Fun Lichtenstein

When I went to the Roy Lichtenstein exhibition a couple of weeks ago I saw a series of his paintings that, essentially only made sense in the context of his whole oeuvre. The works are called something like 'Imperfect Paintings'. Each one was an asymmetrical abstract pattern, a geometric jumble with just one angle jutting out from the edge of the canvas, breaking the pure classical rectangle.

I loved them, above all for their pointlessness. The only 'justifications' for doing them were that they could be made and that they were fun. They fitted into Lichtenstein's body of work; without prior knowledge of his earlier work they would doubtless appear quite random.