Blue Floor is one of a series of artworks Lichtenstein made in the early 1990s depicting domestic interiors. Finished to a very large scale they were inspired by a billboard advertisement for a furniture store Lichtenstein had seen outside Rome in 1989. Throughout his career he continued to base his paintings on imagery from popular culture and the mass media; he often sourced the images for works of his Interiors series from advertisements found in the Yellow Pages, and made use of a projector to enlarge the design to the appropriate size. His characteristic use of paper stencils used to mask off areas on the canvases of his paintings to be left blank is evident in the sharp raised edges of the painted shapes.

As in much of Lichtensteins work there is a sense of detachment to the painting; the furniture represented here is generic, the colours are bland pastels, and the rendering flat, unreal and illustrational. But offering only a minimum of information, Lichtenstein gives enough detail for the viewer to complete the picture, for the work to become a believable representation. The scale of this artwork, close to life-size, with its corner seeming to jut out into the gallery space almost invites the viewer into the work.

Image: © Roy Lichtenstein, Olyvia Fine Art