, involving more print runs, colors and media as time went on.
Then, too, you never get the sense of him snidely elevating some things while bringing low others. Instead, Lichtenstein conveys genuine interest, even affection, whether he performs variations on a panel from a cartoon strip or Claude Monet series paintings or details of architecture or brush strokes. You feel he is like those photographers who shot unexpected subjects just to see how they’d look in pictures: The images pay off less because of daring or transgression than because of the loveliness of an artist working with heightened curiosity.
The ambitiousness and sheer size of some of the prints on show will be astounding on first encounter, and viewers making an initial acquaintance will want to watch “Roy Lichtenstein: The Art of the Graphic Image,” the 25-minute film by Frank Cantor that captures the artist working in what turned out to be his last decade.
Unlike last year’s Chicago exhibition of paintings by Andy Warhol, which forced an image of gravity and seriousness, the present show has it as a matter of course, and it looks wholly natural.
As a bonus, the exhibition is complemented by an excellent 96-page catalog, in which three essayists manage to say a great deal without artificial inflation, and a six-page brochure that deftly introduces the artist as well as outlines the heightened climate of printmaking to which he contributed.
At 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, 847-491-4000.
Just after the start of the American folly in Iraq appeared a number of exhibitions on the theme of war. Since none of the pieces included in the shows was in favor of conflict, they all can be said to have been indebted to some of the most powerful anti-war artworks ever produced: Francisco Goya’s aquatint etchings, which when published 35 years after his death were collectively called “The Disasters of War.”
Perhaps only Otto Dix’s “The War” portfolio treating World War I approaches Goya’s achievement, but artists have never stopped trying. So the DePaul University Museum has brought together 56 of Goya’s prints with 11 by the bad boys of contemporary British art, the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, who clearly were inspired by the Spanish master.
This was a first-rate idea that proved a disappointment when carried out. Part of it is owing to the numbers, as there are not enough prints shown by the Chapmans — they made 83 — to allow their vision a place of equality. But the larger part is owing to how their update looks only small and, at best, childlike whereas Goya’s remains large and searing.
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All the Chapman pieces, of etching, drypoint and aquatint, were created over 28 days in a flurry of activity. They are, however, responses to Goya, not the actuality of war, and this is a difference that tells. They can lapse into sensational puerility — one print shown presents a hapless creature with a penis for a nose and a vagina for a mouth — because however much they were caught up in the spirit of Goya’s “Disasters,” it was for them an exercise pursued in a time of peace.
Goya, on the other hand, responded to the French invasion of his native Spain, the famine in Madrid and visions that haunted him of the future (under the repressive government of Ferdinand VII, once his power was restored). As a liberal he initially welcomed Joseph Bonaparte, but soon was repelled by his savagery and the corruption that followed the French withdrawal. That he knew the incendiary nature of his responses was proven by his decision not to publish them, even when business became brisk among other printmakers commemorating the war.
They still arouse the feeling they do because of how different they are from earlier treatments of war. They have no pageantry, splendor or anything resembling propaganda. Some do not even have a clear enemy or focus, as the source of the terror is barely seen, though the consequences engulf everyone. War is here a condition of the everyday. It falls like night. And when it does, it obliterates not only the living but also the legacy of the past, as Goya shows when he makes reference to the Apollo Belvedere, one of the greatest sculptures of antiquity.
At 2350 N. Kenmore Ave., 773-325-7506.
‘Roy Lichtenstein Prints 1956-97’ through June 17 at Block Museum of Art
‘Disasters of War from Goya to the Chapman Brothers’ through June 15 at DePaul University Museum
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