Floor 4: 4th Floor Landing (Exhibition Landing): Exhibition introduction

Wall Text

1978
Magna and oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1979

In a series of paintings from the mid- to late 1970s, Lichtenstein explored the styles of various early twentieth-century art movements. Here he references the melting forms, irrational pairings, and dreamlike spaces of Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí. Rather than simply copy the source material, Lichtenstein fully transformed it into his signature comic-book-inspired bold outlines, flat planes of primary color, and imitation of the benday dots of commercial printing. Such quotations question traditional ideas of originality and point to how all art forms rely on shared visual languages.

This was the first major painting that Doris and Donald Fisher acquired (in 1979), and it effectively signaled the beginning of their collection.