Executed in 1967, Roy Lichtenstein’s Modern Tapestry (Study) was created as the principal study for the artist’s first two recorded tapestries, both woven on a monumental scale in 1968. Marking a pivotal moment in Lichtenstein’s exploration of new mediums and artistic language, the present work stands as an outstanding example of his radical creative vision and meticulous compositional planning. Featuring his signature Ben Day dots and bold primary hues, the present work belongs to Lichtenstein’s celebrated Modern series that he began in the summer of 1966 with his poster for the Lincoln Center in New York, and which he continued to explore for the following half-decade. Inspired by the grandeur of New York’s Art Deco architecture, particularly the iconic Radio City Music Hall, Lichtenstein has constructed a composition that fractures and reassembles the visual language of Cubism. The result is a witty fusion of archetypal styles – parodying and championing the pervasive modernist aesthetics of the 1920s and 30s. Declaring an undaunted departure from the iconic imagery of his earlier Pop and comic-strip paintings, Lichtenstein reinterprets the modern metropolis of New York, characterised by stylised zigzags, chevrons and geometric shapes. Through his observant eye, Modern Tapestry (Study) is imbued with the opulence and technological optimism that accompanied the prosperity of American interwar technological progression.

Lichtenstein often conceptualised works with a pencil sketch, before beginning his more refined collages that employed printed and felt-tip pen coloured papers as the basis for his image matrix. These materials, with their rigid lines and flat layers, offered him the flexibility to experiment with composition and colour without the commitment of more permanent.mes dia. Annotations along the upper and lower border offer Lichtenstein’s specific instructions on his desired scale and colour tone, functioning as directives for the weavers. He specifies that the length of the carpet should span a monumental 12 feet, or 365 cm, and notes that the colours in the collage are “inaccurate,” advising the weavers to instead match the samples he has cut from colour swatches to achieve a vibrancy and chromatic richness deeper than the ink of his markers – specifications that all four weavers honoured in their production. Lichtenstein’s precise artistic control is wholly observable in the present work, even in the collaborative production of the tapestries. Known to produce works for nontraditional or unconventional purposes, Lichtenstein made only a handful of tapestries during his lifet.mes , and as such, the present work occupies a unique position in his wide-spanning oeuvre.

Functioning as a pastiche of Art Deco’s visual tropes, while also engaging with ancient history, the present work collages Lichtenstein’s felt-tip pen drawn motifs: a fragment of a brushstroke in the upper left quadrant self-references the artist’s then ongoing Brushstroke series (1965-71), while the ancient Greek Ionic column and painter’s palette speak to the eternal Hellenistic quest for balance and harmony; a blond ‘Classical head’ dominates the composition, presaging his later interest in the subject explored through his series of Head sculptures (1974-1991). Through the Heads, Lichtenstein sought to depict humans as machines possibly in response to the implicit trust placed in technological advancement that pervaded post-war America. Lichtenstein continues this subversive interrogation through the remainder of the collage, pasting together a sun, wings, an aeroplane, large pipes, and an industrial ship with smoke expelling from its funnels. This last group of motifs holds an underlying evocation of Streamline Moderne, a sleeker form of Art Deco which emphasised speed and progress through curved forms and smooth lines – a response to the Great Depression and the subsequent economic realities of the 1930s. Set against the rising sun – a new dawn – Lichenstein’s last set of motifs speak to the aerodynamic design of aeroplanes soaring above and the powerful curves of transatlantic ships cutting through waves. Lichtenstein has rendered an incongruous image from a panoply of historical allusions, where symbols are spliced together and yet, characteristically for the Modern series, they together weave stories of a utopian vision based on American idealism.

Characteristic of the Modern series, the present work functions as a rejection of monumental post-war abstraction, against the rationale of Abstract Expressionism in its decision to take subjects directly from what Louisiana Museum director Poul Erik Tøjner described as “the riotously proliferating image bank of contemporary American culture” (Poul Erik Tøjner, “I know how you must feel…,” in Roy Lichtenstein: All About Art, Esbjerg 2003, p. 28). Beyond his relationship to the immediate post-war American artistic landscape, there is a thread that can be traced from the present work further back, to that of European artistic traditions: Cubism, recalling the urbanistic compositions of Fernand Léger where forms undergo a process of metamorphosis from figuration to geometry; to Futurism and its celebration of industry and technology; and to the Le Corbusier influenced style of Purism based on a rational and mathematical approach to design. While the Abstract Expressionists focused on answering questions of colour and form, driven largely by emotional and spiritual factors, Lichtenstein’s similar concerns with form and composition were motivated by interrogating the American visual lexicon. Much like Léger’s key work The City (1919), Lichtenstein also brings together a framework of vivid hues and clashing shapes to produce a visual intensity that could rival the modern urban environment. The fractured composition of the present work would also act as a prelude to his later Modern works, with compositions that took influence from Picasso’s Cubist portraits of the late 1930s that employed his characteristic curvilinear geometry. With Modern Tapestry (Study), Lichtenstein expands the parameters of his Pop Art vernacular to the illustrious history of modern art history.

Modern Tapestry (Study) embodies Lichtenstein’s capability for progress, both within the history of art, and within his own celebrated oeuvre. Lichtenstein demonstrates an ability to reconfigure the language of painting by drawing upon symbolism that is distinctly rooted in the American cultural imagination. Though they appear seemingly disparate, the amalgamation of these motifs to construct a uniquely American composition remains one of Lichtenstein’s lasting legacies. The Modern series, exemplary in Modern Tapestry (Study) are a vivid comment on the decadence of the modern movement; its final accomplishment, however, according to curator Elisabeth Sussman was to be “vital presences of a new art” (Elisabeth Sussman, Roy Lichtenstein: The Modern Work, 1965-1970, Boston 1978, p. 14). Beyond this, his hallmark Ben Day dots, primary tones, and bold linework are instantly recognisable in the present work, encapsulating the enduring potency of the artist’s signature pop aesthetic and visual language. Lichtenstein’s oeuvre is predicated on a semiotic investigation of how systems of representation allow us to conceptualise and interpret the world around us.