Diagram 1 - Amerind Landscape 1979

Roy Lichtenstein made this “Diagram 1 – Amerind Landscape” with pencil and crayon. Looking at this, I can see the artist playing with basic shapes and primary colors. I imagine Lichtenstein experimenting, trying to find a balance between abstraction and representation. There are those bold lines, stripes and geometric forms – they kind of remind me of architectural blueprints, or maybe even a child’s building blocks. I wonder what he was thinking about, trying to capture the essence of a landscape through these simplified forms? It is as if he was trying to deconstruct the world around him, breaking it down into its most fundamental elements, before reassembling them into something new. He made comic book paintings, and this feels of that world, a precursor or a related experiment. Artists are always in conversation with each other, building upon the ideas of the past while pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and this piece makes me think about that.