Golf Ball

Golf Ball (sometimes Golfball) is a 1962 painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is considered to fall within the art movement known as pop art. It depicts "a single sphere with patterned, variously directional semi-circular grooves." The work is commonly associated with black-and-white Piet Mondrian works. It is one of the works that was presented at Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition and one that was critical to his early association with pop art. The work is commonly critiqued for its tension involving a three-dimensional representation in two dimensions with much discussion revolving around the choice of a background nearly without any perspective. History When Lichtenstein had his first solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in February 1962, it sold out before opening. Golf Ball was one of the works that Lichtenstein exhibited. Later, Lichtenstein included Golf Ball in Still Life with Goldfish Bowl, 1972, and Go for Baroque, 1979. The painting exemplifies the novel superimposition of abstraction and figuration. The work also represents abstraction as a result of elimination of three-dimensionality, chiaroscuro and a landscape context. The use of black and white is regarded as dramatic, and although it may have been influenced by 1940s and 1950s works of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, it is more likely a commentary on Mondrian's 1917 Composition in Black and White. Alternatively, it may have been a reference to another of Mondrian's pre-World War I black and white oval paintings, such as Pier and Ocean, 1915. This complementary source art was common of Lichtenstein's 1960s work on frequently advertised objects. Lichtenstein describes his sources as Mondrian Plus and Minus paintings. Description In 1962, Lichtenstein produced several works in which he depicted "the repetitive regularity of their patterned surfaces." Golf Ball is a depiction of a golf ball using a Mondrianesque set of black and white arcs to depict the three-dimensionality of the subject. However, the neutral background manipulates the image and diminishes the volumetric characteristics by stripping the viewer of his perspective. It is described as a "pure graphic mark on a gray ground" as well as a "totality of abstract marks." Lichtenstein described Golf Ball as "the antithesis of what was thought of as having 'art meaning because of its lack of perspective.