Notes

This service plate by Roy Lichtenstein - one of the leading exponents of modern American art - quotes fragmentarily from the artist's own repertoire of Pop art imagery. Lichtenstein combines the blow-up character of comic strips - primary colours, dots, bold outlines - with a colour scheme of blue and yellow, black and white, creating a perfectly decorative composition which fills the inner circle of the plate, literally placing a work of abstract art in a culinary context. Seen in this way, the art of cooking takes on a double meaning - and the menu assumes a cultural significance somewhere between epicurean experience and artistic expression.

Rosenthal GmbH contacted the artist about this project in summer 1986. Lichtenstein completed the design and a contract was signed by the end of 1988.