Baked Potato
Roy Lichtenstein
American, 1923–1997
1962
An ink-and-acrylic on paper depiction that turns a steaming baked potato with a melting pat of butter into a bold, cartoonlike emblem.
You're struck by the enormous, flat black mass of the potato and the luminous, almost geometric yellow butter drawn with thick black outlines and minimal detail, which makes the ordinary snack feel both familiar and formally exaggerated.
Made at the height of Pop Art, it shows Lichtenstein’s tactic of borrowing the graphic vocabulary of advertising and comics to make the everyday visible as art, challenging distinctions between high and low culture.
Medium
Ink and acrylic on paper
Dimensions
22 1/4 x 30 1/8" (56.6 x 76.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (by exchange)
Accession
385.1984
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
