


Roy Lichtenstein(1923-1997)Sweet Dreams Baby!, from 11 Pop Artists Portfolio, Vol. III
Sold for US$125,312.50 inc. premium
Looking for a similar item?
Our Prints & Multiples specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot


Matthew Stavro
Associate Specialist
Amanda Omeljaniuk
Valuation Management System Coordinator

Deborah Ripley
Director
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Screenprint in colors on heavy, smooth white wove paper, signed in pencil and numbered 32/200 (there were also 50 Roman numeral proofs), published/printed by Original Editions/Knickerbocker Machine and Foundry, Inc., New York, Dawa Basaneow screen printer, with full margins.
35 3/4 x 25 5/8in (90.6 x 65cm)
sheet 37 5/8 x 27 5/8in (98.4 x 70cm)
Footnotes
In Lichtenstein's most important print, Sweet Dreams Baby! 1965, the artist boldly announces his Pop Art bona fides to the reigning practitioners of Abstract Expressionism. The combative phrase and cartoonish figure of a man on the receiving end of a knock-out punch are meant to deliver a warning, albeit humorous, that he planned to rewrite the rules of painting, and indeed of printmaking.
Using silkscreen, Lichtenstein instructed commercial printers to apply heavily inked passages, more like sign printing than traditional fine art printing that used etching or stone lithography. Lichtenstein's trademark application of magnified Benday dots in the composition, meant to mimic mechanical offset printing of newspapers, became part of the composition - his "brushstrokes" applied, ironically, by hand. Lichtenstein's radical idea of using subjects from mass media in his art practice was one of his most enduring legacies.