Roy Lichtenstein: 1997 at the Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum has opened Roy Lichtenstein: 1997 on its third floor, a focused look at the last year of the artist's life. It runs through June 1, 2027, alongside the large retrospective Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, which opened October 11 on the fifth floor. Seen together, the two shows set a single year against a full career.

Lichtenstein (1923–1997) helped usher in the Pop art era with paintings drawn from comics and American consumer imagery. In 1997, at seventy-three, he was working at full pace. Beyond his studio painting, he was developing two mural commissions, several large-scale sculptures and a new series of prints.

The show concentrates on how his work was changing. His mostly primary palette gained highlights of mint green, turquoise, coral and cyan. He also began making images without his signature heavy black outlines, producing results that echo the look of the early digital age. At the same time he kept recycling motifs from his own work, such as pyramids and brushstrokes, and quoting Leonardo da Vinci and Henri Matisse, as he had throughout his career.

Lichtenstein fell ill in August 1997 and died the following month from complications of pneumonia, leaving many projects unfinished. Some were fabricated or completed after his death; others exist only as sketches. The exhibition gathers material related to these projects, much of it from the Whitney's own collection, to show the range of his late experimentation and his interest in how new technologies affect image making.

One work on view is Bellagio Hotel Mural: Still Life with Reclining Nude (Study), 1997, a collage and graphite study on board for the Las Vegas hotel commission. It combines a reclining nude figure, striped patterns, a flower pot and a window in bright planes of color.

The exhibition is organized by David Crane, Curatorial Research Associate, and Nakai Falcón, Curatorial Assistant, with support from David Bolger.