Preparedness 1968

Roy Lichtenstein made this huge painting, Preparedness, with oil and magna on canvas. You know, it’s fascinating how Lichtenstein embraced this commercial printing aesthetic; it feels so deliberate and almost mechanical, yet there's something deeply human about his choices. The Ben-Day dots and bold outlines are so iconic. I love how they flatten the image, creating this very graphic, almost cartoon-like quality. The colours are very direct – like, *BAM*, you know, in your face, primary. Looking at it up close, you can see the texture isn’t really about the hand of the artist but rather about the process of mechanical reproduction. The flatness really messes with your perception. It’s like, are we looking at a representation of industry, or are we looking at an image of a representation? Thinking about artists like Fernand Léger and his interest in the machine age, I can't help but see how Lichtenstein riffs on that. Ultimately, I think Lichtenstein invites us to question what art is and can be, and to embrace the ambiguity inherent in the act of seeing.