Study for "Fragmented Painting of Lemons and a Melon on a Table" 1973

This study for "Fragmented Painting of Lemons and a Melon on a Table" by Roy Lichtenstein is an exercise in seeing, and the reductive language of Pop. It's all there in colored pencil—the lemons, the melon, the table—but reduced to the barest of visual information. I can imagine Lichtenstein thinking through his project, about how to represent the world through accessible, almost comic means. The diagonal hatching in the background feels like a thought in motion, a way of filling space that echoes the graphic patterns he’s known for. You know, making paintings is like having a conversation with all the painters who ever lived. We are all just borrowing and riffing off each other’s ideas, trying to find a new way to say something. The way Lichtenstein flattens form makes me consider how to do the same, and what can happen when you embrace ambiguity and uncertainty rather than seeking fixed or definitive readings.