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“Mural of the Bauhaus staircase: the large version”, created by the artist for a Beverly Hills building, rejected by its new tenant. This is New York’s transient gain.
By Deborah Solomon
As we approach Roy Lichtenstein’s centenary on October 27, can we focus our attention on the meaning of the word “forever”?Art is long and life is short, the maxim goes, but now even new Lichtenstein stamps issued in the U. S. are not long in the world. U. S. The postal service celebrates the artist’s centennial with the promise “Forever. “By contrast, one of the artist’s best-known works, the giant mural “Bauhaus Stairway Mural: The Large Version,” got rid of his supposedly permanent excavations in Beverly Hills.
“Mural of the Bauhaus Staircase,” a wonderfully ingenious and lucid painting measuring approximately 26 feet tall and 18 feet wide, originally commissioned for the rooflit atrium of the iconic I. M. building. Pei, which housed the Creative Artists Agency. In 1989. Artist who was then 66 years old and noted for his taste for painting that extracted an unexpected air of mystery from the anonymity of the printing of advertising points. He preferred advertising-quality primary colors and raw outlines whose readability was well suited to the needs of wall art.
The mural now makes its first appearance in New York City, at the outpost of the Gagosian Gallery on West 24th Street. It was flown in as part of the artist’s centennial celebration, which will culminate in a full retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 2026. Meanwhile, it’s glorious to have the mural in Manhattan, even if the existing exhibition (through December 22) is out of context and even mysterious. It doesn’t include preparatory sketches for the mural or archival photographs of its installation, and I don’t know why he left California.
That’s why I had to call. I learned that the mural belongs to Michael Ovitz, co-founder and former president of CAA and one of Fresh Art’s main creditors. “A new tenant came in and I didn’t need one,” Ovitz said in our phone conversation. referring to the pictures that Lichtenstein painted for five weeks. The tenant, who arrived in 2021, is Alo Yoga, a company that specializes in tights, short blouses and other garments designed for what it calls “conscious movement. “
“I wasn’t satisfied with that,” Ovitz said, about having to buy the mural, “but I couldn’t do anything. “
Why would a company reject art paintings commissioned specifically for its building?When I asked Alo, a spokesperson declined to comment.
The irony is that the “Bauhaus staircase mural” may seem almost tailor-made for a sportswear company. It shows four or five figures on their backs, climbing a wide industrial-style staircase. Their bodies are well-toned and fat-free, and they are dressed in monochrome long-sleeved blouses that resemble the non-sexist athleisure that is a wardrobe staple.
Lichtenstein, a pioneer of post-fashion recycling, borrowed the subject of his mural from a beloved masterpiece of German painting: Oskar Schlemmer’s 1932 “Bauhaus Staircase,” which belongs to the Museum of Modern Art. The painting depicts an authentic staircase of the Bauhaus, progressive art that opened in Weimar, Germany, in 1919, and illustrates the modern movement in its most extroverted and techno-friendly form. The artists asserted a connection with designers and engineers and set out to fix the world.
Some of this power is felt in Schlemmer’s painting, whose characters give off a zigzagging rhythm. The central figure, a brunette dressed in an orange top, has protruding elbows and a V-shaped waist. She is a woman of a new type, an angular and androgynous emissary of the ranks turned to the future of the Bauhaus.
In a nod to their theme, MoMA’s curators have historically hung the Schlemmer on a sufficiently lively public staircase. Museum visitors who walk and then climb to the ground are rewarded with the amazing view of a mirror that symbolizes their own movements.
And keep in mind that Schlemmer’s characters go upstairs. The upward movement in art alludes to a greater belief, as, for example, in Titian’s “The Assumption of the Virgin” or Barnett Newman’s decidedly vertical “zippers. “On the other hand, it would possibly evoke Dadaist irreverence and, in particular, Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” the cubist portrait that created an uproar at the 1913 Armory Show because neither a nude nor the supposed staircase can be located in its location. a multitude of tilting aircraft.
Not surprisingly, Lichtenstein was attracted to Schlemmer, who rejected the hot, romantic spirit of twentieth-century German expressionism in the same way that Lichtenstein rejected the emotional spirit of summary expressionism a century later. Originally from New York and raised on the Upper West Side, Lichtenstein remains one of our most influential artists. Founder of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, he gained his first fame with immaculate and hyper-elegant paintings of comic blondes and their Ken-like boyfriends, a healthy pantheon compared to fellow pop artist Andy Warhol’s Vampire Portraits of Celebrities.
One of Lichtenstein’s recurring themes was the absurdity of almost sensible visions, and Schlemmer’s painting was therefore the best water for his trend mill. Lichtenstein seemed torn between admiration for his avant-garde predecessors and a contrary preference to parody their work. Instead of the dancer Schlemmer placed in the upper left of his portrait, balanced on points, Lichtenstein replaced it with an Oscar statuette. He turned the radical classes of the Bauhaus into a race for the Oscar.
Although Lichtenstein was commissioned for a specific site, the painting can be moved without wasting any of its aesthetic power. Technically, “Bauhaus Stairway Mural” is not a mural, as it is not painted directly on a wall. Rather, it is a life-size mural. canvas.
In this it differs from countless works of art whose movement has all but destroyed them, such as Keith Haring’s dynamic “Grace House Mural” (circa 1983), an 85-foot-long parade of radiant babies, barking dogs, and other figures that once graced the stairwell of a Manhattan youth center. When the center closed, the building’s owner got rid of the mural and sold it in thirteen cut fragments.
Lichtenstein’s mural, which isn’t for sale, probably won’t be finished in a DIY store. But it’s a little awkward to think about the photograph that replaced it in the atrium of the former CAA building in Wilshire. Once Lichtenstein was hung, an advertisement for Alo products was seen in mid-September. The ad shows a masculine style dressed from head to toe with clothing bearing the Alo logo. Despite the company’s yoga theme, the style pose is less that of a person looking down. dog than that of “Winged Victory of Samothrace”, his soft jacket floating in the simulated breeze.
On what basis would a company choose to decorate its premises with a poster depicting a man modeling a windbreaker and not with a painting by Lichtenstein worthy of a museum?Certainly, companies prefer to promote their logos. But a generation ago, corporations turned to art to burnish their reputation and gain a sleek patina. Art sponsorship was considered a bargain, a prestigious logo, beneficial to all, and not something that took up too much space in the lobby or was too elitist to attract customers.
It’s proof, even if we don’t want it, that art is the opposite of branding. Branding seeks to offer a product to the widest imaginable audience, while art considers a user alone in a room, seeking to give physical form to the invisible. question of his inner life – or, in Lichtenstein’s case, wondering whether he had an inner life in the first place. As he once said, “I have no wonderful anxieties. I wish I had done that. It would be much more interesting. “
Ethan Tate contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
Roy Lichtenstein: Mural of the Bauhaus staircase
Through December 22 at the Gagosian Gallery, 555 West Street, Manhattan; (212)-741-1111, gagosian. com.
Deborah Solomon is a critic and biographer who is lately writing a biography of Jasper Johns. Learn more about Deborah Solomon
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