In Whaam!, how is the Reception discussed?
The painting was, for the most part, well received by art critics when first exhibited. A November 1963 Art Magazine review by Donald Judd described Whaam! as one of the "broad and powerful paintings" of the 1963 exhibition at Castelli's Gallery. In his review of the exhibition, The New York Times art critic Brian O'Doherty described Lichtenstein's technique as "typewriter pointillism ... that laboriously hammers out such moments as a jet shooting down another jet with a big BLAM". According to O'Doherty, the result was "certainly not art, [but] time may make it so", depending on whether it could be "rationalized ... and placed in line for the future to assimilate as history, which it shows every sign of doing." The Tate Gallery in London acquired the work in 1966, leading to heated argument amongst their trustees and some vocal members of the public. The purchase was made from art dealer Ileana Sonnabend, whose asking price of £4,665 (£92,449 in 2024 currency) was reduced by negotiation to £3,940 (£78,081 in 2024 currency). Some Tate trustees opposed the acquisition, among them sculptor Barbara Hepworth, painter Andrew Forge and the poet and critic Herbert Read. Defending the acquisition, art historian Richard Morphet, then an assistant keeper at the Tate, suggested that the painting addresses several issues and painterly styles at the same time: "history painting, Baroque extravagance, and the quotidian phenomenon of mass-circulation comic strips." The Times in 1967 described the acquisition as a "very large and spectacular painting". The Tate's director, Norman Reid, later said that the work aroused more public interest than any of its acquisitions since World War II.In 1968, Whaam! was included in the Tate's first solo exhibition of Lichtenstein's work. The showing attracted 52,000 visitors, and was organized with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which later hosted the exhibition from 4 November to 17 December 1967, before it traveled to three other museums.
in Barbara Hepworth Brian O'Doherty x Tate Stedelijk Museum The Times World War II history painting Tate Gallery Donald Judd Herbert Read Whaam! keeper The New York Times Andrew Forge Ileana Sonnabend Norman Reid