The Living Room, 1990: Published 1991, by Roy Lichtenstein

  • Stylised image of a domestic interior scene.
    The Living Room, 1990, published 1991
    Woodcut and screenprint on 4-ply Paper Technologies, Inc., Museum Board
    Sheet: 147.6 x 182.9 cm
    Edition of 60; plus 14 AP, 1 RTP, 2 PP, 3 GEL, 8 SP, 1 C

    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

    BACK TO: INTERIOR SERIES

     

    The Living Room, 1990, from Roy Lichtenstein's late Interior series, depicts a domestic interior organised around a receding red wall filled with uniform Ben-Day dots. This angled wall meets a projecting white wall at a crisp corner, projecting inward from the left and creating a strong architectural focal point. Positioned against the dotted wall is a solid white sofa, covered with six square-shaped and circular multicoloured cushions. Above, two recessed ceiling lights appear in the upper right portion of the image, simplified into circular forms without visible radiance. 
     
    Because Lichtenstein eliminates shading and tonal gradation, the living room’s light source remains deliberately ambiguous. The red dotted wall presses forward visually, flattening against the picture plane, while the angled architecture and placement of the sofa imply recession into space. This friction between three-dimensional depth and flat surface is central to the work’s visual logic.
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  • "I might add a mirror where there wasn’t one, or I would substitute a different painting, or add a second painting."

     

    - Roy Lichtenstein

    Despite depicting an everyday living space, the room feels highly orchestrated. The dotted wall competes with the perspectival lines of the floor and ceiling, creating a dynamic oscillation between depth and surface. The sofa, window, and lighting fixtures serve less as narrative elements and more as structural devices within a system of lines and planes. In The Living Room (1990), Lichtenstein transforms ordinary household objects into components of a carefully calibrated visual architecture, characteristic of his late Interior series and his continued exploration of spatial illusion within printmaking.