Roy Lichtenstein’s Haystack V (C.69) continues his radical Pop reinterpretation of Monet’s celebrated Haystack series, pushing the subject further into the language of mass media. By using red and blue Ben-Day dots set against a stark white background, Lichtenstein transforms Monet’s impressionistic play of light into a bold graphic abstraction, where the bucolic subject barely surfaces through the grid of mechanical repetition.

The haystacks, once rich with the atmospheric nuance of shifting daylight, now seem almost buried beneath industrial patterning. Lichtenstein is not concerned with Monet’s interest in time or the ephemeral effects of weather, but with the process of seeing in the age of reproduction. The haystack becomes less a natural form than an image coded through print technology, where recognition is mediated by systems of dots and color fields.

In this work, the palette of red and blue carries symbolic as well as visual weight. The bold clash of primary tones underscores the artificiality of the image, stripping the landscape of its natural qualities. The result is a confrontation between tradition and modernity: Monet’s subjective brushstroke collides with Lichtenstein’s cool detachment and mechanical execution.

Haystack V exemplifies Lichtenstein’s broader project of interrogating the ways in which high art and popular culture intersect. By appropriating an Impressionist icon and filtering it through the visual codes of advertising and comic book printing, he both honors Monet’s achievement and dismantles its aura, recontextualizing it for a 20th-century audience.

The piece becomes a meta-commentary on perception itself. Just as Monet invited viewers to see differently through fleeting impressions of light, Lichtenstein asks us to reconsider how we interpret images in an era dominated by mechanical reproduction and graphic simplification.