the heART of it: Love Not Glamour

My Great Uncle was a wise chap. I think once you attain a certain age these pearls of wisdom become much more palatable to the younger generation - they seem like good sense rather than just parental meddling… Not that mine have ever meddled, they’re more in the mould of mistakes are good and if it’s something really bad then rally around and tell everyone else to bugger off. Uncle Phil once told me that Love should not be glamorous. He left it at that. Helpful really until you get to a certain place and perspective in your life when it all becomes clear. If you haven’t got there, you will, if you have, how true is that?!

Everyone needs a eureka moment...

Now my epiphany on this only came this afternoon – at approximately fourteen minutes past two on the way home from the Bank. Luckily for all of us, the art world got there way before I did, and have been trying to get us to see this very fact for years. There are so many images by the great and the good of the artistic community on the simplicity and everday nature of real love, and it’s on these that I intend to witter in a contented manner for a little while. Grand gestures are all very well and good, but artists have been pointing out for years that it is in fact the simple things which fulfil us emotionally, an embrace, a glance, a touch, a smile. These small gestures of intimacy can sustain us much better for their personal nature than ever an extravagance can because at the end of the day any idiot can pay for a nice meal or a piece of jewellery, but it takes one who knows you to remember exactly how you like your tea in the morning or when to give you a hug when you don’t even realise that you really need one.

Mark Chagall, The Lovers. Mixed media

The first stop on this eclectic trip through the last century is once again the artist Marc Quinn, who it has to be said I like rather a lot – he’s gutsy, no afraid to push boundaries, but unlike so many artists out there who go for shock value he’s actually good enough to back up his vision. The Kiss is my favourite of his images because if it’s simplicity – I mean what could be more effortless: two people in an embrace which is passionate and meaningful to them? The total self-absorption of the figures is moving; the pleasure and happiness these two clearly derive from one another is inspirational. There is another subtler message here when you start to really look, and I am going to be fairly blunt about it, Love conquering disability. This piece is really read on two levels – the emotional and the visual. That said, the longer you look the less you see and the more you feel; here is the perfect vision of young love and hope made real by the subjects anchoring in the world of physical handicap.

Marc Quinn, The Kiss, 2002. Marble

Though his somewhat turbulent relationships would tend to suggest to the unknowing spectator that he didn’t know the meaning of the word, Sir Stanley Spencer managed to capture and convey the sacred nature of the quiet moments we find in Love. Whilst there are many beautiful images on the everyday comfort we find in long-standing relationships one of my favourites is a simple pencil drawing of his beloved first wife Hilda and a daughter patting a dog which Stanley himself holds on a lead. There are other paintings which I could talk about, other drawings as well, but for some reason there is something in this small depiction of the family unit which is just perfect. Perhaps it’s because of Hilda and Spencer’s background that I find it so touching - despite difficulties within the marriage, Hilda's was the key role in his emotional life, as much of his work showed. They corresponded regularly, and he continued writing to her even after their divorce in 1937 and her death in 1950. These letters could be over a hundred pages long. As he wrote, 'You still are to me the most revealing person of true essential joy I know.’ There is something simple yet totally fulfilled in the absorption and interaction of the two main characters, a warmth to the touch, a sense of belonging together and tranquillity. Love in Spencer’s world was both passionate and quiet, when he followed the glamour of it he was nearly ruined, but the simple side of it was his constant companion and solace for the rest of his life.

Sir Stanley Spencer, Family Group, 1939. Pencil on Paper

When I was little (which if you believe my +1 I still am) my father bought me a poem called Hugs. It hung on a beam by my bed for years and I can still recall the majority of it to this day. Now I happen to be a bit of a tactile person - and by bit I mean utterly, irretrievably touchy feely – and I love a good hug. There’s something about them which can be intensely personal for an act which is essentially everyday; it’s the emotion which you imbue them with which makes them important parts of relationships and a way to convey your Love for another person. Nan Goldin pays this simple embrace homage in her seminal work The Hug. From what I can see there is nothing big or impressive about what is shown here, except maybe the hair, but that is the beauty of it. A hug, to the right minded person, shuts out the world, erases stress, conveys emotion, cheers you up and occasionally makes your heart skip a beat.

Nan Goldin, The Hug, 1980. Photograph

Thus far I’ve babbled on about Love in a relationship (whether fleeting or long term), but what about Love between family or friends? Well here the same principle of simplicity applies. I have several close friends, and by close I mean really close - being an only child elevates them to pretty much family. Now, we’ve been through a lot together over the years and there is a bond there which is for all intents and purposes is what I recognise to be Love; it has grown stronger through adversity, pain, laugher and many different relationships but remain constant and comforting. 

Against the world, your friends will always stand beside you...

That is the other things which artists remind us of in talking about relationship and the feelings they evoke; Love can grow from the most unlikely situations. David Hockney painted We Two Boys Together Clinging in 1961 before homosexuality was decriminalized and as such allows us to read his piece in two ways. The first directly refers to what I was saying about Love between friends, as the title is taken from Walt Whitman’s poem of the same name and discusses the bonds between friends and how unshakable they are. The second is still about Love in adversity and comes directly from the socio-historic context of the time it was painted.  The two protagonists in this painting are seen exchanging a passionate embrace and kiss in front of a lavatory wall covered in graffiti. The painting’s child-like lines and bright pinks and blues lend the embracing figures a vivacity to match that of the poem, in spite of the otherwise dreary greys of the background, suggestive of passion in the midst of somewhat illicit circumstances. The childlike nature of it also lends something in terms of the naivety of Love and a belief (exactly like a child) that everything will be fine.

David Hockney, We Two Boys Together Clinging, 1961. Oil on Board

Love it would seem is as complex as we choose to make it. We can strive for the ideal, we can find ourselves immersed in the darker aspects of it or we can find happiness in the simple pleasures it bring to us. Art is there for whatever version of this emotion we decide we wish to see, and like Love itself, it shifts and changes, challenging our perceptions and comforting us by turn. It’s been kind of fascinating to see the differences in interpretation of this subject, and it’s interesting the conversations it has thrown up and controversies it has reignited between my nearest and dearest. For me, well it’s a private thing as all true matters of the heart are. That said I can safely say I’ll be following some sage advice from one who knew infinitely better than myself…

the heART of it: The World Without Disney

So we’ve seen classical portrayals of Love in the previous post – I must admit to going slightly gooey over the whole thing, much to my +1’s disgust which lead to far too much ribbing on his part – but what do we mean by Love in the modern sense? The classic imagery is all romance, chivalry and gratuitous nudity, but is there still some semblance of this ideology in contemporary pieces? 

Barnaby Furnas, Romeo and Juliet #4, 2011.  Water dispersed pigments, dye, colored pencil, seral transfer and acrylic on linen. Traditional subjects may remain in contemporary works, but there is definitely a  difference in the scenes depicted - less about falling in Love, more about the consequences of that somewhat simple act.

I think it’s fair to say attitudes have changed somewhat. It seems to me that declarations of Love are now shown through the giving of a spare key, the dividing of the sock drawer (the romance in this act is almost palpable), and splitting the bill over dinner. An old university argument which was discussed somewhat tipsily (understatement) between my group of friends, and I hasten to add it was both guys and girls, was whether Disney has given generation of women and men a totally distorted idea of what Love is. Does Love as I’d like to see it still have a place in the modern world or should it be confined to celluloid and digital space as a sentimental museum piece?

Roy Lichtenstein, Hopeless, 1963. Oil on Canvas. The juxtaposition of Pop colouration and  dark subject matter is something which Lichtenstein favoured again and again in his work.

As always I can only speak from experience. I was mulling this over the other morning whilst sipping a big mug of hot chocolate and watching the world slide by - it’s amazing the things that come to you when you’re being stood-up for a breakfast meeting with The Architect - and I came to the conclusion that what we want from Love has altered, just as what we want from our relationships has altered. I was reminded of something my fabulous and feisty friend Anna said over lunch a few months ago: we’re no longer looking for (in) dependence with our other respective other halves; we’re actually looking for co-dependence. Despite the sometimes overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Love is still here (how else would Richard Curtis make any money?) but it has become much subtler, much more equal and much more open.

Banksy, Hope. Aerosol paint. 

This well-rounded epiphany reached, I began to dwell (not surprisingly under the circumstances) on the negatives as well as the positives. Is this subtlety what modern artists crave for their representations of Love? Well, the reaction is pretty bi-polar: we have the good and, frankly, the ugly. In fact the reaction of some modern artists toward ‘Love’ is so extreme we end up discussing it as either an absence, or worse, a perversion of the term and all we hope it stands for.

Francis Bacon, Triptych May-June 1973, 1973. Oil on Canvas. This portrait about the death of George is beautiful in it's poignancy and tragedy. It shows the grief which Love brings and is a firm part of the newer more honest depictions of all sides of love in modern society.

The darker side of this somewhat schizophrenic personality has found outlets through a number of different artists over the past 60 years. Some notable modern painterly contributors include Tracey Emin, Katharina Fritsch, Jean Jacques Lebel and big-hitters like Freud and Bacon. Their images of Love in all its darkness and self-obsession are some of the most iconic ever produced; from Emin’s comments on rape, to Freud’s obsessive rapaciousness to Bacon’s emotional trauma at the loss of Love. They all have an important voice to add to discussions of contemporary portrayals of darker forms Love. I’m not the biggest fan of Emin – though one cannot fail to recognise her contribution to the art scene – and her work seems more to be about shock value than actual skill. That said, her work is undeniably painful and perfectly encapsulates this new found critique of human relationships which has blossomed in the wake of the sexual revolution and the more open nature of modern society.

Tracy Emin, More Nothingness, 2009. Ink on Paper

One of my favourite modern sculptors is Marc Quinn, whose early place in the art world was cemented due to his position in the YBA group back in the late 1980’s, and his work on relationships and pre-conceptions in society fits into both positive and negative discussion of the way in which Love is shown in art. For arguments sake I’m going to put this in the negatives, not because I have a problem with it, but simply due to public conceptions about relationships and showing issues which are slightly taboo. In his piece The Kiss Quinn depicts an embracing couple, and at cursory glance there is nothing new to this, but when one looks closer both man and woman are handicapped in some way. Even today, society shies away from acknowledging deformity, whether from birth or from amputation, and by and large this social group is invisible, particularly in art. To be confronted therefore with a life-size statue of two disabled people passionately embracing has been deemed by many narrow minded people as being grotesque and wrong. In doing this, the deformed character of society is shown clearly; judgmental, cruel, narrow minded, dismissive, violent. The image is overwhelmingly positive (and I’ll talk more about it next week) but it is what it shows of Love in our wider society is much darker and more destructive.

Marc Quinn, The Kiss, 2002. Marble

The need to depict Love in all its glorious agony, would therefore seem to be the preoccupation of modern artists. The chivalry and romance seems to have been absorbed by the desire to shock us to the core, to cleanse the artists themselves of grief and to make Love real rather than imagined. Now, I refuse to believe this is the case, and by refuse I mean I shall throw an epic wobbly and start ranting at anyone and everyone who will listen to me that this is simply not the case. Of course there is darkness, but happiness is not created in a vacuum; if it was it would have no greater meaning than a word and only a vague feeling of what it meant to be content. You cannot have love without grief, love without pain or love without heartbreak. It seems therefore dear readers, that the fact that there is a deluge of the dark proves that there is also an abundance of light around us…

the heART of it: Oldies But Goodies

Every generation likes to think it's the first to discover anything new. I swear that if there wasn’t a hell of a lot of past precedent some bright spark would claim they’d invented the wheel. When it comes to art, and shock value, many artists love the thought that they’re producing the most scandalous and radical work ever. It is important to remember though that what is now considered tame and classical and scholarly, was at one point deemed to be shocking and tawdry, especially when religion weighed ponderously into the debate to dole out a portion of judgement on what was acceptable.

Diego Velasquez, The Toilet of Venus (1647-51). Oil on Canvas. This image is first recorded in June 1651, and in order to avoid censure by the Spanish Inquisition it is presumed that the image was displayed in private. It is amazing to think how attitudes have change, but at the same time in so many places they have not altered at all...

Now I’m not about to claim that modern and contemporary work produced depicting Love is not outrageous and drastic, particularly considering that popular feeling toward sexuality and its depiction has shifted radically in the last fifty or so years. It is clear though, that the complexity and intensity of depicting Love has been something of a pre-occupation for the Art world for centuries. We can reach all the way back to the ancient civilizations of the world for the very first examples. Not quite such a modern concept after all…

Wall relief from the tomb of Seti I.

So, I could make this seriously Old School in outlook, but that would be somewhat dull in my opinion, so let’s jump forward a millennia or two. Aphrodite, or Venus if we’re going to be Roman about it, is one of the most iconic images when we start talking, writing or thinking about Love. Her form and her embodiment of Love and Beauty have captivated the great and the good of the last 500 years. From censure during the Spanish Inquisition with the likes of Velázquez, to intimate ideas of Love conquering all with Botticelli they were all utterly transported by ideas of Love.

Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars (1485). 

One of my favourite images from this period is by Correggio and dates to roughly 1525. This is a veritable cornucopia of classical Love imagery: To my romantic and (frankly) sentimental nature there’s more here than just a beautifully constructed and executed image; I see elements of hope, family and tenderness. As Venus emerges from the darkened landscape into the light we are shown an image of how life can be, it is aspirational as well as inspirational – exactly as Love ought to be. For me, the particularly touching element is the interaction of Mercury and Cupid; their absorption, watched over by Venus, is so moving. Out of the dark, out of despair and out of the cold, Love has emerged bringing light and warmth and infinite possibilities for happiness. In the final analysis, what is Love if not hope?

Antonio Correggio, Venus with Mercury and Cupid (1525).  Oil on Canvas

Now I’m not going to lie about this – I never particularly liked Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I was forced, and I mean forced, to study his sister Christina at school and the thought still makes me shudder – someone needed to hold that woman down and feed her chocolate until she perked up… Age has bought a modicum of wisdom and perspective though, and I now make a conscious effort not to tar brother and sister with the same brush. Indeed it would be impossible to talk about time-honoured depictions of Love without bringing in the Pre-Raphaelites. I could jabber, as could a great many people, at length about the romanticized images of Love which are presented in the work of this group of men, but I believe my favourite image is a much more honest and infinitely less well-known piece which works perfectly with the idea of true Love rather than the ideal.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix (1864-70). Oil on Canvas.  This is a much  more typical example of Rossetti's idealised portrayal of Love and the premature death of Beatrix. It is believed that this image is a memorial to Rossetti's wife Elizabeth, with the ghostly presence of himself on the right and Love on the left.

Found was a piece created by Rossetti which can be read in a number of different ways depending on your personal feelings. It remained unfinished at his death and is his only treatment of a contemporary subject in oil; he returned to it many times during his life, but much like the story it depicts remained unrequited, even to him. I find it a fascinating subject, because it deals with an aspect of Love which is nearly impossible to render accurately – that step into the unknown.  Pain is as much a part of Love as happiness; it is a necessary evil and divides the strong from the weak in how we deal with it. In this case, one can sympathise with the Drover who has just come across his lost love wandering the streets of London as a prostitute, the fear and uncertainty of the woman in how she should react, the hope for both of them if they can overcome their past mistakes which lead them to this place; the fear of their possible future together combines with the happiness of their possible future. In short, it is as complex as the emotion is depicts, it leaves one gasping for air, confused and enlightened in equal measure.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Found (unfinished). Oil on Canvas.

All of the depictions of Love which are detailed here are what I would term slightly old-fashioned. Now I personally love a little vintage in my life, so I don’t see that as a bad thing in any way. On the contrary, it is amazing the arrogance of youth that we feel we have nothing to learn from what has gone before, especially in matters of the heart. My only issue with tradition is that sometimes it holds us back – much like convention in that respect – and stops us pursuing the path we want. If science is right and there is no life after this, then we cannot take our emotions with us, they die here with us, and all we have left is the memory of our actions. I suggest each and every one of us makes them count. Luckily, the artists of today are not bound or hampered, and their depictions of love in the modern world are as eye-opening, and often inspiring, as those which have gone before.