I Can See the Whole Room...and There's Nobody in It!
| I Can See the Whole Room...and There's Nobody in It! | |
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| Artist | Roy Lichtenstein |
| Year | 1961 |
| Movement | Pop art |
| Dimensions | 121.9 cm × 121.9 cm (48 in × 48 in) |
I Can See the Whole Room...and There's Nobody in It! (sometimes I Can See the Whole Room and There's Nobody in It! or simply I Can See the Whole Room!) is a 1961 painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is a painting of a man looking through a peephole. It formerly held the record for highest auction price for a Lichtenstein painting.
The work is based on a William Overgard-drawn comics panel from a Steve Roper cartoon. Lichtenstein's derivation augments the presentation of the narrative and expands the use of color in the image. As with the original the image employs the theme of vision, and focuses specifically on mechanized vision as well as monocularity.
Based on a 1961 William Overgard drawing for a Steve Roper cartoon story published by the Publishers Syndicate on August 6, 1961, Lichtenstein’s I Can See the Whole Room!...and There's Nobody in It! (1961) measures four-foot by four-foot and is in graphite and oil. The painting depicts a man looking through a hole in a door. His finger is extended to open a circular peephole, while simultaneously allowing the artist to present his face. The painting also uses a speech balloon.
It was sold by collector Courtney Sale Ross for $43.2 million, double its estimate, at Christie's in New York City in November 2011; the seller's husband, Steve Ross had acquired it at auction in 1988 for $2.1 million. The painting originally sold for $550 in 1961. It surpassed the $42.6 million record set the previous November by Ohhh...Alright... The following May, it was surpassed by Sleeping Girl, which sold for $44.8 million.
The picture teases the viewer who is given the feeling that he is in a dark room being viewed by the main subject of the painting who is a man that peeks through a hole in the door. The narrative element of the image, which included a speech bubble that presents the caption "I Can See the Whole Room and There's Nobody in It", clarifies that the man can not see anything in the room although he has a good look at it. The work is a satirical reference to abstraction because it can be imagined as a monochrome canvas that is affected by an actor that has inserted his finger as well as a narrative that also violates this imagining. This finger is also regarded as phallic.
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