Forget it! Forget me! 1962

Roy Lichtenstein made 'Forget it! Forget me!' with oil and magna on canvas. The painting leaps out at you with its bold colors – a shocking red background, a blue suit, and that iconic blonde hair. It must have been so compelling for Lichtenstein to take something from mass media and blow it up, making it fine art. I can almost see him there, meticulously creating each Ben-Day dot, mimicking the printing process but with a painter's touch. He's playing with reproduction, with high and low culture, all at once. It's like he's saying, "What is art, anyway?" There's this tension between the cold, mechanical reproduction and the handmade quality of the painting. And then there’s the subject matter. It’s so melodramatic. Lichtenstein found a way to make us question what we see and how we feel. He’s definitely part of an ongoing conversation about the nature of art, and the nature of feeling.