Lot127 N11733 Roy Lichtenstein Coup de Chapeau II
“Coup de Chapeau II, 1996, presents an equally extreme vertical but part of the subject seems missing. We have a highly charged cartoon energy arc passing through a base dust cloud, then it flows up into a landed punch or explosion graphic… But this blow is now so forceful that only the presumed wearer’s hat remains in the sculpture.”
Bursting into three-dimensional space, Coup de Chapeau II encapsulates the iconic graphic power of Roy Lichtenstein’s instantly recognizable Pop idiom. Here, Lichtenstein harkens back to the explosive force and comic-book characters of his earliest Pop paintings of the 1960s. The cartoon-like hat, resembling those worn by Lichtenstein’s early comic book heroes, soars into the air, creating a swelling cloud in its wake and leaving the hat wearer in its dust. Coup de Chapeau II and its smaller sister sculpture, Coup de Chapeau I, operate as three-dimensional extensions of the artist’s final self-portrait, Coup de Chapeau (Self-Portrait), and its study Coup de Chapeau (Self-Portrait) (Study) from 1995-6. In his earlier two-dimensional works, the artist represents himself stunned by a flying hat soaring into the air—a symbol for the whiplash of the oncoming new millennium. In Coup de Chapeau II, Lichtenstein has isolated the airborne yellow hat and the trace of its motion, causing the viewer to ponder who wore the hat and the source of its inexplicable flight. Coup de Chapeau II is among the most celebrated of Lichtenstein’s sculptures, having been included in numerous exhibitions, including most recently the Albertina in Vienna for Roy Lichtenstein: A Centennial Exhibition.
Reaching nearly 90 inches, Lichtenstein’s Coup de Chapeau II epitomizes Lichtenstein’s transformation of his two-dimensional Pop idiom into sculpture. Here, Lichtenstein propels his signature graphic vernacular, including bold primary colors and strong lines, into three-dimensional space. Beams of yellow, blue, white and black emerge from a billowing cloud in a cartoon arc. Evoking the artist’s famed wall sculptures and explosion paintings of the early 60s, a crimson explosion bursts at the apex of the sculpture’s arc as if erupting with energy. Then thrust into the air, Lichtenstein’s yellow cap is launched above the explosion, tilted on its brim in mid-rotation. Lichtenstein accentuates this spinning effect by doubling the brim of the hat, creating the illusion that the hat is still in motion. Here, the French phrase “Coup de Chapeau” takes on multiple meanings: “The term coup de chapeau is defined as a salute, but coup alone is a blow, stroke, or hit, with chapeau being hat. To give un coup de chapeau means to bow. While Lichtenstein thought of his phrase as ‘a tip of the hat.’” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art (and traveling), Roy Lichtenstein: Sculpture and Drawings, 1998-2000, p. 21)
Coup de Chapeau II operates as an important counterpart to Lichtenstein’s final and exceedingly rare self-portraits. The work reveals a highly personal revelation for the artist of his own grappling with the forces of change in a rapidly evolving society. The present sculpture was preceded by Coup de Chapeau (Self-Portrait) and its study Coup de Chapeau (Self-Portrait) (Study)—two rare works in which the artist depicts himself, stunned, by an airborne yellow cap. In the work on paper, Lichtenstein inscribes next to his image: “Self Portrait (Man hit by the 21st Century).” The hat illustrated in the aforementioned works and Coup de Chapeau II evokes the cap worn by Dagwood Bumstead in the popular comic “Blondie.” Methodical and iterative, Lichtenstein’s practice is one of sustained engagement across media. In many cases, the artist pursues a subject through a selection of different.mes dia such as drawing, collage, painting, sculpture and printmaking. Considering Coup de Chapeau II in dialogue with the related work on paper and painting illuminates the role of the artist in its narrative. Here, despite the omission of any human figure, Lichtenstein realizes a form of self-portraiture, exploring his own response to the advent of the new century. Harkening back to his earliest comic-book paintings, Lichtenstein’s Coup de Chapeau II is both a pure fulfillment of Pop and a reflection on the arc of his career. Like much of Lichtenstein’s oeuvre, these works are referential to his own practice and art history: “These so-called self-portraits incorporate aspects of René Magritte’s Surreal frontal and spectral images, Lucas Samaras’s visionary pastel heads, and Lichtenstein’s own painted self-portraits from as early as 1947 through works of the 1970s.” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art (and traveling), Roy Lichtenstein: Sculpture and Drawings, 1998-2000, p. 21)
“Shortly before his death he finished Coup de Chapeau I and II. In these pieces all his ironic and easy-going spirit returns to a set of sculptures in which the character wearing hats has disappeared, only to leave room for the unreal trace of the blow that separates the hat and man. The trace left by Roy Lichtenstein in this century is, however, real and unerasable. His work enabled art history to take other routes and move away from the illusory idea of linearity.”
Executed in 1996 in the last year of Lichtenstein’s career, Coup de Chapeau II is a masterful example of the artist’s continued reinvestigation of art history and his own practice. From the early 1960s, Lichtenstein was guided by an investigation of “art about art,” deconstructing the arbitrary boundaries between “high” and “low” through a system of signs and symbols associated with mass production and comic books. Lichtenstein developed his signature visual vernacular, creating paintings inspired by comic-book caricatures and some of the most salient iconography from the art historical canon. As Lichtenstein’s career progressed, he eventually turned to his own work as a source of inspiration. In the present work, Lichtenstein quotes from the iconography that characterized his earliest Pop paintings, bringing it into three-dimensional space. The soaring hat resembles those in the compositions of some of his most celebrated early paintings, such as Mr. Bellamy (1961) and Kiss with Cloud (1964), while the explosion in its wake harkens back to the artist’s iconic explosion sculptures and war paintings of the 1960s, like Whaam! (1963) and Varoom! (1963).
From Lichtenstein’s earliest explorations with three-dimensionality in the mid-1940s through the end of his life in 1997, sculpture occupied a central place in the artist’s practice. Across media and form, Lichtenstein operates to blur the boundaries and arbitrary parameters of their qualities. He probes the semiotics of space and perspective, volume and mass through his distinctive visual lexicon of color and line. Nowhere is Lichtenstein’s playful investigation of form and representation more apparent than in his sculptures like Coup de Chapeau II.
