Kiss V (1964) by Roy Lichtenstein is a piece that explores emotions and relationships through his characteristic comic art style, but with an ironic and detached twist. This work belongs to the Kiss series, one of the most well-known within pop art, a movement in which Lichtenstein is a key figure. As in other of his works, in Kiss V the artist uses images taken from comics, but he doesn’t simply reproduce them; he transforms them, exaggerating certain visual and stylistic elements, making the image become something more than a graphic representation of a scene.
The painting shows two figures, a man and a woman, in a passionate embrace, their faces so close that their lips almost touch. However, what makes this scene unique and typical of Lichtenstein is the way it is presented. The visual style of Kiss V is marked by thick outline lines and flat colors, combined with the characteristic Ben-Day dots, a technique used in commercial printing to create shading and tones in images.
What’s fascinating about the piece is the way Lichtenstein plays with emotional exaggeration and artificiality. The kiss is depicted in a way that, instead of capturing the intensity or genuine intimacy of a romantic moment, it becomes a distant image, another piece of visual consumption within mass culture. The scene seems stripped of any real emotional nuance; it is exaggerated and mechanized, a metaphor for how human emotions can be consumed and replicated in cinema, comics, and advertising.
The work also reflects an implicit critique of the idealization of romantic relationships presented in popular media. The characters in the painting don’t seem to have a genuine emotional connection but are trapped in a superficial representation of love, as if it were just another image in a cultural production chain.
As for its impact, Kiss V is considered one of the most iconic examples of how Lichtenstein could take elements of popular culture and transform them into contemporary art, questioning the relationship between art and consumer culture. The work highlights how comics, a medium considered “low” compared to traditional arts, can be used to explore universal themes like love, desire, and emotionality, but from a critical and reflective perspective.
Kiss V is a high-impact piece that invites reflection on how emotions and relationships are represented, consumed, and recycled in contemporary visual culture. Lichtenstein, as in other works, not only celebrates these themes but also challenges them, inviting the viewer to question the authenticity of the media-driven emotions we consume.
