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Tate Modern Film

Roy Lichtenstein: Three Landscapes

9 March 2013
10 March 2013
11 March 2013
12 March 2013
14 March 2013
15 March 2013
16 March 2013
17 March 2013
18 March 2013
19 March 2013
20 March 2013
21 March 2013
22 March 2013
23 March 2013
24 March 2013
Three film screens next to each other, each showing a different natural landscape

Three Landscapes 1971

© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein / DACS 2013

Roy Lichtenstein’s triple screen film installation Three Landscapes is a mesmerising hybrid of film, painting, billboard, comic strip and kinetic spectacle. It is shown here for the first time in Europe in conjunction with Tate Modern’s Lichtenstein: A Retrospective.

Lichtenstein’s only venture into filmmaking premiered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1971 as part of the groundbreaking Art and Technology program. The project placed international artists – including Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and others – in residence with leading California-based industries, and exhibited the results of their collaborations.

Lichtenstein spent two weeks at Universal Studios in February 1969, and decided to make film loops of sky and water, projected on several screens in the gallery. The films relate directly to a group of kinetic landscape collages that he made in the mid-1960s, which used Rowlux – a prismatic plastic – to suggest moving water and light.

Lichtenstein filmed on Long Island, New York working with independent filmmaker Joel Freedman. The resulting five-minute film loops juxtapose footage of the sea and a tropical fish tank with a static Benday-dot pattern and still images of a blue sky, clouds, and a seagull. The still and moving images are divided by a thick black line that echoes the comic-strip images of his paintings. This black horizon line, which rocks back and forth, combines with the endless repetition of Lichtenstein’s ‘moving pictures’ to produces a contradictory viewing experience, emphasising the flatness of the picture plane while engaging the spectator in an ambient cinematic spectacle.

Three Landscapes was restored recently by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in its original 35 mm format and has been transferred to 16 mm for this presentation at Tate Modern.

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) was born and worked in New York City.

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9 March 2013

10 March 2013

11 March 2013

12 March 2013

14 March 2013

15 March 2013

16 March 2013

17 March 2013

18 March 2013

19 March 2013

20 March 2013

21 March 2013

22 March 2013

23 March 2013

24 March 2013

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  • Banner design featuring an artwork by Roy Lichtenstein and black text on a yellow background that reads Lichtenstein: A Retrospective

    Lichtenstein: A Retrospective

    Tate Modern: Lichtenstein: A Retrospective. The first full-scale retrospective of the Pop artist in over twenty years bringing together 125 of his most definitive paintings and sculptures.

  • Artist

    Roy Lichtenstein

    1923–1997
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