Bull Profile Series

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Bull Profile Series

Artist Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923-1997)

Publisher Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl , Los Angeles

Printer Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl , Los Angeles

Place of OriginLos Angeles

Date1973

DimensionsH: 27 in. (68.6 cm); W: 35 in. (88.9 cm)

MediumLithographs, screenprints, linocuts.

ClassificationPrints

Credit LinePurchased with funds given by the Toledo Modern Art Group in honor of Julie Mellby and Robert F. Phillips and with Museum Purchase Funds

Object number

2004.15A-F

Not on View

DescriptionLichtenstein's Bull Profile Series humorously references both the artist's own pop and mass media style, and the history/development of modern art. Sequentially arranged, the six prints recapitulate the development from representation to abstraction, utilizing the image of a bull.

Label TextAll abstract artists try to tell you that what they do comes from nature, and I'm always trying to tell you that what I do is completely abstract. In his typical Pop Art tongue-in-cheek way, Roy Lichtenstein here treats one of the overriding subjects of 20th-century art: the relationship between representation and abstraction. The image of a bull (itself simplified into a kind of icon) is deconstructed to its basic form and structure until it becomes purely geometrical. Beginning in the early 1960s, Lichtenstein was one of the pioneers of using and adapting the aesthetic and techniques of commercial art like advertising and comic strips.