Roy Lichtenstein's merging of high art and popular imagery has made him one of contemporary art's most challenging figures. This newer addition to the MoMA Artist Series features nine paintings and a sculpture from The Museum of Modern Art's substantial collection of his work. His well-known paintings Girl with Ball and Drowning Girl are here, among others based on comic books and advertisements. A selection of later works highlights his engagement with high-art styles and with the work of other artists, always in his signature color palette, black linework, and faux half-tone dots.

A lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculture at MoMA, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art and in Lichtenstien's own life. 48 pp.; 35 illus.