ART PLEASE

Today we’re giving thanks with one very pop guest at the table: Roy Lichtenstein’s Turkey (1961). Happy Thanksgiving 🦃!!!!

Painted just before his famous comic-book works, Turkey belongs to an early group of “everyday object” paintings – along with things like an electric cooker and a coiled cord – where Lichtenstein turned humble consumer goods into icons of Pop. A Sunday roast on a platter becomes a sharp little portrait of post-war American plenty, advertising, and supermarket culture. 

A few things we love about this work today:
• It looks like a simple still life, but its source is commercial imagery – the kind of food pictures you’d see in mid-century ads and packaging. 
• A classic family symbol (the turkey dinner) is flattened into bold lines, flat colour and graphic shapes, asking how much of our “traditions” are staged for the camera.
• The image later reappeared on a Lichtenstein Turkey Shopping Bag for the legendary 1964 “American Supermarket” exhibition, where a New York gallery was transformed into a full grocery store of Pop art. 

On a day that’s all about abundance and togetherness, it’s a reminder that what ends up on our tables – and in our images – is never just food. It’s history, desire, advertising, class, culture… all carved into one very graphic bird.

Today we’re thankful for:
• Artists who turn the ordinary into something we can’t forget
• The printers, framers, shippers and handlers who get art safely from studio to wall
• The museums, foundations and estates who care for these works
• And the viewers (you) who keep looking, questioning and sharing

Artwork credit:
Roy Lichtenstein, Turkey, 1961. Oil and graphite on canvas, 26 × 30 in.
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. All rights reserved. Image rights courtesy of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation / DACS (where applicable). 

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