''Grrrrrrrrrrr!!'' is a 1965 oil and Magna on canvas painting by

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. Hi ...

. Measuring , it was bequeathed to the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

collection from Lichtenstein's estate. It depicts a head-on representation of an angry dog growling with the

onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

expression "''Grrrrrrrrrrr!!''". The work was derived from ''

Our Fighting Forces ''Our Fighting Forces'' is a war comics anthology series published by DC Comics for 181 issues from 1954–1978. Publication history ''Our Fighting Forces'' began with an October–November 1954 cover date. Writer-editor Robert Kanigher's w ...

'', which also served as the source for other military dog paintwork by Lichtenstein.

Background

The Lichtenstein foundation notes that the inspiration for this painting is a frame of ''Our Fighting Forces'' #66 (February 1962), which was published by National Periodical Publications (now DC Comics). In that frame only a portion of the dog's head is visible and the

speech balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...

says "Grrrrr!" In addition to the painting itself, Lichtenstein produced a small graphite on paper study. The painting was bestowed to the Guggenheim Museum after Lichtenstein's 1997 death, following a promise made in 1992. The museum used ''Grrrrrrrrrrr!!'' in the promotional posters for the 1993 exhibition "Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective", which ran from October 7, 1993 – January 16, 1994. Other notable exhibitions where this work was shown include "Rendezvous: Masterpieces from the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Guggenheim Museums" which ran from October 16, 1998 – January 24, 1999 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as "Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation" which traveled to several museums in China between 2007 and 2008. The work appeared on the cover of the November 1993 issue of '' ARTnews''.

Details

Although ''Grrrrrrrrrrr!!'' is derived from what Guggenheim Senior Curator Susan Davidson calls a "low-grade comic strip" that is a typical Lichtenstein source, it is representative of Lichtenstein's fascination with "the atomic language of

Ben-Day dots The Ben Day process is a printing and photoengraving technique for producing areas of grey or (with four-colour printing) various colours by using fine patterns of ink on the paper. It was developed in 1879 by illustrator and printer Benjamin H ...

, black outlines and the three primary colors as the elementary vocabulary of low-budget commercial imagery." According to Jennifer Blessing of the Guggenheim, "There is also an element of humor in creating fine art out of what has customarily been considered 'low,' a playfulness that is equally evident in the onomatopoeic caption and bellicose expression of the dog in ''Grrrrrrrrrrr!!''"

Related works

In 1962, Lichtenstein created ''Arrrrrff!'', an oil and graphite pencil on canvas painting depicting a dog from a subsequent issue of ''Our Fighting Forces'', the series that was the source of ''Grrrrrrrrrrr!!'' That source depicts the dog by the name of "Pooch" in profile with a text bubble reading "Sniff--Sniff--Sniff--Sniff--Arrrrrff!" above his head. The inspiration for this painting came from ''Our Fighting Forces'' #69 (July 1962). ''Arrrrrff!'' was sold at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

in 1996 for $420,500 to an undisclosed buyer.

Notes

External links

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Collection websiteLichtenstein Foundation website
{{Authority control 1965 paintings Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein Paintings in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Dogs in art

Background

Details

Related works

See also

Notes

External links