Temple Postcard

An oversized postcard from the Whitney Museum shop reproducing Roy Lichtenstein's Temple (1964), an offset lithograph in the museum's Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection.

The image shows a ruined classical colonnade in black outline over a field of blue Benday dots: three columns and a broken entablature against a pale sky. Lichtenstein's lithograph was issued in 1964 both as a numbered edition and as an unsigned mailer announcing his exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York (October 24 to November 19, 1964). The Whitney's impression (2019.95) came as a gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and was shown in Order and Ornament: Roy Lichtenstein's Entablatures (2019-2020). The postcard was issued in 2026, ahead of the museum's retrospective Roy Lichtenstein: Like New (October 11, 2026 to May 10, 2027).

Lichtenstein (1923-1997) turned in 1961 to subjects taken from comics and advertisements, painted in a manner that imitated commercial printing. Classical architecture entered his work in 1964 with the temple images and returned later in the Entablature series. The Whitney holds 460 of his works and counts him, with Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist, among the key figures of Pop art.