Yellow Still Life 1974

Roy Lichtenstein made this "Yellow Still Life", and right away you notice he's not exactly going for realism! The banana bunch with thick black outlines and uniform yellow colour is like a caricature. It's a print, so the surface is super-flat. The yellow isn’t trying to trick you into seeing light and shadow, and it doesn’t blend into the background. It’s more of a symbol for ‘yellow’. I like how the black lines define the shapes and give the picture an almost comic book feel. That chunk of cheese is a hoot – it’s so simply and boldly done with those iconic little black curved shapes. And the black and white striped table is a great example of the artist’s play with pattern and repetition. It gives the piece a real graphic punch. You could put this up against a Matisse, and see a conversation about how to represent objects using color, line, and flat picture planes.