Haystack 1969

Roy Lichtenstein made this print of a haystack, probably using a screenprinting process to get those crisp lines and flat areas of color. Isn’t it interesting how he takes something as traditional as a haystack and gives it this pop art twist? What I love about Lichtenstein is how he embraces the mechanical. Look at the Ben-Day dots filling the sky and the ground. Each one is perfect, uniform, almost robotic. It's like he's saying, "Here's a haystack, but it's also a machine-made image." The yellow of the haystack pops out, doesn't it? It’s so bright and clean against the black outlines, and I notice how the solid color contrasts the dotted ground. Lichtenstein, influenced by artists such as Andy Warhol, showed that art could be anything, even a commercial image. It’s a big conversation, and it's not over.