Robert Longo For Strong in Love, 1983 Longo's grainy version of mass-media illustration brings a standard emblem of deep emotions into widescreen close-up. Sentimentality swoops in on cue, only to be vaporized by an exaggeration: the backs of the lovers' heads burst into the faces of snarling dogs. The avant-garde deploys irony to assure us that its primitivism is not truly primitive. Longo pushes Strong in Love past the point where such irony provides a way out. This image is truly primitive, and rife with Longo's self-consciousness too.