Blonde 1978

Roy Lichtenstein made this screenprint, Blonde, and everything is so deliberately laid down; each mark a decision. I love how Lichtenstein takes something as seemingly flat as a printed comic and makes it into something deeply emotional. Look at the way the hatching on her face gives way to these bold, flat areas of color. It's like he's saying, "Hey, this is just a picture," but then the expression in her eyes pulls you right back in. That tension between what's real and what's fake is what makes Lichtenstein so cool. He's like Warhol's brainier cousin, always playing with our perceptions. You see a similar kind of comic-book abstraction in the work of Peter Saul, who’s not afraid to push things to the edge of grotesque. And in both artists there’s this sense that art is a conversation, a back-and-forth, and that there are many ways to see, think, and feel.