In the 1990s, Lichtenstein created a body of work called Interiors, in which he mixed references to classical antiquity, the Renaissance, and modernism. He also used visual signs plucked from his own illustrious career, such as his characteristic Ben-Day dots. Created in the last year of Lichtenstein’s life, this drawing is a study for a painting commissioned by the fashion designer Gianni Versace. A confusedlooking Ajax, a hero of Greek mythology, finds himself in an eclectically decorated room in which styles float free of their contexts and hatch marks are divorced from their descriptive function.
Roy Lichtenstein
American, 1923–1997
Study for “Interior with Ajax,” 1997
Graphite and colored pencil on page removed from a sketchbook
Richard and Mary L. Gray, promised gift to the Morgan Library & Museum
Gray Collection Trust, Art Institute of Chicago
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Photography by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics Inc.
Rachel Federman: What would Ajax, a hero of Greek mythology make of an ornate modern interior? That seems to be the question posed in this drawing. Roy Lichtenstein used his signature comic book style and his deep knowledge of art history to interrogate the very notion of style, whether in art or popular culture. Like Ajax, the anachronistic urn and arbitrary swath of drapery at the center of the drawing signaled a classical as a generalized style. References to classical antiquity roam through the history of Western art and architecture like free-floating signifiers. Consider, for example, the classical archetypes conjured in Hendrik Goltzius's bust of a warrior, and Jacques-Louis David's nude soldiers gesticulating with their weapons both on view nearby. Despite their evocation of a distant time and place, work such as these claim the classical as an accessible and malleable cultural touchstone. Greco-Roman antiquity was also the dominant theme of the opulent Miami home of Italian fashion designer, Gianni Versace, who commissioned the painting for which Lichtenstein's drawing serves as a study. The artist assuredly had this destination in mind when he conceived this witty composition.