Referencing an object loaded with signifcant literary and art historical precedent, Lichtenstein invokes centuries of artistic and cultural tradition. The mirror alludes to the theatrical compositions envisaged by the Old Masters, the highly curated Mannerist and Baroque canvases, whilst simultaneously recalling strategic methods of illusion employed by the likes of Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, André Breton and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Conveying surrealist metaphors, a discursive vernacular, and magical realism alike, the mirror carries with it the politics surrounding subjects of representation. With Ben-Day dots, Lichtenstein not only shifed tenets of representation in painting, but also achieved potent dualism, bringing pictures simultaneously closer and further from reality. Using the refective device as a visual axis through which to portray the protagonist, the artist allows straight slices of image to fracture an otherwise continuous composition. Referencing philosophy and art history, the subject of the mirror held technical challenges for Lichtenstein. Musing on the motif, he noted ‘There’s no simple way to draw a mirror, so cartoonists invented dashed or diagonal lines to signify mirror. Now, you see those lines and you know it means mirror, even though there are obviously no such lines in reality. If you put horizontal, instead of diagonal, lines across the same object, it wouldn’t say ‘mirror’ (Roy Lichtenstein,
Diego Velázquez, The Rokeby Venus, oil on canvas, 1648-51, National Gallery, London. Bridgeman Images.
quoted in Michael Kimmelman, PORTRAITS, Talking with Artists at the Met, The Modern, The Louvre and Elsewhere, www.lichtensteinfoundation.org, online). Through the recurring theme of projection and refection, Lichtenstein developed a graphic idiom that traces light activity and distinguishes between the fore- and back-ground. One of the earliest works which the artist executed in porcelain enamel on steel, Girl in Mirror challenges the relationship between subject and object. Belonging to only three other square editioned works boasting both the same subject and medium, the present work is rare graphic spectacle. Recognising the significance of medium in achieving his clean, unified aesthetic and presenting the primacy of the image itself, Lichtenstein’s groundbreaking adoption of enamel porcelain ‘reinforced the look of mechanical perfection that paint could only simulate but not duplicate and it provided the perfect opportunity to make an ephemeral form concrete’ (Diane Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1971, p. 23). Eschewing the evidence of the artist’s hand, aside from subtle variations in the surface with the rigid black outlines of the figure and mirror, the highly glossy, almost reflective, surface of the present work replicates the smooth surface of the mirror within the work itself.