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Period: to
Pop Art Movement
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Flag
Flag is an encaustic painting by the American artist Jasper Johns. Created when Johns was 24, two years after he was discharged from the US Army, this painting was the first of many works that Johns has said were inspired by a dream of the U.S. flag in 1954. It is arguably the painting for which Johns is best known. -
Target with Plaster Casts
Targets by Johns, feature a depiction of an actual target that is, for all practical purposes, utterly interchangeable with the real thing. The target allowed Johns to explore a familiar two-dimensional object, with its simple internal geometric structure and a complex symbolic meaning, while the “plaster casts” on the top part of the artwork represent bits of the human body (foot, nose, face, hand, ear, penis, heart, breast, and lungs) set in their boxes. -
Three Flags
Once again created by Jasper Johns, the work comprises three canvases painted with hot wax. The three canvases form a tiered arrangement, with each canvas approximately 25% smaller than the one below, thereby creating a three-dimensional work. In a sense, the perspective is reversed, with the smaller paintings projecting out towards the viewer. -
Numbers in Color
Jasper Johns let the process of painting the number sequence dictate the structure of the painting. This allowed him to concentrate on the qualities of the paint itself, exploring colour and thickness. The result is a highly abstract structure, but one rooted firmly in the real world. -
President Elect
This large-scale work exemplifies James Rosenquist's technique of combining discrete images through techniques of blending, interlocking, and juxtaposition, as well as his skill at including political and social commentary using popular imagery. Implementing images that included President John F. Kennedy and a yellow Chevrolet, he created the collage using images cut from their original context that he adapted to fit a monumental scale in a photo-realistic style. -
Campbell's Soup Can
Regarded as a famous piece from arguably the most famous creator of pop art, Andy Warhol can be credited for establishing the classic Campbell's soup can as an iconographic pop art emblem, but he never would would have appropriated its imagery had it not already been iconic in its own right. The reason he painted soup cans was simply because he liked soup, but he merely painted things he held close to heart such as Coca-Cola, money, movie stars, and even dietary supplements. -
Girl with Ball
This oil-on-canvas painting from Lichtenstein significantly alters the original source and is considered exemplary of his other works that exaggerate the mechanically produced appearance although the result of his painterly work. It is an enduring depiction of the contemporary beauty figure. -
Masterpiece
Using his classic Ben-Day dots and narrative content contained within a speech balloon, Masterpiece is regarded as a tongue in cheek joke that reflects upon Lichtenstein's own career. In retrospect, the joke is considered "witty and yet eerily prescient" because it portended some of the future turmoil that the artist would endure. -
3 Coke Bottles
During Warhol's early career, he experimented with many different confectionary items, and this was the first of many produced artworks to be inspired by Coca-Cola, which was one of his favorite drinks. It soon started to spawn a wide array of artwork connected to the product. -
Whaam!
Based on an image Lichtenstein found in a 1962 DC comic, All American Men of War, Whaam! is regarded for the temporal, spatial and psychological integration of its two panels. The painting's title is integral to the action and impact of the picture, and displayed in large onomatopoeia (the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named) in the right panel. -
Hopeless
Hopeless is a typical example of Lichtenstein's Romance comics with its teary-eyed face and dejected woman filling the majority of the canvas. Lichtenstein made modifications to the original source using vibrant colors and bold and wavy lines to intensify the emotion of the scene. The work is considered a significant advancement in Lichtenstein's "form, color, composition, and overall power of image". -
Drowning Girl
The best example of intertextuality within Lichtenstein's body of work consists of this work in particular which depicts a crying woman who appears to be in the process of being swallowed by turbulent waves. Despite her immanent death, her focus is solely on her sorrow, making for one of the most significant works in Lichtenstein's career. -
Eight Elvises
This silkscreen painting certainly showed Warhol's infatuation with Elvis Presley, the King of Rock n Roll. In 2008, it was sold by Annibale Berlingieri for $100 million to a private buyer, making the painting the most valuable work by Andy Warhol. -
Anxious Girl
The present lot conveys all the visual and psychological power of its companion work, yet its intimate scale seems to enhance the intensity of the subject's troubled gaze. -
Shot Marilyns
The Shot Marilyns is a work of art produced in 1964 by Andy Warhol. It consists of four canvases, each a square measuring 40 inches and each consisting of a painting of Marilyn Monroe, each shot through in the forehead by a single bullet. -
Girl in Mirror
Girl in Mirror uses Ben-Day dots like many of Lichtenstein's other works, but it was inspired by the hard reflective finish of signs in the New York City Subway system and, in turn, they inspired his subsequent ceramic head works. 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. -
M-Maybe
M-Maybe depicts an attractive girl, which is typical of Lichtenstein’s romance comics adaptations. As is a common theme among these works, she awaits a man in a vague but urban setting. Lichtenstein had a desire that his paintings look as mechanical as possible although he was a painter. -
Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London
In this postcard collage Oldenburg raised an everyday cosmetic item to a monumental scale. Made during his stay in London at the height of the 'swinging sixties', it embodies the popular, expendable, sexy imagery of Pop art. -
Beverly Hills Housewife
The Beverley Hills Housewife is a painting by the British artist David Hockney. This picture is seen to be an homage to the people who viewed women as nothing but an individual who cooked, cleaned and looked after the kids otherwise known as a housewife. -
American Collectors
David Hockney uses the subjects, the objects, and his own style to recreate a mundane scene that invites both strangers and friends of the couple to ponder their dualistic home that stands as both a residence and gallery.