Landscape 5

Roy Lichtenstein

1967

screenprint on pink moiré Rowlux with blue moiré Rowlux collage, mounted on board

15" x 17 3/4"

Landscape 5 is printed on Rowlux—an iridescent plastic that was engineered to improve visibility of roadside signs at night. Lichtenstein said the material was “ready-made nature,” its “brilliant reflections like real water reflecting real sunlight.” For the artist, Rowlux was “the perfect quotidian way of producing the appearance of a landscape that seemed, on one hand, to be more real because it moved, but obviously less real because you knew it was made of a material that produced this particular trick.” Much like the advertisements of the 1960s with their shiny, packaged promise of happiness and ease of life, Lichtenstein entices the viewer to admire his plastic and printed sunset over the water. The consumer, and in this case the viewer, may be aware of the falsehood of the image, yet choose to be deceived out of sheer pleasure.

Credit

Museum Purchase Fund