Entablature VI (C.143) is among the most restrained works in Roy Lichtenstein's Entablature Series — a pale, cool picture in which light blue and cream tones dominate, the architectural ornament rendered with a delicacy that contrasted sharply with the deeper, more imposing palettes of earlier prints. The collaged element here was translucent rather than metallic, introducing a different quality of light, the architectural detail reading with a refinement closer to the decorative arts than to the monumental civic buildings that had provided the series' source material.

The tonal restraint allowed the intricate character of the decorative elements to assert itself more fully than in works where strong colour dominated. The layered mouldings, the precisely rendered ornamental patterns, the careful horizontal division of the picture: these were the elements that the classical entablature had been designed to display, and Lichtenstein's rendering gave them their full weight without the competition of an assertive colour scheme.

The Entablature Series was produced at a moment when Lichtenstein was being widely recognised as the most intellectually rigorous of the Pop Art generation — an artist whose scrutiny of art and architectural history was systematic rather than merely appropriative. Entablature VI (C.143) shows that scrutiny at its most patient, treating the ornamental system with the same close attention he had brought to comic-book panels and Impressionist canvases. In his hands the entablature was never merely decorative — it was always carrying something else.

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