ROY LICHTENSTEIN

Lichtenstein elevated the everyday into the extraordinary. Taking imagery from comic books and advertising, he took the imagery of contemporary existence, often derided and ignored by the public, and by placing on canvas through rigorous and arduous work of hand applying the Benday dots that were the byproduct of mass production from screen-printing, they became works of fine art. Here, the Alka-Seltzer becomes a motif of America, and of modern life in totality. Through graphic design, the glass rendered in high contrast black and white transforms itself from the mundane to the iconic, playing with ideas of renaissance art and religion, but bringing it down into the truth of the common man, depicting an image that feels at once familiar, and through his depiction, altogether foreign. Lichtenstein’s glass brims with excitement, it fizzes and pops with promise of the new, and by isolating the image, he grasps at the universal. 

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

Georgia O’Keeffe transformed desert planes into abstract color-fields, turned the flowers that grew in the heat into psychedelic explorations of form and movement, and skulls that dotted the landscapes into eerie motifs of the American Southwest. She was, and remains in the popular imagination, an artist so deeply tied to the land, and particularly that of her adopted New Mexico, that to imagine her is to do in the context of the great American landscape. So it is perhaps surprising that towards the end of her life, she turned her focus to the world above. Flying in planes around the world, she gazed out the window and saw new landscapes made from billowing clouds and horizons dancing in shades of blue made visible in the thin air. Gone are the earth tones of her seminal works, replaced by whites, blues, and peaches in calming expressions of scale. Sky Above Clouds IV was a significant undertaking, measuring more than twenty four feet across. It’s monumental size engulfs and invites us to stop and look, to lean our heads against the window and stare out into the expanse.

MARC CHAGALL

Chagall’s work is most often associated with vivid color, fantastic subjects rendered in lively brushstrokes, and playful romance. His work is spiritual, drawing on folklore and mythology to explore themes of love, celebration, and, in this case, persecution. White Crucifixion is the first in a series Chagall painted drawing an allegory between the persecution of Jesus Christ and the persecution of the Jewish People under the hands of the Nazis. The color that populated Chagall’s work has all but drained away and in its place are pale greys and empty whites - flashes of fire, and the dye of traditional Jewish robes seem faded, though hanging on in a world that has lost its beauty. Chagall casts Jesus as a Jewish martyr, and in doing so reframes the Christian ideology used by the Nazi Party against them, highlighting the hypocrisy and atrocity of the persecutors, In his depiction of the destruction of villages, violent attacks, and government sanctions, he breathes new life into the most told story of the Western World, finding a pertinent and essential relevance in a time when a caring God must have seemed so far away.