The Disney cartoon characters, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, fish off a dock in this horizontal painting. The scene and characters are painted entirely flat areas of canary yellow, cobalt blue, tomato red, and white. To our left, Donald leans over the edge of the dock with his feet spread and duckbill hanging open. He has a white body outlined in blue, big eyes filled with a pattern of tiny blue dots, and yellow feet and duckbill. He wears a blue sailor’s hat and jacket with a red bow tie and yellow circles indicating buttons. He holds a fishing pole with an oval, red bobber near the fishhook high over his head. The pole has bent back with the fishhook snagged on the back hem of Donald’s jacket. A white speech bubble over Donald’s head is outlined in blue, and blue text inside reads, “LOOK MICKEY, I’VE HOOKED A BIG ONE!!” Mickey stands to our right, covering his smiling mouth with his left hand, on our right, and holding an upright fishing pole with the other hand. His round face is filled with a pattern of tiny red dots, and his curving hairline and ears are blue. He wears blue pants, a red shirt and shoes, and white gloves. The dock is mostly yellow with a white area on the right. Its planks and three white, round posts supporting it are outlined in blue. Rippling water surrounding the dock is defined by wavy lines and undulating bands of blue against a yellow background. The artist signed his initials in the lower left, “rfl.”
Roy Lichtenstein, Look Mickey, 1961, oil on canvas, Gift of Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1990.41.1

Pop

Emerging in the 1960s, pop art drew from commercial formats like advertising, comic strips, newspapers, and movies. Artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Marjorie Strider made art that seemed to lack personal touch. They left it to the viewer to decide whether these works celebrated or criticized consumerist society.

  • Four deep, three-dimensional letters spell out the word AMOR in this free-standing sculpture, with the A and M stacked on top of the O and R to create a square on a low black platform. The letters are coral red with butter-yellow undersides. The elongated, oval-shaped opening within the circular letter O is angled 45 degrees, toward the M at the upper right. We stand slightly to the left in this photograph so we can see the deep sides of the letters. The sculpture is displayed out-of-doors with trees and a tall black fence in the background and plantings around the base.
  • Thirteen round cakes sit in three rows, each on a disk-like stand supported on a thin rod, in this horizontal painting. We look slightly down onto the cakes, which only barely overlap. All of the cakes are round except for one, which has been cut in half so we see the four layers of yellow cake and chocolate frosting inside. The top of that cake is white. All of the other cakes are unique except for two angel food cakes at the center, which are slightly different heights. Most of the other cakes have white or brown frosting, except for a pink cake at the front right. That cake has white swags piped on the sides and a pink rose on the top. Next to it is a cake topped with yellow, perhaps lemon curd. The other two cakes in the front row have a white swirl against dark brown frosting, and the fourth, near the left egde, is topped with a single red cherry. Half of a low, pale orange cake is cut off by the left edge of the canvas in the middle row. Each cake stand casts a pale gray shadow against the light, arctic-blue counter. The paint is thickly applied throughout, and the outlines around the cakes, plates, and rods are streaked with rainbow colors. The artist signed the work by incising his name and the date into the wet white paint in the top right corner: “Thiebaud 1963.”
  • The head and shoulders of a young woman shown against a solid, turquoise-green background fills this stylized, nearly square portrait painting. She faces and looks at us. Her face and neck is a field of orchid purple. Her eyelids are covered in crescent-shaped areas of turquoise above small areas of arctic blue, overlaid over the whites of her eyes and iris. Her full lips are covered with bright scarlet red. Black shading picks out her arched eyebrows, her heavy-lidded eyes, the shadow under her nose, her smiling mouth, the hollows under her high cheekbones and at her temples, and the shadow her chin casts on her neck. She has a mole between her left nostril and the left corner of her mouth, on our right. Her short, wavy hair is swept up from her forehead and overlaid with a field of canary yellow over the black shading that indicates curls along the sides of her face and along the back of her neck. A pear-shaped area of turquoise alongside her neck to our right could be the collar of her shirt. The turquoise background is flecked with a few black vertical lines, especially near the left edge.
  • In tones of dark sepia and coffee brown against a silvery-white background, a rectangular image taken from a photograph is repeated to make a grid with five across and eight rows in this square silkscreen painting. The repeated images are indistinct and grainy, though some are clearer than others. The image shows three men, four women, and a baby gathered in front of what could be a farmhouse. Shown from the knees up, the people appear to have light skin and most of them smile. The women wear dresses and one man, to our right, wears a brimmed hat. The sky above them is marked with fine, parallel, curving lines, reminiscent of fingerprint whorls.
  • The Disney cartoon characters, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, fish off a dock in this horizontal painting. The scene and characters are painted entirely flat areas of canary yellow, cobalt blue, tomato red, and white. To our left, Donald leans over the edge of the dock with his feet spread and duckbill hanging open. He has a white body outlined in blue, big eyes filled with a pattern of tiny blue dots, and yellow feet and duckbill. He wears a blue sailor’s hat and jacket with a red bow tie and yellow circles indicating buttons. He holds a fishing pole with an oval, red bobber near the fishhook high over his head. The pole has bent back with the fishhook snagged on the back hem of Donald’s jacket. A white speech bubble over Donald’s head is outlined in blue, and blue text inside reads, “LOOK MICKEY, I’VE HOOKED A BIG ONE!!” Mickey stands to our right, covering his smiling mouth with his left hand, on our right, and holding an upright fishing pole with the other hand. His round face is filled with a pattern of tiny red dots, and his curving hairline and ears are blue. He wears blue pants, a red shirt and shoes, and white gloves. The dock is mostly yellow with a white area on the right. Its planks and three white, round posts supporting it are outlined in blue. Rippling water surrounding the dock is defined by wavy lines and undulating bands of blue against a yellow background. The artist signed his initials in the lower left, “rfl.”
  • An iron-gray pencil with the stubby proportions of a golf pencil lies with the point angled away from us to our right in this photograph. The other end of the pencil appears cut so the lead is visible. The background lightens from nickel gray to white behind the sculpture.
  • A silver butter knife rests across a slice of white bread so its rounded blade is covered with a layer of the vivid yellow spread, presumably butter, that covers the bread in this nearly square painting. The handle of the knife angles from near the bottom center of the composition up toward the top right corner. The handle is cropped by the bottom edge of the painting just below where it meets the blade. The bread on which it rests is also angled toward the upper right corner, so its curved top is cropped. Three more unbuttered slices of bread splay out like a fan beneath it, to our left and into the upper left corner. The bread is eggshell white with soft gray pockmarks to capture the air pockets in the crumb, and each slice has a deep, honey-brown crust. The glossy yellow butter glistens where the light catches it. The area around the slices of bread is the same vibrant yellow of the butter, along the bottom of the canvas.

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Printed with fine black lines on cream-white paper, a man wearing a knee-length tunic and reading from a piece of unfolded paper faces our right against a mostly blank background in this vertical engraving. The man's right shoulder, closer to us, is angled in a way that suggests his torso is turned slightly away from us even though his feet and face are shown in profile. A narrow wreath is almost lost in his dense curls, and he has a straight nose and prominent chin. His fur-lined tunic is belted low across his hips, and a dagger hangs from his belt. His pointed clog-like shoes seem to slip onto his feet like sandals, and he stands on a grassy field in an otherwise empty space. Creases in the paper he holds suggests it had been folded into nine sections.

Prints

Printmaking has played a key role in spreading artistic styles, scientific diagrams, and ideas around the world. A printmaker first creates a design on a matrix—a surface often made of metal, wood, or stone. They then apply ink and press paper or fabric to the matrix, transferring the design. This process can be repeated, creating multiple works.

Shown from the shoulders up, a woman and man, both with brown skin, look at each other in this horizontal portrait painting. Their bodies are angled toward each other and both have black hair, dark eyebrows, and full, coral-red lips. To our left, the woman faces our right in profile. She has a delicate nose and high cheekbones. Her eyes are painted with black lashes over black eyes, without the white of the eye. A gold disk earring hangs from the ear we can see, and she wears white and royal-blue beads in two necklaces. Her hair is combed or styled close to her head, and a swath of brick-red fabric, flecked with golden yellow, wraps around the back of her neck. A scarf with butter-yellow, denim-blue, and red stripes in a plaid pattern is draped across her shoulders, over a rose-pink garment. To our right, the man’s face is angled toward the woman but we see both eyes and the far cheek. His hair is closely cropped and he has a rounded nose, curving brows, and full cheeks. The shadows and folds of his white garment are painted with streaks of teal blue. The background behind the pair is patterned with bands and geometric designs of mustard yellow, scarlet red, and teal, with some stylized leaves in emerald and forest green. The artist signed the work in red paint in the lower right corner, “Lois M. Jones.”

Love

From blossoming romances to painful heartbreaks or lifelong connections, artists capture all stages of love. This most universal human emotion has inspired countless moving works of art.