Roy Lichtenstein

signed and dated 70 (on the reverse)

diameter: 61 cm. 24 in.

Estate of the artist

James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe (acquired from the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1998

Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Peace Show, May - June 1970

New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein: Mirror Paintings, March - April 1971

State University of New York at Stony Brook, Fine Arts Center, Roy Lichtenstein: Mirrors and Entablatures, October - December 1979, cat. no. 4, p. 3, illustrated, and p. 14

Southampton, Parrish Art Museum, Roy Lichtenstein: Paintings, August - September 1982

Lyon, Musée St. Pierre Art Contemporain, La couleur seule: L'expérience du monochrome, October - December 1988, p. 192, illustrated in colour

Pully-Lausanne, FAE Musée d'Art Contemporain and Liverpool, Tate Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein, September 1992 - April 1993, p. 67 (Pully-Lausanne), illustrated in colour and

p. 39 (Liverpool), illustrated in colour

Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Roy Lichtenstein, May - September 1998, cat. no. 32, p. 64, illustrated in colour

Roy Lichtenstein's Mirror #2, painted in 1970, stands as a rare and seminal example from one of the artist's most conceptually rich and technically ambitious series. Part of a broader body of Mirror paintings, this work reflects Lichtenstein's incisive engagement with the mechanics of perception and illusion - core concerns that have defined Western painting since the Renaissance. Yet, as is characteristic of Lichtenstein's practice, these themes are rearticulated through the visual idioms and production strategies of mass culture. Mirror #2 is not merely an image of a mirror; it is a profound meditation on the nature of representation itself.

By the late 1960s, Lichtenstein had begun to expand the scope of his Pop Art practice to engage more directly with art historical motifs. The Mirror series thus emerges at a crucial point in his oeuvre, marking a transition from the comic-strip iconography of the early 1960s to a more self-reflexive and meta-pictorial investigation. The motif of the mirror - long celebrated in Western art for its symbolic and technical challenges- provided Lichtenstein with a vehicle to explore the limits of visual representation. From Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (1434) to Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656), the mirror has served as both a metaphor and a mechanism for investigating the act of seeing. Lichtenstein's innovation lies in how he deconstructs this tradition through the lens of mass production, consumer culture, and the graphic language of the commercial image.

In Mirror #2, Lichtenstein appropriates his source imagery from a print advertisement for Contessa Line Mirrors by the Tyre Brothers Glass Company - a typical gesture of appropriation that underpins his Pop methodology. However, unlike his earlier works that ironized the content of mass culture, here he turns his attention to the form of representation itself. The mirror becomes an object not of reflection, but of simulation. Devoid of any actual reflective surface, Lichtenstein's mirror is rendered through Ben-Day dots and simplified geometric contours, invoking the industrial printing techniques of mid-20th-century newspapers and magazines. These dots do not reflect light, but rather suggest its reflection, performing the illusion of illusion itself.

This recursive investigation into the mechanics of looking positions the Mirror series- and Mirror #2 in particular- as a critical nexus in Lichtenstein's artistic evolution. Rather than offer a faithful depiction of mirrored space, Lichtenstein presents a flattened, abstracted image that simultaneously references and undermines the illusionistic traditions of painting. In doing so, he exposes the constructed nature of visual experience, aligning his work with broader postmodern concerns about simulation, surface, and the dissolution of originality. From a technical and art historical standpoint, the series is notable for its consistency and rarity. Of the 26 Mirror works created in 1970, 19 are circular, with 13 sharing the same 24-inch diameter as Mirror #2. The series' scarcity - particularly among these identically scaled circular canvases - has made individual works highly sought after in the art market and within museum collections. Notably, Mirror #10 is held by The Museum of Modern Art in New York, while Mirror #8 resides in the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul. Additional examples in varied formats are housed in other prominent public collections, further underscoring the institutional recognition of the series' significance. The high valuation of works from the Mirror series in recent years also reflects a growing appreciation for this more conceptual dimension of Lichtenstein's practice. At Sotheby's New York in May 2022, Mirror #9 fetched $6,069,500 - over four times its pre-sale low estimate, while Mirror #1, an early rectangular example, sold for $4,618,000 in November 2021, nearly tripling its low estimate. These record-breaking sales not only demonstrate the market's enthusiasm for the series but also suggest a re-evaluation of Lichtenstein's legacy beyond the comic imagery that once defined him.

Mirror #2 encapsulates the intellectual rigor and visual innovation that characterizes Roy Lichtenstein's mature work. Through the appropriation of a banal advertisement and the transformation of a classical motif, Lichtenstein challenges viewers to confront the constructed nature of visual truth. The Mirror series, and Mirror #2 within it, operates at the intersection of Pop Art, conceptual inquiry, and art historical dialogue, cementing its place as a critical touchstone in postwar American art.