Skip to Content
Closed today, next open Thursday. Closed today, next open Thursday.

Mirror #3 (Six Panels)

Abstract work of numerous vertical lines dividing a horizontal image, making rectangular shapes in black, white, yellow, and white with tiny black dots forming the effect of a gray gradient. Many of the shapes have diagonal white bands running irregularly across them, evoking reflective surfaces of different angles.
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Image actions

  • Abstract work of numerous vertical lines dividing a horizontal image, making rectangular shapes in black, white, yellow, and white with tiny black dots forming the effect of a gray gradient. Many of the shapes have diagonal white bands running irregularly across them, evoking reflective surfaces of different angles.

Date:

1971

Artist:

Roy Lichtenstein
American, 1923-1997

About this artwork

Roy Lichtenstein was perhaps the most consistently inventive artist among the group of individuals who rose to prominence as the progenitors of American Pop Art in the early 1960s. Throughout his career, he explored the functional simplicity and visual clichés that characterize processes of mechanical reproduction. Initially preoccupied with the visual immediacy of cartoons, Lichtenstein embraced the technical constraints of graphic illustration, applying them to painting. Mirror #3 (Six Panels) is among the most ambitious, summarizing canvases in the artist’s Mirror series (1969–72). Like his famous cartoon images, these paintings were inspired by popular culture sources. Studying illustrations from furniture and glass-company catalogues, Lichtenstein familiarized himself with pictorial conventions used to represent reflection. The work also references the long tradition of rendering mirrors in art, a theme that was explored by artists from Diego Velázquez to Pablo Picasso. Lichtenstein was perhaps most invested, however, in broadly generic questions of surface and support. Only stylized gleam and shadow are reflected in his mirror; thus, the puzzling, fragmented, even conceptual abstraction becomes the real subject of the work.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Roy Lichtenstein

Title

Mirror #3 (Six Panels)

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1971

Medium

Oil and Magna on two sets of three joined canvases

Dimensions

305 × 335 cm (120 × 132 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the Anstiss and Ronald Krueck Collection, facilitated by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation

Reference Number

2005.18

Copyright

© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share