Roy Lichtenstein Red Barn (C.89) For Sale

Red Barn, 1969 by Roy Lichtenstein, taken from his Cartoon series, is illustrative of the artist’s fascination with all the tropes and symbolism of American society. The simplified countryside scene is both pastiche and parody of traditional art history and the bucolic mid-American rural life. In re-interpreting the traditions of landscape painting, Lichtenstein continues a heritage from previous generations of famed American artists and elevates pop art into the higher echelons of art history. 

Taking a traditional landscape setting, so synonymous with the 19th century old masters who romanticised the rustic country scene, Lichtenstein decimates that idealised vision with his cartoon-esque interpretation. All his pop art signatures are apparent: the bright colourways, graphic lines and ben day dot techniques. The crimson red barn lies in the heart of green rolling hills and leafy trees, surrounded by vagrant skies created through dense areas of black and white dots.

Lichtenstein’s landscape depictions are some of his most innovative artworks: he conveys the unknown essence of light and form through his own graphic visual language, enhancing the presence of the red barn in the picture, through dramatic use of bold colour and shadow. The play with dark shadows and opaqueness give the simplified print a depth and dimensional quality to the picture: the viewer’s gaze is drawn to the vagrant clouds and looming skies hovering above the shadowed outline of the red barn. 

By taking such a recognisable art history motif, the rural landscape, and creating his own impression of it in such an drastically economical manner, Lichtenstein recreates historical art genres to be both familiar and inaccessible.