Haystack #6, State I (C.71) presents the same lithographic work as Haystack #6 (C.70) in a yellow-olive palette on Special Arjomari paper — the haystack form set in a colour range that sat entirely outside the warm atmospheric register Monet had employed.

Where Impressionism's Rouen and Haystack series moved through the oranges, pinks, and golds of French daylight, Lichtenstein's states were never constrained by natural colour; his palette was declarative, arbitrary, chosen for its effect rather than its descriptive accuracy.

Lichtenstein was demonstrating that the colour choices underpinning Impressionist painting — presented as the faithful recording of observed light — were in fact a construction..

By replacing Monet's observed palette with one that declared its own artificiality, he made the case that perception is always mediated, always shaped by prior codes, never the unfiltered experience that Impressionism claimed. Haystack #6, State I (C.71), alongside the other states of Haystack #6, offered the most transparent version of this demonstration. The same haystack, in four different colour states: the subject constant, the colour variable, the point made by the comparison itself, not by any single work.

For more information or to buy Haystack #6, State I by Roy Lichtenstein, contact our specialists using the enquiry button above.