Yellow Still Life (Still Life with Cheese), 1974: Lithograph and screenprint on paper

  • Roy Lichtenstein *Yellow Still Life* (1974), featuring bananas, citrus fruit, and a wedge of cheese rendered in bold yellow with black outlines and diagonal hatching.
    Yellow Still Life, 1974
    Lithograph and screenprint on BFK Rives paper, sheet: 83.7 x 112.5 cm
    Edition of 100; plus 14 AP
    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
    BACK TO: SIX STILL LIFES SERIES
     
    Yellow Still Life, 1974,  presents a simplified arrangement of fruit and a wedge of cheese, rendered entirely in Lichtenstein’s signature graphic style. Bananas curve across the centre of the composition, flanked by rounded citrus forms and a small lemon in the foreground, while a block of cheese sits behind them. The entire scene is unified through a dominant yellow palette, contrasted with bold black outlines and diagonal hatching beneath the objects. By reducing the composition to a limited colour scheme and clear, stylised forms, Lichtenstein flattens the image and emphasises surface over depth, turning familiar objects into striking visual symbols.
     
    Produced as a lithograph and screenprint on BFK Rives paper, the work forms part of Lichtenstein’s Six Still Lifes series. Here, he distils the traditional still life genre to its essentials, focusing on repetition, line, and colour rather than naturalistic representation. The restricted palette intensifies the graphic impact of the image, while also highlighting his interest in mechanical reproduction and visual clarity. In doing so, Lichtenstein transforms everyday subject matter into a controlled system of shapes and patterns, reinforcing his exploration of how images are constructed and perceived.
  • "I don't believe in originality. Everything has been done before." 
     
    - Roy Lichtenstein

    Across the Six Still Lifes series, Lichtenstein uses domesticated still life scenes as a framework to explore image-making rather than everyday life itself. Objects like fruit, vessels, and table settings are familiar and historically rooted, but he strips them of context and narrative, presenting them as flat, repeatable forms. By doing so, he removes any sense of intimacy or realism and instead treats the domestic scene as a constructed composition, where arrangement, pattern, and visual structure take priority over meaning or function.