Roy Lichtenstein Chronology: the 1980s
1980
May. R.L.awarded honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Southampton College in
New York.
May 22-Sept 16. MoMA devotes entire museum to Pablo Picasso: A
Retrospective, organized by William Rubin and Dominique Bozo.
1980-81
Artists such as Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Haim Steinbach, and others begin
to directly copy other people's artworks and objects as the basis for their
own works.
1981
R.L.creates four Woman paintings using modified Abstract Expressionist
brushstroke based on de Kooning's third Woman series, from the late 1950s.
May 8-June 28. The Saint Louis Art Museum presents an exhibition of R.L.'s
paintings and sculptures from 1970-80, organized by Jack Cowart; the show
travels to museums in U.S., Europe, and Japan.
1982
R.L. begins to combine loosely painted brushstrokes with constructed
Abstract Expressionist brushstrokes in his paintings.
Begins series of paintings incorporating frame motif, and Paintings and Two
Paintings series, in which two contrasting images are ambiguously linked by
single or hybrid frame motif.
Neo-Expressionism is coined to refer to a group of painters in the U.S. and
Europe whose work features figural images and Expressionist-style brushwork,
including Georg Baselitz, Eric Fischl, David Salle, and Julian Schnabel.
"Neo-Geo" comes into fashion as a term describing geometric abstraction in
the works of such artists as Ross Bleckner, Peter Halley, Philip Taaffe, and
Meyer Vaisman.
Aug. 8-Sept. 19. R.L.'s 1961 paintings Look Mickey, Popeye, and Wimpy
(Tweet) exhibited for the first time, at the Parrish Art Museum
(Southampton, New York).
1983
Columbus, Ohio, purchases R.L.'s Brushstrokes in Flight for ground-floor
entrance to its International Airport.
Publication of Alloway's monograph devoted to R.L.'s work.
Dec. 3-11. Creates 90-foot-long mural on wall of Castelli's Greene Street
gallery space, a compilation of many motifs from his earlier works,
including the composition notebooks, Art Deco patterns, pyramids, mirrors,
still lifes, and Picassoesque figures. It is on view until January 14 (and
is then destroyed).
Dec. 8-Feb. 10, 1984. The New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York;
583 Broadway) presents Difference: On Representation and Sexuality, organized
by Kate Linker and Jane Weinstock.
1984
R.L. returns to New York part-time to live and work, in a loft at 105 East
29th Street.
Autumn. Begins maquette for Mural with Blue Brushstroke for the lobby of the
Equitable Tower in Manhattan.
Sept. 20-Dec. 2. The Whitney Museum presents Blam! The Explosion of Pop,
Minimalism, and Performance, organized by Barbara Haskell.
1985
In response to MoMA's inclusion of only 14 women out of 165 artists in its
1984 exhibition International Survey of Recent Paintings and Sculpture, a
group of artists who refer to themselves as the Guerrilla Girls begin to put
up posters in and around Manhattan protesting the art world's
underrepresentation of women and ethnic groups.
Nov. R.L. begins to paint Equitable mural; it takes almost six weeks to
complete.
1986
R.L.'s Salute to Painting, a large outdoor sculpture, is installed at the
Walker Art Center.
Spring. Creates Perfect and Imperfect paintings, featuring compositions of
pure geometric abstraction.
Autumn. The Kunstverein in Cologne presents The 1960s: Cologne's Emergence
as an Art Metropolis from the Happening to the Art Market, organized by Wulf
Herzogenrath and Gabriele Lueg.
Oct. 17-Feb. 16, 1987. The Brooklyn Museum presents The Machine Age in
America 1918-1941, organized by Dianne Pilgrim and Richard Guy Wilson, with
the assistance of Christopher Wilk; the show travels to three other U.S.
museums.
1987
Jan. ARTnews publishes Eleanor Heartney's article "Simulationism: The Hot
New Cool Art," featuring the work of Ashley Bickerton, Halley, Koons,
Annette Lemieux, and Alan McCollum.
The Public Art Fund in New York begins "Messages to the Public," a program
in which texts by artists such as Nancy Dwyer, Holzer, and Alfredo Jaar are
displayed on the Spectacolor Board in Times Square.
Feb. 22. Warhol dies.
March 15-June 2. MoMA mounts first major retrospective exhibition of R.L.'s
drawings, organized by Bernice Rose, the first show of drawings by a living
artist ever presented by the museum. The show travels to museums in the U.S.
and Europe.
1988
R.L. begins Reflections series in Southampton, incorporating quotations of
previously depicted comic strips (as well as some new ones), a motif that he
has not used since the 1960s.
His Coup De Pinceau (Brushstroke), a 31-foot-high aluminum sculpture, is
installed at the Caisse de Depots et Consignations in Paris.
Publication in Munich of the first monograph devoted to his pre-Pop works,
by Ernst A. Busche.
R.L. creates Plus and Minus paintings, a new series based on works by
Mondrian.
May. Sets up a studio and residence in a 1912 building on Washington Street
in Manhattan, a former iron foundry, which he renovates. Divides his time
between Southampton and Manhattan.
June. Receives an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from his alma mater, Ohio
State University.
Nov. 16-May 1989. R.L.'s Brushstroke, a 30-foot-high painted aluminum
sculpture created in 1987, is installed at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in
Manhattan as part of the Public Art Fund's project to install temporary
installations on public sites in New York.
Nov. 19-Dec. 19. Sonnabend Gallery in New York (420 West Broadway) presents
works by Koons, including expensively produced porcelain copies (in enlarged
versions) of kitsch statuettes.
1989
After a photographer sees Koons's 1988 sculpture String of Puppies
reproduced in the Los Angeles Times, he sues Koons for copying his
greeting-card photograph without permission.
March 15-May 15. R.L. stays at the American Academy in Rome as
artist-in-residence.
Spring. Travels to Tel Aviv to begin designing a 23-by-54-foot mural for the
entrance hall of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Summer. Begins work on Bauhaus Stairway; Large Version a mural for
I. M. Pei's new building for the Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills.
Nov. 7. R.L.'s Torpedo . . . Los! sells at Christie's auction house for a
record $5.5 million; he joins the ranks of Johns and de Kooning as the only
living artists whose works have commanded such a price.