Ruins 1965

Roy Lichtenstein painted 'Ruins' with oil and magna on canvas, but it's not dated. It's hard to see any brushstrokes here. The surface is so flat, so screen-printed, it’s all about the idea of an image. Look at the lower left, and see how the shadow is rendered. It’s a simple blocky shape, like a cartoon. It’s this tension between the weighty subject matter, these fallen columns, and the light, almost throwaway style, that I find so interesting. It's as if he's saying, "Yes, history is important, but let's not get too serious about it." Lichtenstein plays with the tension between flatness and depth, representation and abstraction, high art and low culture in all his works. I see a connection between this piece and Giorgio de Chirico's melancholy cityscapes. Both artists create a sense of mystery and unease through their use of perspective and simplified forms. Art is a conversation, you know, an echo through time.