The Brooklyn Rail

At twenty-six feet high, Roy Lichtenstein’s Bauhaus Stairway Mural (1989) towered over me, projecting a playful spirit despite the seemingly impersonal means of its creation. I was awestruck by the monumental scale of the painting, imagining the energy that goes into creating an artwork of this size. But as I stood there longer, the novelty faded away and I began to feel a sense of detachment, wondering how to make a deeper connection. 

Lichtenstein created the mural-sized painting in situ for the atrium of I.M. Pei’s Creative Artists Agency building in Beverly Hills, California, responding to the sweeping architecture and bustling activity around it. Now, alone in a gallery, the painting feels unsettled, squeezed onto a wall with only inches between the floor and ceiling. The tight framing emphasizes its size, but also makes it look curiously out of place. 

Bauhaus Stairway Mural is based on an Oskar Schlemmer painting of the same name, which depicts students ascending a staircase at the Bauhaus. Lichtenstein parodies the work in his characteristic Pop style, using primary colors, crisp black outlines, and stenciled Ben-Day dots to rework Schlemmer’s gentle subject into something heightened and bold, a reflection of modern America in 1989. 

At a distance, the various parts appear locked into place, but as you approach, the composition begins to move. Lichtenstein’s elongated curves took my vision for a ride before plunging into fields of Ben-Day dots, which produce a buzzing after-image that carries across the picture plane. Besides Lichtenstein’s dramatic optical effects, what held my attention most were moments in the composition where the artist went off-script, deviating from Schlemmer’s original painting.

On the far left, a silver handrail pitches forward, its horn-like shape reminiscent of a spire on top of a skyscraper. The extremity of this form’s depiction made me consider the painting’s relationship to architecture, as well as the dramatic verticality of Lichtenstein’s figures, each ascending as if they wish to emulate the height and anonymity of the city skyline. Hovering above the handrail, in the upper-left corner of the mural, is an abstracted figure resembling a storefront mannequin. A vertical line splits its body in two, skewering it on a red post. Where Schlemmer’s version of this figure dances en pointe, Lichtenstein’s is once again made anonymous, reduced to a schematic, an abstract placeholder for a figure in motion.

In the painting’s most dramatic moment, the female figure in the foreground extends her right arm—an invention of Lichtenstein’s—falling just short of an adjacent leg which tapers to a needle’s point. The hand and spear seem to reach for one another, creating an unnerving passage into and out of the picture. 

Just north of this near-embrace is a prime example of Lichtenstein’s dry humor, where a figure’s hand points directly to a tiny Ben-Day dot. Something about this tickled me— perhaps it was the subtle play on words, as if the artist was saying wryly, “If you’re looking for the point, here it is”. 

Lichtenstein spent his life observing the parts of our culture that often get overlooked, blowing them up to a scale that demands our attention. Gagosian’s exhibition of Bauhaus Stairway Mural offers a unique opportunity to view Lichtenstein’s reverence and irreverence at a new angle, on a truly monumental scale. And when extracted from its original architectural setting, Lichtenstein’s composition seems to dramatize the detachment of its faceless figures, as it sends the eye aloft, searching for a context that remains just out of reach.