Torpedo...Los!: Difference between revisions

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According to the Lichtenstein Foundation website, ''Torpedo...Los!'' was part of Lichtenstein's second solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery of September 28 &mdash; October 24, 1963, that included ''[[Drowning Girl]]'', ''[[Baseball Manager]]'', and ''[[Whaam!]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/frames.htm|title=Chronology|accessdate=2012-05-09|publisher=Roy Lichtenstein Foundation}}</ref> On November 7, 1989, ''Torpedo...Los!'' sold at [[Christie's]] for $5.5 million (US${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|5.5|1989|r=1}}}} million in {{CURRENTYEAR}} dollars{{inflation-fn|US}}) to Zurich dealer Thomas Ammann, which was a record for a [[work of art]] by Lichtenstein.<ref name=AdKWSARa$M>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/09/arts/a-de-kooning-work-sets-a-record-at-20.7-million.html|title=A de Kooning Work Sets A Record at $20.7 Million|accessdate=2012-05-09|date=1989-11-09|work=[[The New York Times]]|author=Reif, Rita}}</ref> The sale was described as the "highpoint" of a night in which Christie's achieved more than double the total sales prices of any other [[contemporary art]] auction up to that date.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/06/arts/art-prices-are-still-astonishing-but-fever-seems-to-be-cooling.html|title=Art Prices Are Still Astonishing, But Fever Seems to Be Cooling|accessdate=2012-05-09|date=1989-12-06|work=[[The New York Times]]|author=Reif, Rita}}</ref> The seller of the work was Beatrice C. Mayer, the widow of [[Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago]] founder and board member Robert B. Mayer as well as daughter of [[Sara Lee Corporation]] founder [[Nathan Cummings]].<ref name=A>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/03/arts/auctions.html|title=Auctions|accessdate=2012-05-09|date=1989-11-03|work=[[The New York Times]]|author=Reif, Rita}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:NewsBank:CSTB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0EB37331AD0EB121&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=0D0CB579A3BDA420|title=Donors cite need for new art museum|accessdate=2009-08-23|date=1991-01-29|work=[[Chicago Sun-Times]]|author=Gillespie, Mary}}</ref> ''Torpedo...Los!'' was expected to sell for $3 to 4 million at the time.<ref name=A/> Prior to the sale the work was part of the Robert B. Mayer Memorial Loan Program and was exhibited at colleges and museums.<ref name=A/> In 1991, Mayer became one of the key benefactors of the new Museum of Contemporary Art Building.<ref name=Tesoanam>{{cite web|url=http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:NewsBank:CSTB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0EB37331A6F45D82&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=0D0CB579A3BDA420|title=Trustees endow success of a new art museum|accessdate=2009-08-23|date=1991-01-29|work=[[Chicago Sun-Times]]|author=Gillespie, Mary}}</ref>

Although most of Lichtenstein's war imagery depicts American war themes, this depicts "...a scarred German submarine captain at a battle station..."<ref>{{cite book|title=Roy Lichtenstein|publisher=[[Praeger Publishers]]|editor=Coplans, John|chapter=|date=1972|page=40|quote=With the exception of a solitary painting of sea warfare, ''Torpedo...Los!'' (1963), which depicts a scarred German submarine captain at a battle station, all the war paintings are linked by the depiction of a generalized American subject obvious to the viewer.}}</ref> He is a [[World War II]] [[Nazi]] commander. The manner of depiction with the commander's face pressed against the [[periscope]] reflects fusions of industrial art of the 1920s and 1930s.<ref name=TPTLmF>{{cite book|title=Roy Lichtenstein|author=Hendrickson, Janis|publisher=[[Benedikt Taschen]]|date=1993|isbn=3-8228-9633-0|page=38|chapter=The Pictures That Lichtenstein Made Famous, or The Pictures That Made Lichtenstein Famous|quote=The Nazi commander of ''Torpedo...Los!'' (Ill. p. 20)(1963) refers more definitely to the Second World War. In the superficial world of the comics, only an enemy could have a scar and eyebrows like that. As in so many of Lichtenstein's paintings showing human comic figures, the face has been blown up to an overwhelming size and become a main element in the composition. Perhaps the way it has been pressed up against the telescope, uniting man and machine, was meant to recall such fusions in the industrially-orientd oriented art of the twenties and thirties.}}</ref> By enlarging the face of the captain relative to the entire field, Lichtenstein makes him more prominent than in the source.<ref name=RLDW/> He retained the source's "clumsiness" of the secondary figure and replaced the dialogue with a much shorter "cryptic command".<ref name=RLDW/> The humorous aspect of this in 1963 is in part due to its temporal displacement referring back to World War II during the much later period of the [[Cold War]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Pollack and After: The Critical Debate|edition=second|editor=Frascina, Francis|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-415-22867-0|date=2000|page=141|quote=Lichtenstein's ''Torpedo...Los'', cribbed from a comic about a Nazi sub commander, was placed with jokey topicality in the era of Polaris submarines. Here was an art that could shrewdly feed on the Second World War while keeping present, and yet assuaging, the fears of the Cold War.}}</ref> The styling of the balloon content, especially that of the large font characters, is complemented by or complementary to the other traditional visual content of the painting.<ref>{{cite web|title=Pop Art: A Critical History|editor=Madoff, Steven Henry|isbn=0-520-21018-2|date=1997|page=205|publisher=[[University of California Press]]|chapter=Focus: The Major Artists|quote=''Torpedo-Los!'' displays again the artist's awareness of the balloon as an essential factor in the comic allusion. Eliminating the ponderous balloons in the original panel, he adopted his own from a subsequent panel in the same sequence. With respect to the general masses of the composition the balloon's exclusion may not have been detrimental. But in this case the dialogue itself is ingeniously interwoven into the general design. The three alphabetic characters comprising the word "LOS" are clues to the composition's organic design...the dialogue enclosed within the balloon is visually exploited in the interests of compositional structure.}}</ref>

==Notes==