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…