Year 1992 Created 1992 | Artist Roy Lichtenstein | |
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Type Oil and Magna on canvas Dimensions 320 cm × 420 cm (130 in × 170 in) Location Fitzhugh Farm,
Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection Similar Roy Lichtenstein artwork, Other artwork | ||
Bedroom at Arles is a 1992 oil and Magna on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein based on the Bedroom in Arles series of paintings by Vincent van Gogh. It is the only quotation of another painting that Lichtenstein did of an interior. It is located on the Fitzhugh Farm in Maryland in the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection.
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History
As of 18 August 2003, the painting was part of the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection housed at Fitzhugh Farm located an hour and a half north of Washington, DC. After Andrew Mellon and the original founders, the Meyerhoffs are the largest donors to the National Gallery of Art. The painting was on display at the National Gallery of art from October 1, 2009 through May 2, 2010. Drawings for the painting were donated by Lichtenstein's heirs and the Lichtenstein Foundation to the National Gallery of art in 2005.
Details
Lichtenstein has updated the original work by van Gogh with contemporary chairs and replaced casual shirts with businessmen's white shirts. He uses Ben-Day dots on one wall and pays homage to Expressionism's woodcuts, using wavy lines on the floor. The painting is part of Lichtenstein's early 1990s domestic interiors phase, and is supposedly based on the Art Institute of Chicago-housed second version rather than the other two versions in the series. Lichtenstein dramatically enlarged the scale of van Gogh's work from 72 cm x 90 cm to 320 cm × 420 cm (130 in × 170 in) and changed the tone from rustic to bourgeois, using Mies van der Rohe-inspired bright yellow Barcelona chairs. In fact, Lichtenstein supposedly worked from a 1993 Vincent van Gogh Calendar that included the Art Institute version.
Lichtenstein says that he cleaned up Van Gogh's version and jokes that it would be to Van Gogh's liking, although he notes that the vast contrast between his cartoonish style and the original is in and of itself humorous. He notes that his work is meticulous, while Van Gogh's was spontaneous. He also notes that his translation is no more debasing to the master than were Pablo Picasso's translations of Diego Velázquez.
Critical review
Carol Vogel of The New York Times described the work as a "humorous interpretation". Aleid Head describes the color selection, which includes acid yellow and bright turquoise, as garish. According to Diane Waldman of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the painting, which presents a pedestrian perspective, successfully distances his version from the original.