Roy Lichtenstein: Tokyo Brushstrokes

Streaming video - 2015

This film offers comprehensive documentation on a major public sculpture by the Pop master, Roy Lichtenstein. Just as he drew inspiration from cartoons and advertising to produce some of the most indelible images in contemporary painting, Lichtenstein became intrigued by a brushstroke he saw in a cartoon as a "symbol" of painting. He started "brushstroke paintings" in 1965 and began making sculptures in the late 1960s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that he embarked on a series of "monumental brushstroke sculptures" which became public works in Paris, Barcelona and, in 1994, Tokyo. In this film, we see Lichtenstein starting from a collection of brushstrokes he created for collages, selecting images, making ...models, meeting with the Japanese architect and curator, enlarging the drawings to some thirty feet, fabricating the sculptures in a foundry, and finally, installing the sculptures in Tokyo where all the work of preparation gives way to the mystery of creation. In the artist's own words, "It's just a road you start taking, and you keep correcting and changing until you get something that seems right...I don't really mind having art go from me to other people, even if I never see it again. I'm interested in doing it..." more