Nude with Red Shirt 1995

Roy Lichtenstein made this painting of a Nude with a Red Shirt sometime in the late 20th century. I can imagine him in his studio, carefully applying each dot, one by one. Think about that process, repeating the same shape over and over to create a figure. I love the flat planes of color against the Benday dots. It's like he’s both highlighting and abstracting the female form, turning it into a landscape of pop art. The bold red shirt contrasts with the nude figure. It's like a conversation between the figure and the ground, a push and pull between abstraction and representation, a dance that so many painters engage in. Lichtenstein, just like any artist, pulls from the work of others. I can see the legacy of Matisse in this image, a shared love of simplified forms and expressive color. And I am reminded that painting isn’t made in a vacuum; it’s an ongoing dialogue across generations.