LACMA’s groundbreaking Art & Technology Program (A&T), which operated from 1967 to 1971, famously paired artists with corporations in so-called “coastal industries” such as aerospace, entertainment, or scientific research. The program aimed to give artists unprecedented access to cutting-edge materials and technologies.
When Roy Lichtenstein joined A&T, he had already produced a series of landscape collages featuring images of sun or sky intersecting with land or water over a horizon line using plastic film to mimic the glimmer of sunlight on water. A&T paired Lichtenstein with Universal Studios, and he embarked on his first and only foray into filmmaking, translating his collages into a series of moving pictures. Juxtaposing film fragments with his own iconic Ben Day dots and other painted imagery, the artist presented the looped three-screen film using rear projection, thereby hiding the mechanics behind the work so that Three Landscapes could “appear to exist autonomously, as a painting” (Maurice Tuchman, 1971; see https://archive.org/details/reportonarttechn00losa_).
In 2014, former LACMA curator Jennie King located the canisters containing Lichtenstein’s film project in storage and, through intensive research and collaboration, was able to have the film properly restored (a previous restoration mistakenly combined multiple versions). In January 2023, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation completed restoration of the landscape films and gifted LACMA a full set of materials in all restored formats relating to both the 1970 and 1971 presentations, including master negatives, internegatives, digital transfers, projectors, lenses, projection screens, and media players.
Lauren Hanson
2023