Roy Lichtenstein

Man with Folded Arms

1962

For Man with Folded Arms, Roy Lichtenstein reinterpreted Paul Cézanne’s Man with Crossed Arms (c. 1899) by painting a diagram outlining Cézanne’s compositional strategies for the work that he had found in an instructional art book. For the original painting, Cézanne created his subject’s form using expressive strokes of color. Like the diagram, Lichtenstein’s work is devoid of color, with the man’s form articulated by graphic lines that sit on a ground of Benday dots. The work embodies Lichtenstein’s approach: a hand-painted, one-of-a-kind replica of a mass-produced printed reproduction, rendered in a visual language borrowed from popular culture that lends the work the flat sterile quality of printed matter.

Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923, New York; d. 1997, New York)
Man with Folded Arms, 1962
Oil on canvas
70 x 48 1/2 in.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Panza Collection