Nurse 1964

Roy Lichtenstein's 'Nurse' stares out at us from a yellow field, her expression caught between worry and surprise. Just imagine him building up this painting, layering those flat areas of color and meticulously placing each Ben-Day dot to mimic the look of cheap printing. I can picture him thinking about how to make something mass-produced feel personal. The nurse’s bright yellow hair and the graphic black outlines give her an almost cartoonish quality, but then you see the detail in her wide eyes, the subtle shading that suggests a real person underneath the pop-art facade. It’s like he’s asking us to think about how we see images, how they affect us, and how an artist can take something familiar and make it new again. There is a dialogue between high and low art, between commercial and fine art, and between the artist and the viewer. This nurse, with her stylized features and anxious gaze, reminds me that art is always a conversation.