On View
Not on viewObject number2009.41
Sunrise
Artist
Roy Lichtenstein
(American, 1923-1997)
Date1965
Mediumcolor offset lithograph
Dimensionsimage: 18 1/4 × 24 1/4 in. (46.4 × 61.6 cm)
Credit LineBequest of Charlotte Collins from the Charles and Charlotte Collins Collection
Exhibition History"A Passion for Collecting: Prints of the 1960s and '70s from the Collins Collection," KIA Galleries 2&5 (Nov. 13, 2010 - Jan. 2, 2011).
"Lasting Legacy: A Collection for Kalamazoo," Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan (Sep. 6, 2014 - Jan. 4, 2015).
Round and Round, Ethel Denton Groos Gallery, November 4, 2017 - March 4, 2018
"Drawn to Abstraction," Sardoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA (August 25 - November 1, 2020).
Label TextRoy Lichtenstein's art challenged expectations about the line between "fine art" and popular culture. The Pop Art movement focused on the mundane, commercial objects of daily life. In Sunrise, Lichtenstein ironically turns to landscape, a traditional “fine art” subject. However, he does not celebrate the morning’s natural beauty or symbolic associations. Instead, one of nature's most glorious moments is dressed in the bright, primary colors and flat symmetry of an advertisement. He even reproduces—by hand—the printing industry’s mechanized system of Ben-Day color dots. The spreading rays of Lichtenstein’s Sunrise present the sublime as a "new and improved!" day.
