In honor of the 100th anniversary of Roy Lichtenstein this year the Whitney Museum of American Art announced today that it will organize a retrospective of the greats of Pop art in 2026.
The news coincides with the unveiling of a new set of U.S. Postal Service stamps commemorating five of Lichtenstein’s works.
The artist first developed his signature style, painting copies of comic book scenes that mimicked the Ben-Day dot-printing process used in the medium, in 1961. His elevation from mass media into the beautiful -arts, with its uncanny machine quality, became one of the founding elements of the Pop Art movement, catapulting Lichtenstein to international fame.
“Few artists in history crystallize artistic and social currents within their work as perfectly as Lichtenstein,” said Scott Rothkopf, the museum’s chief curator and future director, today. “He understood something deep in both the optimism and the darker side of post-war American culture, and with great conciseness he gave shape to them in his Benday stripes and dots. Even if the printing processes he imitated are almost unrecognizable today, his sense of operation, circulation and duplication of images seems perfectly in tune with our digital age.
Roy Lichtenstein stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, designed by USPS Art Director Derry Noyes, features the 1965 sculpture Standing Explosion (Red) the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; the canvas of 1966 Modern painting I from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Los Angeles; the 1972 painting Still Life With Crystal Bowl the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; and two paintings from private collections, still life with goldfish (1972) and Portrait of a woman (1979). Courtesy of USPS.
Designed by USPS Art Director Derry Noyes, the stamps recreate the 1965 sculpture Standing explosion (red), at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the canvas of 1966 Modern painting I at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation; the 1972 painting Still Life With Crystal Bowl at the Whitney; and two paintings from private collections, still life with goldfish (1972) and painting Portrait of a woman (1979).
“I have always been a fan of the post office. I think it’s an amazing organization. He sends mail everywhere, not just in this country, but all over the world, ”said Dorothy Lichtenstein, the artist’s widow and president of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, in a statement. “I think it’s an honor, and more people will find out about Roy. I think he would have really liked [the stamps].”
The Whitney began collecting Lichtenstein’s work – it now owns 443 objects by the artist – in 1966, the year after its first appearance in the Whitney Annual, the precursor to today’s prestigious Whitney Biennial. Among the artist’s many honors are election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York and the National Medal of Arts, awarded by President Bill Clinton in 1995, just two years before his death in pneumonia in 1997, at just 73 years old.
That the backbone of Lichtenstein’s success was the appropriation of other artists’ work was widely accepted by the art world during his lifetime, but inspired accusations of plagiarism in recent years, especially from the comic artist community.
The stamps come in a sheet of 20 which also includes a photograph of Bob Adelman of Lichtenstein posing with a model for the 1983 sculpture Airbrush strokes.
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