Stretcher Frame Revealed Beneath Painting of a Stretcher Frame 1973

This is Roy Lichtenstein’s meta painting, Stretcher Frame Revealed Beneath Painting of a Stretcher Frame, made using oil and magna on canvas. The bright yellow is so flat, so insistent, it's almost cartoonish, and then you see the black dots - Ben-Day dots! - and the thick black lines, and you know you're in Lichtenstein's world. It's like he's showing you the backstage of a painting, revealing the usually hidden structure underneath. Look at the trompe l'oeil rip, how he renders the depth of the canvas turning back on itself with just stripes! It’s so bold and playful, he’s really messing with the idea of what a painting is and what it’s supposed to show. It's like he's saying, "Hey, this is all just paint on a flat surface," but at the same time, he's creating this illusion of depth and space. It makes you think about representation and abstraction, and how artists are always playing with these ideas. You can see something similar in the work of Jasper Johns, where representation and abstraction also collide.