‘What could be discovered? What is new there?’: blockbuster exhibition celebrates Roy Lichtenstein

The often-criticised pop artist is the focus of a monumental new survey including rarely seen pieces and ambitious new restagings at New York’s Whitney Museum

When the American artist Roy Lichtenstein created his monumental Greene Street Mural in 1983, he took inspiration from the Bayeux tapestry for its serial storytelling technique. But whereas the embroidery depicting the Norman conquest continues to delight after nearly 1,000 years, Lichtenstein’s site-specific mural was destroyed after six weeks, in accordance with his wishes.

More than four decades later, however, the monumental Greene Street Mural is to mesmerise art lovers once more. This week a 96ft (29-metre) recreation of the work will span the entire entryway to Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, the first major New York retrospective of the pop artist’s work in 33 years, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.