Two Red and Yellow Apples 1981

Roy Lichtenstein made these ‘Two Red and Yellow Apples’ with screen printing, in his signature pop art style. Look at how he’s reduced everything down to these bold, flat colours and thick black outlines. It’s like he’s taken a photograph and flattened it. For me, that’s the beginning of making art: distilling an image. The texture in this print comes from those stripes. They’re all very purposefully placed, especially around the apples, giving a sense of volume, but it’s all an illusion, of course. I'm drawn to the fact that the marks within the apples follow the direction of the round shape, but in an abstract way. Each apple is bisected into two colours. Do they look like two halves put together, or a single form that has been altered? Lichtenstein’s work always reminds me of Warhol, using repetition and commercial techniques to make art about everyday life, but here it feels like he's thinking about something even more fundamental: still life itself.