The usually straight, parallel lines of musical staves are liberated here into curving and looping waves. Music was one of Lichtenstein’s great loves – he played the clarinet in his youth, and learnt the saxophone at the age of 70. During the late 1930s, he visited New York’s vibrant jazz clubs and jazz became a lifelong passion. This print responds to the creative and improvisatory nature of this style of music. It also acts as a playful visual pun on the artist’s own fascination with the arrangement of line, form and colour in the composition of artworks. The print, the third in a series of three ‘Composition’ prints, was produced for the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE), a non-profit organisation dedicated to enabling American art to be displayed in United States embassies worldwide.