Virtual Interior; Portrait Of A Duck 1995

Roy Lichtenstein's "Virtual Interior; Portrait Of A Duck" is a symphony of lines and dots on canvas, a pictorial puzzle rendered with the cool precision that was his trademark. I imagine Lichtenstein in his studio, silk-screening those Ben-Day dots, thinking about space and representation. He's having a conversation with the history of painting, while he's cartooning it. Look at the thick outlines defining Donald Duck and the furniture! It's like he's diagramming how we perceive, reducing everything to its simplest graphic form. There's a playfulness, a joy in the artifice. It reminds me of other artists who’ve blurred the lines between high and low art, like Andy Warhol. But Lichtenstein's got this detached irony that’s all his own. I wonder if he knew how influential this would all become? Like all good painting, it's an ongoing experiment.