Sunrise over water

What appears to be a burst of wild, energetic brushwork is actually anything but spontaneous. Roy Lichtenstein, the American Pop artist celebrated for his comic strip paintings and signature dots, mapped out every swooping blue, yellow, and gray stroke with real precision. The crisp black outlines wrapped around each swirl give them a cartoonish edge, almost like brushstrokes drawn in a comic panel. This was Lichtenstein's cheeky jab at the Abstract Expressionists, painters who treated a single gesture as a heartfelt outpouring of emotion. He took that idea and turned it into something cool, flat, and deliberately fake.

The title, "Sunrise over Water," unlocks the picture. Those blue sweeps across the top read as a morning sky, the yellow shapes stand in for the sun climbing up, and the rippling lines below become water catching the early light. Made in 1996, near the end of his life, this print shows Lichtenstein circling back to the brushstroke subject he had been playing with for decades. Even a peaceful sunrise, in his hands, becomes a sly joke about how painting itself works.