Mike Bidlo
(American, b.1953)
Not Lichtenstein (On, 1962)
$2,500
Etching printed in black, a fine, fresh impression, the full sheet, printed on cream white BFK Rives paper, with margins, signed, dated and numbered in pencil by the artist, executed in an edition of 60 (there were also 12 numbered Artist’s Proofs, 4 numbered HC proofs, 2 numbered Printer’s Proofs, 1 RTP proof and 1 BAT proof), printed by Catherine Stack at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York, published by World House Editions, Middlebury, Connecticut, in very fine condition, unframed.
Note:
Mike Bidlo belongs to a generation of 1980s artists, including John Armleder, Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, Louise Lawler, Barbara Kruger and others who practiced appropriating images from popular culture and art history, Bidlo, who is arguably one of the most significant of the appropriation artists, is best known for his incredibly accurate hand-produced renderings of works in various mediums by important twentieth century artists, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, Giorgio Morandi, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Georgia O’Keefe, Giorgio De Chirico, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Piero Manzoni, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and others, to even his peers like Julian Schnabel. The artist, who considers himself a Conceptualist as well as a Neo Dadaist, is a devout student and connoisseur of twentieth-century art and his painstakingly accurate hand recreations are done with a sense of appreciation and devotion, as well as an exploration into the concepts of originality and creativity, author and authorship. The artist has said of his process:
My work is perhaps an extreme example of this strain of art which references other art because it directly mirrors the image, scale, and materials of the original. Whatever differences appear in my work are a consequence of my working method and not an attempt at projecting a personal style.
Arts Journalist and Independent Curator, David Gibson has noted:
Bidlo continues his quest to reconceptualize the wheel. His new edition “Not Lichtenstein” takes as its origin mystery Roy Lichtenstein’s 1962 etching of a wall light switch titled “On”. This simple image is indicative of everyday choices in the domestic or business sphere, and with its chosen position, one of positive inclinations. The light being on, so is the artist’s imagination. The ironic aspect of a satire about a satire plays right into the stylistic and symbolic aspects of the source material, and the society with which it is engaged. Bidlo’s work places the spectator somewhere farther down the rabbit hole of ironic distance from the social issues at hand. Are we still an “on” society? We are by all terms still adding art that’s minimal, concerned with functionality and Emersonian Self-Reliance, and is still looking back upon the past for emblems of truth. Bidlo reminds us that the paradigms are the purpose.
– David Gibson, January, 2025, New York