Roy Lichtenstein
September 2004
Along with Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein's name is synonymous with the bold brash images which defined sixties Pop Art. Unlike Warhol who employed commercial advertising in his imagery, Lichtenstein turned to the banal comic-strip stories of mass-American culture, using the commercial process of offset lithography to produce his prints. Lichtenstein had previously been a teacher and his early work reflected the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism. It was not until the early sixties that his style changed radically.
Printmaking has always been an important parallel activity to Lichtenstein's paintings with silkscreen printing being one of the artist's favourite methods. However, by the early eighties, some 'Pop' artists including Lichtenstein and Jim Dine, began to reject the commercial processes of lithography and screen-printing, preferring instead to experiment with more 'autographic' printmaking techniques like etching and woodcut.
In 1980 Lichtenstein began painting brushstroke still lifes with apples. A year later Artforum reproduced the artist's painting Red Apple (1981) on its cover and a study for Yellow Apple (1981) (1). Petersburg Press then approached Lichtenstein, expressing an interest in producing a Japanese woodcut series using the traditional Japanese method of printing. The result was Seven Apple Woodcuts (1982), Red Apple being one print from this portfolio. Film transparencies of the images were photographically transferred to blocks of cherry wood so that Lichtenstein could cut the image he wanted directly from the woodblock.
Though printed with water-based inks in the traditional Japanese manner (instead of using oil-based inks of the western tradition), each colour received four to six printings in order to disguise any evidence of wood grain. The colours were applied to the blocks with brushes and printed by hand several times on Japanese paper, in order to produce the desired effect.
The actual printing of the series was done in two cities, Cambridge, Massachusetts by Michael Berdan who had lives and trained in Japan and in Philadelphia by Shigemitsu Tsukagushi, master printer from Japan where he shared the proofing and edition printing with Diane Hunt.
1. Artforum, vol. 20, September 1981
Printmaking has always been an important parallel activity to Lichtenstein's paintings with silkscreen printing being one of the artist's favourite methods. However, by the early eighties, some 'Pop' artists including Lichtenstein and Jim Dine, began to reject the commercial processes of lithography and screen-printing, preferring instead to experiment with more 'autographic' printmaking techniques like etching and woodcut.
In 1980 Lichtenstein began painting brushstroke still lifes with apples. A year later Artforum reproduced the artist's painting Red Apple (1981) on its cover and a study for Yellow Apple (1981) (1). Petersburg Press then approached Lichtenstein, expressing an interest in producing a Japanese woodcut series using the traditional Japanese method of printing. The result was Seven Apple Woodcuts (1982), Red Apple being one print from this portfolio. Film transparencies of the images were photographically transferred to blocks of cherry wood so that Lichtenstein could cut the image he wanted directly from the woodblock.
Though printed with water-based inks in the traditional Japanese manner (instead of using oil-based inks of the western tradition), each colour received four to six printings in order to disguise any evidence of wood grain. The colours were applied to the blocks with brushes and printed by hand several times on Japanese paper, in order to produce the desired effect.
The actual printing of the series was done in two cities, Cambridge, Massachusetts by Michael Berdan who had lives and trained in Japan and in Philadelphia by Shigemitsu Tsukagushi, master printer from Japan where he shared the proofing and edition printing with Diane Hunt.
1. Artforum, vol. 20, September 1981
Jennifer Ramkalawon