Happy tears

Tears roll down this woman's cheeks, yet the title insists she is crying from joy. That little contradiction sits at the heart of Roy Lichtenstein's work. As one of the driving forces of American Pop Art in the 1960s, he borrowed the visual language of cheap comic strips and pulpy romance magazines, then blew those melodramatic panels up to enormous size. Her skin is made up of tiny colored dots called Ben-Day dots, a shortcut printers once used to fill in shading on the comics page. Lichtenstein painted them by hand, taking something meant to be tossed away and reworking it into gallery-worthy art.

Everything about the piece nods to comic book style, from the thick black outlines to the punchy palette and that electric yellow behind her. Lichtenstein had a habit of choosing women in the grip of big feelings, heartbreak, worry, desire, then rendering them with a strange, detached calm. The mismatch between her teary face and the upbeat title keeps you guessing about her true mood. That gentle wink at the overwrought drama of pop culture, and the surprising elegance he finds in it, is exactly what makes his work so recognizable.