Swatch x Magritte Watches

One style features details from Girl (1963), with the artwork’s famous smiling blonde reproduced on the watch’s face. The artwork, a lithograph from the illustrated book 1¢ Life, is a diptych: an image of an aerosol can being pressed down shares the spread with the smiling girl. Details of the spray can are reproduced on the reverse side of the watch’s band. The front of the band is blue. This watch has a 41mm case with a strap that measures 9.5lx 0.75""w.

The other style features a melancholy crooner, the blonde woman subject of Reverie (1963), reproduced on the watch’s face. The works comic-strip-style word bubble, featuring some of Mitchell Parish’s 1929 lyrics for the 1927 jazz song “Stardust,” has been cleverly reproduced as the watch’s strap loop. Lichtenstein’s enthusiasm for jazz music provided inspiration for a number of his artworks. The band of this watch style is a solid bright yellow. The watch has a 34mm case and the strap measures 9.5lx 0.75""w.

Both of the artworks on these Swatch x MoMA watches feature Lichtenstein’s famous appropriation of Benday dots, which were originally employed in an inexpensive mechanical printing method that was used for a variety of print materials, including comic strips. Lichtenstein enlarged and exaggerated these dots in his work to evoke this printing technique.