Roy Lichtenstein’s Composition IV (C. 293), created in 1995, is part of the artist’s late exploration of music as visual abstraction, where sheet music becomes both subject and structure. Like other works in his Composition series, this screenprint reimagines the linearity of musical notation, transforming it into a bold, graphic interplay of rhythm, form, and color.

Here, Lichtenstein strips music of its function as a system for sound and instead recasts it as a visual architecture of rhythm. The intertwining staves bend and twist across the surface, refusing to conform to their usual rigidity. Musical notes—usually precise indicators of pitch and time—float instead as playful graphic symbols, emphasizing their role as visual icons rather than auditory instructions.

The palette of crisp black lines against blocks of yellow, red, white, and blue situates the work firmly in Lichtenstein’s Pop idiom. The vivid colors break up the composition like syncopated beats, punctuating the field of notes and bars with bursts of intensity. By introducing flat zones of color—such as the bright yellow rectangle and red diagonals—Lichtenstein destabilizes the grid-like logic of notation, giving the piece a sense of improvisation akin to jazz.

This work, like Composition I–III, demonstrates Lichtenstein’s fascination with how systems of representation mediate experience. Just as his Brushstroke series reimagined the painterly gesture as a mechanical sign, Composition IV reduces music to an image, questioning the boundaries between sensory modes. In doing so, Lichtenstein creates a kind of meta-commentary on creativity, showing how the structures that shape art—whether brushstrokes or musical notes—can be abstracted, exaggerated, and transformed into art themselves.

Executed just a few years before his death, Composition IV embodies the artist’s mature style: playful yet rigorous, accessible yet intellectually probing. It illustrates his enduring ability to take familiar cultural forms and remake them into sharp, witty, and vibrant explorations of perception and meaning.

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