Foot and Hand (section)

Roy Lichtenstein made comic book panels into serious art, and this close-up shows exactly how he did it. The heavy black outlines, the flat blocks of yellow and pink, and those little dots scattered across the skin are his signature moves. Those dots have a name, Ben-Day dots, borrowed from the cheap printing used in comics of the day. Lichtenstein painted them by hand, one by one, turning a throwaway technique into something worth hanging on a wall. Back in the 1960s, when he was a leading voice of American Pop Art, this idea struck many people as bold and even a bit cheeky.

The scene crops in tight on a foot and a hand, with the fingers wrapped around a small object that might be a cigarette. Pulling these body parts out of any larger picture gives the image a strange, almost comic energy. Is the person calm or on edge? Are they in the middle of something dramatic, or just resting? Lichtenstein leaves those questions hanging, and that open ending is part of the appeal. Cut off from any real story, an ordinary gesture suddenly becomes something you find yourself puzzling over.