Sculpting With a smile

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 5, 1999 | by Stephen Goode

Roy Lichtenstein's pop-art Sculpture is whimsical, enchanting and surprisingly subtle. A new exhibition of his work turns out to be one of the brightest shows of the season.

Anyone familiar with contemporary American art knows Roy Lichtenstein's paintings inspired by comic books and the Sunday funnies -- his versions of Popeye and Olive Oyl, for example, or his famous Sweet Dreams, Baby!, which depicts a man getting socked in the jaw, the word "POW!" punctuating the blow. But fewer know that Lichtenstein, born in 1923, also was a sculptor who created works of increasing subtlety, skill and beauty right up to his death in 1997.

Now, Lichtenstein's sculpture is the subject of an exhibition at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art. The show, arranged by Lichtenstein expert and museum head curator Jack Cowart, collects the 80 sculptures Lichtenstein himself chose as representative of his work. Cowart added about 20 more pieces, along with a generous sampling of the artist's notebooks, drawings, maquettesand other materials intended to explain what he was up to.

They do. It was Lichtenstein's habit to begin by making pencil sketches of forms that interested him. The sketches evolved into tape and paper collages and then into full-scale wooden maquettes, or models. When the sculptures were cast, the metal was painted to match the maquettes.

Lichtenstein was an artist whose mastery of his medium grew with time. Visitors to the Corcoran will be able to watch the progress of Lichtenstein's craft from the mediocre works of the 1940s into the lyrical, lovely creations of the 1960s and afterward. The sculptures' beauty comes from the artist's ability to disguise the difficulties he encountered in making the works -- giving them an air of lightness, ease and fun.

In fact, viewers of the exhibition break into smiles when they walk through the rooms. It's not that the sculptures lack "depth" -- depth isn't what they're about. Rather, it was Lichtenstein's great gift to infuse the mundane with a glow and joy that reminds us that the quotidian can be fun, and that the best art isn't overtly didactic or laden with angst.

Cup and Saucer II of 1977, for example, is everybody's morning cup of coffee, with the rich coffee vapor rising from the sculpture -- like many of Lichtenstein's works, the cup and its aroma look far more three-dimensional than they are. The show also offers the playful Mermaid -- Sculpture Maquette (1978), with its palm tree and clouds supported by the sun's rays, just as the mermaid's form is supported by waves. And Lichtenstein's brightly colored Pop Art Car of 1977, a BMW whose surface the artist painted according to his own whim. (The automaker had a number of other artists, including Alexander Calder and Frank Stella, do BMWs in their own styles.) Lichtenstein decorated his auto with a rising sun and his trademark oversized benday dots.

Outside the Corcoran stands Lichtenstein's multicolored (teal, gray, white, black) 32-foot-tall Brushstroke Group (1988), which can be viewed with the 555-foot-tall Washington Monument, now sheathed in metal scaffolding from head to foot, in the background. It's an extraordinary and dramatic contrast and one that no doubt would have amused Lichtenstein.

The exhibition will be at the Corcoran until Sept. 30, after which it travels to Spain.