Collage for nude with white flower 1994

Roy Lichtenstein's "Collage for nude with white flower" sees blue and white rendered through pop-art sensibilities, turning a classic subject on its head. The Ben-Day dots and bold lines are so deliberate, they're like a dare to traditional art. Look at the way Lichtenstein uses those dots to suggest shading and volume. Each dot is so precise, so evenly spaced, creating a strangely uniform texture that flattens the image even as it tries to give it depth. The diagonal stripes beside the figure are jarring against the dots, and together they push and pull the space in a way that is really quite radical. It reminds me of David Hockney, especially his photo collages, where he's piecing together multiple perspectives to create a fractured, almost cubist view of a scene. Lichtenstein is doing something similar here, breaking down the image into its component parts and reassembling them in a way that challenges our perception. Ultimately, Lichtenstein’s work insists that there is no one way to see things.