Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte has embarked on two major projects that engage deeply with the legacy of 1960s Pop Art icons Roy Lichtenstein and Marisol, culminating in exhibitions running through mid-2024. These works demonstrate Da Corte’s ongoing exploration of pop culture imagery and art history, blending performance, video, painting, and sculpture.
At New York’s Whitney Museum of Art, Da Corte serves as co-curator alongside Meg Onli for "80 Lichtenstein: Like New," the first extensive retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein’s work in the city in more than three decades. On view through May 10, the exhibition features thematic groupings of Lichtenstein’s pieces rather than a traditional chronological display. Da Corte, who is curating a major museum retrospective for the first time, also recreates some of Lichtenstein’s monumental billboards and completes a painting that Lichtenstein had designed but never executed. The show includes works by related artists Elaine Sturtevant, Louise Lawler, and Henri Matisse, reflecting the artistic dialogues that influenced Lichtenstein’s practice.
Da Corte’s interest in Lichtenstein reflects shared concerns about imagery, authorship, and cultural signifiers. The extensive mural reproduction that opens the show highlights Lichtenstein’s use of pervasive visual icons, a precursor to the ubiquity of emoji and digital imagery today. David Breslin, former Whitney curator who originally conceived the collaboration, described Da Corte as a fitting interlocutor for Lichtenstein’s legacy and a contemporary heir to his innovative engagement with popular and modern art.
Simultaneously, Da Corte’s video installation "The Party," debuting December 11 at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and on view through May 3, reimagines a 1965-66 sculptural ensemble by Marisol—that consisted of 15 life-sized figures representing facets of female identity. Taking Marisol’s work as a point of departure, Da Corte reconstructed the figures at a third of their size, using his own face for each and naming them after his extended family. The installation employs stop-motion animation to choreograph the characters in a feature-length opera set in a fictional manor where a matriarch hosts an annual event during the one day the sun rises. The libretto, informed by writers including Jorge Luis Borges and Audre Lorde, and music co-composed with Austin Fisher, explores themes of identity, hope, and a Faustian bargain.
Marisol, born María Sol Escobar to Venezuelan parents and who passed away in 2016, left her estate to the Buffalo AKG, reinforcing the museum’s connection to Da Corte’s project. The installation will travel to the Philadelphia Museum of Art next summer, accompanied by a live performance of the opera by the Philadelphia Orchestra in late February 2024.
Da Corte, 46, who grew up between Venezuela and Philadelphia, has long felt an affinity with Marisol’s fragmented self-portraits and fractured identities. His meticulous recreations, influenced by a family history of dollhouse making, emphasize precision and handmade craftsmanship. Curators such as Cathleen Chaffee of Buffalo AKG and Adam Levine of the Toledo Museum of Art have praised Da Corte’s interpretation for its contemporary resonance and emotional depth, highlighting its exploration of inclusion, alienation, and the immigrant experience.
Both projects illustrate Da Corte’s complex engagement with modernism and pop art’s place in contemporary culture, expanding the dialogue around longstanding artistic legacies through performance, installation, and curatorial innovation.