Sweet Dreams, Baby! (Corlett 39)

A tobacco company's portfolio

Sweet Dreams, Baby! was made for a corporate art project. Philip Morris commissioned a portfolio called 11 Pop Artists for use in Pop and Op, a touring exhibition of about 65 graphic works circulated by the American Federation of Arts. The project was developed for Philip Morris International by Nina Kaiden of the public relations firm Ruder & Finn, and Kaiden asked Rosa Esman of Original Editions, New York, to coordinate production of the Pop portfolios.

The portfolio was published simultaneously in three volumes. Eleven artists took part, among them Allan D'Arcangelo, Jim Dine, Allen Jones, Gerald Laing, Roy Lichtenstein, Mel Ramos, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, John Wesley and Tom Wesselmann. Each made three prints, one for each volume. Lichtenstein's three were Moonscape, Reverie and Sweet Dreams, Baby!, the last of which went into Volume III.

The designer Elaine Lustig Cohen designed the portfolio boxes, and the critic Max Kozloff wrote the introduction that appears in all three volumes. Volume III came in a cardboard portfolio with its title screenprinted in orange on the front.

Pop and Op opened at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond on December 31, 1965, then traveled to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Syracuse, Flint and beyond. A second Philip Morris tour, 11 Pop Artists: The New Image, showed all 33 portfolio prints in Europe and South America in 1966, opening in Munich. After the tour, Philip Morris donated the prints to the participating museums.

From Manhattan to the comic strip

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born in Manhattan on October 27, 1923, the son of a real-estate broker and a gifted amateur pianist. He took Saturday watercolor classes as a teenager, studied briefly with Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League in 1940, and that fall began his degree at Ohio State University, where the teacher Hoyt Sherman's ideas about perception stayed with him for life.

His Pop work began in June 1961, with paintings he described as having no expressionism in them: blown-up consumer goods and panels from comic strips, with dots made by pushing paint through a plastic dog-grooming brush. That fall he brought Look Mickey and other new canvases to a leading New York dealer, who agreed to represent him, and his first solo show of paintings opened in February 1962. Paintings based on war comics such as Blam and Takka Takka followed the same year.

By 1965 he was a central figure of the movement, and the year was crowded: ceramic heads, the first Brushstrokes paintings, enamel sculptures, and the three Philip Morris screenprints. The next year he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, and in December 1966 the Tate Gallery in London bought Whaam!

POW

The picture is a single comic-book blow: a fist slams into a face at the edge of the frame, a burst carries the word POW!, and a speech balloon delivers the line 'Sweet Dreams, Baby!' The cheerful sign-off over a knockout is the joke.

In the third volume of the portfolio Lichtenstein moved away from the subjects of his first two prints, a landscape and a comic-book heroine, toward something more violent and visually loud, recalling his early-1960s paintings Bratatat (1962) and Varoom! (1963) and the print CRAK! (1963-64). A 2012 auction catalogue called it one of his first 'true' Pop prints, with comic-strip violence, high-keyed color and his signature Ben-Day dots.

The image was printed in three runs, yellow, red and black, by Knickerbocker Machine and Foundry in New York, with Dawa Basanow doing the screenprinting. Two studies and a piece of production material for the print, all from about 1965, are recorded in the Roy Lichtenstein catalogue raisonne.

How to identify a genuine impression

A regular-edition impression is numbered in pencil in the lower left margin, out of 200, and signed 'rf Lichtenstein' in pencil in the lower right margin. The sheet measures about 37 5/8 by 27 5/8 inches (95.6 by 70.2 cm); museum and sale records give it within a few millimeters of that. The paper is a heavy, smooth white wove.

There were also 50 proofs numbered in Roman numerals, set aside for Philip Morris, the artists and the collaborators, plus about five artist's proofs, one of which is inscribed 'Artist's proof.' The Buffalo AKG Art Museum's impression is numbered XXXI and came from Tom Wesselmann, one of the eleven artists, who gave it to the museum in 1972. A proof numbered XIX with Philip Morris provenance sold in 2022.

Caution is warranted. The catalogue raisonne reports that an unknown number of unauthorized impressions exist, some possibly with a copied signature and designated as artist's proofs. In 2019 the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation gave the original screenprint matrices to the Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Do not confuse the 1965 print with the 1982 poster. A screenprint poster of Sweet Dreams, Baby! made for Colorado State University in 1982 is smaller, about 35 by 24 3/4 inches, in an edition of 1,000, and signed in pen rather than pencil.

From giveaway to six figures

Because the edition was distributed through a corporate project and a museum tour, many impressions went into institutions early. The Museum of Modern Art received its impression as a gift from the publisher; the Albright-Knox (now Buffalo AKG) received Wesselmann's in 1972; and the Art Institute of Chicago holds an impression given by a private collection.

On the open market, an impression numbered 94/200 sold at auction for $122,500 on October 31, 2012, against an estimate of $70,000 to $100,000. In June 2016 an impression sold at auction in Munich for 85,000 euros with fees, which the lot page converts at a current exchange rate to $98,600. Impression 52/200, with the yellow slightly faded as is common, sold for $112,500 in October 2017. The proof numbered XIX, with Philip Morris provenance, sold for $75,600 in October 2022.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint (yellow, red, black) on heavy, smooth white wove paper

Dimensions

Sheet 37 5/8 x 27 5/8 in. (95.6 x 70.2 cm); image 35 5/8 x 25 9/16 in. (90.5 x 64.9 cm)

Catalogue raisonne

Corlett 39; RLCR 1172; Bianchini 11

Edition

200, plus 50 Roman-numeral proofs and about 5 artist's proofs

Publisher and printer

Original Editions, New York; Knickerbocker Machine and Foundry, New York

Public collections

Museum of Modern Art (274.1966.3a); Art Institute of Chicago (2023.2880); Buffalo AKG Art Museum (P1972:10.5)

Timeline

1. Oct 27, 1923

   Roy Fox Lichtenstein is born in Manhattan.

2. Sep 23, 1940

   Lichtenstein begins his undergraduate degree at Ohio State University.

3. Jun 1961

   His first Pop works appear: paintings based on consumer goods and comic-strip panels.

4. Feb 10, 1962

   His first solo show of paintings opens at a New York gallery.

5. 1965

   Lichtenstein makes Moonscape, Reverie and Sweet Dreams, Baby! for the Philip Morris 11 Pop Artists portfolio.

6. Dec 31, 1965

   Pop and Op opens at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the first stop of the tour.

7. 1966

   The three-volume 11 Pop Artists portfolio is published.

8. Mar 4, 1966

   11 Pop Artists: The New Image opens in Munich and tours Europe and South America.

9. Jun 18, 1966

   Lichtenstein represents the United States at the 33rd Venice Biennale.

10. Dec 12, 1972

    Tom Wesselmann gives his impression, numbered XXXI, to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

11. 1982

    A signed poster version is published for Colorado State University in an edition of 1,000.

12. Sep 29, 1997

    Lichtenstein dies in New York of complications from pneumonia.

13. Oct 31, 2012

    Impression 94/200 sells at auction for $122,500.

14. Jun 11, 2016

    An impression sells at auction in Munich for 85,000 euros with fees.

15. Oct 25, 2017

    Impression 52/200 sells at auction for $112,500.

16. 2019

    The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation gives the screenprint matrices to the Whitney Museum's Lichtenstein Study Collection.

17. Oct 28, 2022

    Proof XIX, from Philip Morris, sells at auction for $75,600.

The world in 1965

• Feb 21, 1965

  Malcolm X is assassinated in Manhattan.

• Mar 8, 1965

  About 3,500 US Marines land in South Vietnam, the first American combat troops in the war.

• Mar 25, 1965

  Martin Luther King Jr. and 25,000 marchers complete the Selma to Montgomery march.

• Jun 3, 1965

  Ed White makes the first American spacewalk, on Gemini 4.

• Jul 14, 1965

  Mariner 4 flies past Mars and returns the first images of the planet.

• Aug 6, 1965

  President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act.

• Aug 15, 1965

  The Beatles play Shea Stadium in New York, the first stadium concert in rock history.

• Oct 28, 1965

  The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is completed.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Sweet Dreams, Baby! (Corlett 39) is number 52 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (39 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The print exists because a cigarette company, Philip Morris, commissioned the 11 Pop Artists portfolio for a touring show.
• Each of the eleven artists made exactly three prints, one for each volume; Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist were among them.
• Buffalo's impression came from Tom Wesselmann, another artist in the same portfolio.
• The catalogue raisonne warns that unauthorized impressions exist, some with copied signatures posing as artist's proofs.
• The original screens survive: the Lichtenstein Foundation gave them to the Whitney Museum in 2019.
• The print is sometimes simply called Pow!