Red Lamps, 1990: Print published 1991, by Roy Lichtenstein

  • Red Lamps, 1990, published 1991 by Roy Lichtenstein

    Red Lamps, 1990, published 1991

    Lithograph, woodcut, and screenprint on 4-ply Paper Technologies, Inc., Museum Board

    Sheet: 145.9 x 200 cm

    Edition of 60; plus 14 AP, 1 RTP, 2 PP, 3 GEL, 3 SP, 1 C

    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

    BACK TO: INTERIOR SERIES

     

    Roy Lichtenstein's Red Lamps, 1990, one of the Interior scenes, presents a domestic interior rendered in a distinctive cartoonlike aesthetic, complete with strong, black outlines, flat colour planes, and regimented Ben-Day dots. The composition depicts a living room where spatial cues and patterned surfaces dominate perception, while the actual source of light remains ambiguous: whether from the window behind the striped, candy-cane-red couch or the two titular lamps that flank the left and right of the composition. 
     
    Additionally, the angled couch, stretching toward the upper-right corner, is filled with diagonal stripes that deliberately defy perspectival depth. This tension between three-dimensionality and two-dimensional flatness creates a dynamic visual push-pull, illustrating how Lichtenstein could transform ordinary domestic scenes into compelling exercises in composition and design. Other elements in the room— dotted walls, carpeted floor, and glass windows—are treated as graphic forms, while the enlargement, tracing, and reworking of an advertisement photograph as source material underscores the artist’s methodical approach to abstraction.

  • "The earlier Interiors were about the spare, deadly quality that hotel and motel rooms seem to have. Later, they turned into a collector’s living room.” 

     

    - Roy Lichtenstein

    Red Lamps incorporates an Abstract Expressionist work, which appears on a wall to the right of the sofa, subtly placing Lichtenstein’s domestic scene in conversation with broader 20th‑century art movements and also perhaps refering his own earlier Brushstroke Figures series. This internal reference enriches the work’s visual narrative, suggesting that Red Lamps is not only a study of interior space and pattern, but also a layered reflection on the visual culture of art itself. Technically, Red Lamps is executed as a lithograph, woodcut, and screenprint in colours on 4-ply Paper Technologies, Inc. Museum Board, hand-signed, dated, and numbered from a limited edition.