Two Red and Yellow Apples 1981

This painting, Two Red and Yellow Apples, comes to us from the studio of Roy Lichtenstein. Oh, Roy. He takes the humble apple and zaps it with pure, graphic energy! I can almost see him in his studio, wrestling with those stripes and flat colors, trying to make something so everyday pop off the canvas. The red is so red. That yellow is so yellow. It’s like he’s not just painting an apple, but the idea of an apple, or even the AD for an apple! You know, painting is just a big conversation, and I can imagine him looking at what Cezanne did with apples, and then thinking about what Warhol was doing, and adding his own graphic language. The process feels like one big experiment. It shows how artists riff off each other across time, turning something as simple as an apple into a wild visual ride.