MEL RAMOS, I STILL GET A THRILL WHEN I SEE BILL No. 1 (Homage to Willem de Kooning), 1979

Mel Ramos

I STILL GET A THRILL WHEN I SEE BILL No. 1 (Homage to Willem de Kooning), 1979

This striking and clever work was created in the late 1970s by American Pop artist Mel Ramos, as an homage to Willem de Kooning. Pop artists like Mel Ramos, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist rebelled against their Abstract Expressionist forebears whose work dominated the art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, they offered works inspired by popular culture, billboards advertisements, celebrity icons and commercialism, mass media, comic book heroes and movie stars, many with radical figuration. To acknowledge this dialogue, and assert the fact that art can be about anything, including art, Ramos cleverly tips his hat to one of the most influential Abstract Expressionists. In I Still Get a Thrill When I See Bill, one of Ramos' gorgeous pin-ups is juxtaposed against a woman's body done in the style of de Kooning, a thrill for the artist and viewer alike. This impression is in excellent condition and has never been framed.

Signed and numbered in pencil on the recto (front)