Analysis Of Roy Lichtenstein's Oh Jeff. I Love You Too.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Oh, Jeff…I Love You, Too…But is one of his most well-known paintings, and some even dare to call it the most famous painting he has ever made. This piece depicts a teenage girl on the phone with her boyfriend Jeff as their relationship appears to be threatened by some outside force. Lichtenstein came up with the subject of this painting and many of his other paintings by copying and distorting single panels from comic books. This scene in particular is taken from the DC Comic’s Girls Romances and Secret Hearts series. The fact that Lichtenstein blatantly copied comic strips was a huge drawback for viewers and is still a nuisance to this day. Although some people say that his work plagiarizes the comic book artists, many …show more content…
Everything from the outlines to the composition itself is drastically altered to create a more aesthetically pleasing painting. His use of bold colors, thick outlines, and “benday dots used in commercial printing imitate the character of cartoons,” (Stokstad 1095). The overall thickness of the lines makes the picture seem very flat and cartoon like, but the variance of the line weight does add some dimension. The use of these thick black outlines tells the viewer that this is not supposed to be realistic even though the painting is life size. Every single line is at a diagonal, which creates a sense of movement and direction. The implied line of the woman’s eyesight is at a diagonal down towards the bottom left corner. Even the letters in the text bubble are made up of diagonal lines which give more emotion to them, as if they are leaning on her lips in hesitation. Lichtenstein’s composition also adds to the emotion of the piece. In order to change the painting from the source image, Lichtenstein cropped and zoomed in on the image. When looking at the original comic strip, the viewer can see the distinct changes made in the final painting. The woman’s body runs off every corner, making her seem larger than life. Even the word bubble overlaps the composition as well as the woman herself. The image now reads as if it was a scene from a romantic movie instead of a still panel from a …show more content…
In the mid-1950’s, right after World War II, Britain and American artists began creating art based on material culture such as movies, television, advertisements, and even comic books. This overlap of art and life had never been seen before “except perhaps partially in the decadent formal exuberance of the twenties” (Osterwold 6). With society watching so closely at this new artistic phenomena, it’s no wonder many of these artists received backlash for their work. Roy Lichtenstein was no exception to this criticism. Many people see Lichtenstein’s newer paintings as mere copies of the original work themselves, but this is proven to be untrue. Lichtenstein chooses specific comics that display a certain archetypical theme or motif so that when he removes a part from the whole, “the scene he is depicting [has] a new and quite unfamiliar meaning” (Osterwold 184). In Oh, Jeff…I Love You, Too…But, Lichtenstein “[tightens] and [clarifies] the source image to focus on significant emotions” in order to emphasize the overly melodramatic scene and turn it into a work of art (Stokstad 1094). In a way, the scene is almost ironic in its display of these intense emotions through the use of simple colors and shapes. Lichtenstein does this on purpose, in order to comment on the difference between reality and imagination. By taking a piece of work that is only understood in its original sequence