During his 1963 visit to the US to see Duchamp’s Pasadena retrospective, Richard Hamilton also picked up a Roy Lichtenstein poster/lithograph from Castelli. When he got back to the UK, he enlarged a tiny section to make his own two-color print edition, A Little Bit of Roy Lichtenstein for…, which he liked to give away to friends.
Today A Little Bit of Roy Lichtenstein for Mark sold at Sotheby’s, part of the collection of the artist Mark Lancaster, who studied with Hamilton, and who shot the photos for Hamilton’s translation of The Green Box. [His copy of it sold today, too.] Lancaster worked in Warhol’s Factory in 1964 while working on his dissertation on Stieglitz, and from 1972 until 1985, worked as Jasper Johns’ assistant and business manager [a lot of nice Johns prints in the sale, btw.] and as artistic director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He somehow survived all that and only died in 2021. Gary Comenas did an amazing interview with Mark Lancaster for warholstars.org in 2004.
The LA collectors Betty & Monty Factor got a Richard Hamilton, too, with a more symmetrically cropped sheet. When A Little Bit of Roy Lichtenstein for The Factors sold at Bonham’s in 2012, it was accompanied by a signed copy of the Castelli Crying Girl poster, which was a nice touch. [There was one at Sotheby’s yesterday, but it was sold separately, and it wasn’t stated it was from Lancaster.] This has been called a poster, and was issued as an announcement for his second show, in September 1963. But Lichtenstein saved some flat, which he signed. I think not being able to pinpoint exactly what they are is the point. [But it also means understanding, context and collecting of it are still somehow a bit wild. Some say there were around 150 signed versions, some around 300, and prices are lmao all over the map, so shop wisely, I guess?]
For added convenience, I zoomed in to the section Hamilton used, but added a little bit more, as a treat:
Hmm. That little guinea pig of an eye might need to be a t-shirt.
Related: Galerie Buchholz used the title of this work for their expansive show of Richard Hamilton last fall in NYC [galeriebuchholz.de]