Art I “In the Car”

Hello.

Info.
Artist: Roy Lichtenstein
Title: In the Car
Size: 172 cm* 203.5 cm
Format: horizontal
Medium: Magna and oil on canvas
Date of Creation: 1963
Current Location: The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

The Essay.

There are two figures in Roy Lichtenstein’s In the Car, a man and a woman. The woman takes up most of the left half of the painting. She is facing towards the right side of the painting, so one sees her at a profile. Her profile line seems to be one continuous, swoopy line. She has yellow hair, about the level of her jaw line, separated by black lines of varying thickness. These lines curve down and then flip up about near her cheekbone. Her ears cannot be seen, except for a round, white earring. Her eyebrow is black and of medium thickness. It is pointed in the middle and its size decreases to a point after the bend. She has grey-blue eyes and salon colored lips. Her eyelashes are very prominent. There is a group of thin, closely-placed lines that go in the same direction on her on her nose, eyelid and under her eye. On her nose, the lines are extremely close together and small. They are going away from the nostril, but the line they form together outlines the outer part of her nostril. On her eyelid, they are diagonal and straight. The bottom starts at the end of her eye. Under her eye, they do not touch the bottom lashes, but go out in the same direction. She is wearing a yellow leopard-print jacket. To her left, in the middle of the painting is a man.
He has black hair with blue splotches in it. The top half of his ear is visible. He is wearing a blue suit with a white collared shirt underneath and a red tie. He is looking back towards her and part of his left eye can be seen. His eyebrows are bushy and also bend in the middle, then go down to a point. He does not appear to have any eyelashes. His eye color cannot be determined. His bottom lip is the same color as his skin. The top lip is about half the size of the bottom lip and has been colored black. There is a short, diagonal line at the left end of his top lip. His lips are about twice the size in length as hers, although hers a much thicker. Coming up from the bottom of his chin, there is a small line, about a third of the height of the rest of his chin. There are small groups of thin, closely placed lines that go the same direction between the nose and left brow line, under his eye and in his nose. Underneath the bottom of the eye, there is a line that curves in the general contour of the eye. It starts by the tear duct. Below this line, on the side closest to the tear ducts, there is a collection of the aforementioned lines. If the line under the eye is going in a more or less east-west direction, then the lines are going in a northwest-southeast direction. The lines between his nose and eyebrow start almost touching the nose line, which continues past the eyebrows. The nose line, after bending between the eyes is almost as thick as the eyebrows. The nose line and the collection of lines form a Y shape, but do not touch. The lines decrease in size, but continue to be aligned on the top. The lines on his nose are in the same place as the lines on her nose and also outline the outer part of his nostril. His lines are longer and more separated. While the line of her profile seems to be one continuous, swoopy line, his is much more broken up and they join together in a much more angular fashion.
Behind him are six black lines of varying thickness and closeness. With those black lines are five white lines of varying thickness and closeness. The first line is above is brow and the last one is on the same level as his chin, although it is half of the way to touching it. All of the lines on his side start out from a long, thick line slanted in a north-northwest to south-southwest direction. Black lines that are one-forth of its size outline it. It extends from the red on the bottom to the red on the top. The red and the white line outlined in black will be described later on, There are more black and white lines of varying closeness and thickness in front of her. They seem to go off the canvas. Most of the lines start the same distance in from her hair as her eyebrow. Three black lines, however, start in her hair. There are four white lines on this side and nine black ones.