“It started when I tried to photograph a print by Robert Rauschenberg that was under glass. But the light from a window reflected on the surface of the glass and prevented me from taking a good picture.”

—Roy Lichtenstein

Lichtenstein’s Reflections began as a series of three paintings of the Popeye character Wimpy and evolved to reference some of the most iconic subjects of his own oeuvre. For these prints, Lichtenstein revisited many of his most recurrent subjects, visually disrupting these typical images to suggest them being viewed under glass; partly interrupted by oblique blocks of color and pattern - both printed and collaged to the surface - the composition seems to mirror and reflect light. When talking about this approach to image making, Lichtenstein mused that “of course, the reflections are just an excuse to make an abstract work, with the cartoon image being supposedly partly hidden by the reflections." After working through these ideas in abstraction on canvas, Lichtenstein took this concept to the printing press at Tyler Graphics, Ltd. in Mount Kisco, New York from 1989 to 1990, producing eight prints for the Reflections series. As a student at Ohio State University, Lichtenstein experimented with mixing several techniques into one print – developing a sophisticated understanding of the unique mark-making potential of each medium. Taking advantage of the extensive facilities of Tyler Graphics and Ken Tyler’s innovative approach to printmaking, Reflections on Girl contains elements of lithography, screenprinting, relief and metalized collage on an impressive scale. 

Lichtenstein first began to ideate upon visual notions of reflection as early as the 1960s, both incorporating mirrors into his compositions and depicting mirrors as subjects. Lichtenstein synthesizes these various manifestations in the Reflections series, playing with a triple meaning of “reflection” as something appropriative, optical and nostalgic. To this end, Lichtenstein deploys the reflective trompe l’oeil in Reflections on Girl through a revisitation of his most familiar source material: comic books. Using an image found in an edition of the 1960s comic book Falling In Love, Lichtenstein’s diagonally slanting illusions of reflection obfuscate the girl’s distraught expression, her dramatic narration (“Fire seethed through my body … fanning … spreading”) and her emotional thoughts (“H-He couldn’t kiss me that way and love someone else!”). Left with only few words that remain decipherable – including “kiss” and “love” – Lichtenstein leaves it to the viewer to concoct a narrative of what circumstances afflict our female lead. Embracing painterly notions of fragmentation through these slashing stripes, the Reflections series sees Lichtenstein explore avenues of abstraction beyond his signature Ben-Day dots and challenge traditional conceptions of representation and real-life vision.