Tag Archives: Love

Love & War~ May 31

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Radha & Krishna: Love

Radha, daughter of Vrishabhanu, was the mistress of Krishna during that period of his life when he lived among the cowherds of Vrindavan…So great was Radha’s love for Krishna that even today her name is uttered whenever Krishna is referred to, and Krishna worship is thought to be incomplete without the deification of Radha. ~ https://www.learnreligions.com/love-stories-from-hindu-literature-1770571

In many paintings (2003.178a), the divine couple is presented within a fertile, flowering landscape filled with pairs of birds. ~ https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rajp/hd_rajp.htm

“Krishna and Radha (Primary Title)”

“Krishna and Radha under a Tree in a Storm”

“Radha and Krishna Dressed in Each Other’s Clothes”

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Love & War~ May 29

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Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Love

The Gates / 1979-05 / 7,503 vinyl “gates” / Central Park, NYC, February 12, 2005-February 27, 2005

Christo Vladimirov Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude were a married couple who created environmental works of art. Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born on the same day, June 13, 1935; Christo in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, and Jeanne-Claude in Morocco. They first met in Paris in October 1958 when Christo painted a portrait of Jeanne-Claude’s mother.
Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile (39 km)-long artwork called Running Fence in Sonoma and Marin counties in California, and The Gates in New York City’s Central Park.
Jeanne-Claude died, aged 74, on November 18, 2009, from complications of a brain aneurysm. Christo died at his home in New York City on May 31, 2020, at 84.  ~Wikipedia

Their relationship lasted 51 years, and they did everything together, Jeanne-Claude said, except three things: “We never fly on the same airplane… I do not draw. Christo is the one who puts on paper our ideas… And I have always deprived him of the joy of working with our accountant.”  ~The Guardian

Love & War~ May 27

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Lovers Walking in the Snow (Crow and Heron) by Suzuki Harunobu

1764–72 / Polychrome woodblock print; ink and color on paper, with embossing / 11 1/4”x8 1/8” / The Met

Courtesan Senri Receiving a Love Letter

Suzuki Harunobu (1725?-1770) “played a pivotal role in the evolution of Japanese printmaking during its great period — the last half of the i8th and the first years of the 19th century. In the final years of his relatively brief life, he opened up a new dimension of expression in that tradition of graphics by introducing many colors to what had essentially been a mono-chromatic art form”. ~archive.org

A Woman Sweeping up Her Love Letters

“Just 20 years previously, the invention of benizuri-e had made it possible to print in three or four colors; Harunobu applied tis new technique to ukiyo-e prints using up to ten different colors on a single sheet of paper. Harunobu was the first ukiyo-e artist to consistently use more than three colors in each print.” ~Wikipedia

A Caged Bird and a Love Letter

“Harunobu died in 1770, only five years after introducing the nishiki-e print. However, in those last few years of his life, he produced over one thousand print designs, chiefly depictions of willowy young girls, and also a fair percentage of shunga (erotic prints), as most ukiyo-e artists did. He is known to have produced at least seven shunga volumes.”~samuraipodcast.com

Suzuki Harunobu / ukiyo-e.org
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Love & War~ May 25

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Charles & Ray Eames: Love

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“Charles was a designer with an eye for form. Ray was an artist with an eye for color. They complemented each other on projects like coat hangers, films, their namesake chairs, and large architectural projects. Through four decades of creative work, they revolutionized design and created an indelible mark on American History. The duo was not without faults, but the pair proved to be inseparable and inspirational. They were the Eameses.”
https://www.pastemagazine.com/design/charles-and-ray-eames/first-couple-of-design-charles-eames/

“Their partnership, which obliterated the distinctions between private and professional lives, inspired numerous contemporary working marriages…Charles and Ray, architect and artist, wanted to do everything — disciplinary boundaries meant nothing to them — and, by and large, succeeded.” https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/1437/

The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention
AD Classics: Eames House / Charles and Ray Eames
The Love Letters of Charles & Ray Eames

Love & War~ May 23

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Weddings in the Renaissance

The scholars Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglion…provide startling information demonstrating just how informal the act of marriage could be and how it could take place in almost any location. “With the assistance of a ladder, the groom, flanked by witnesses, reached the bride, and facing each other they pronounced the formula of the ritual, balanced in an equilibrium as unstable as the tie that thus bound them.” Indeed, before the edicts of The Council of Trent systematized the requirements of a proper wedding in 1563, only mutual consent was an absolute necessity for marriage. FROM Art and Love in Renaissance Italy / MetPublications /
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Love & War~ May 21

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Hannah Höch: Love

Liebe [Love] / 1931 / Drawing, collage / 8.5”x8.25” / National Gallery of Australia

Hannah Höch was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage.  FROM monoskop.org

While she may have been remembered by her bombastic Dada colleagues for her “sandwiches, beer and coffee”, her lifetime of artistic practice reveals a vital and critical woman who could magically collide disparate reproductions of needlepoint patterns, political figures, film stars, animal life and non-Western artifacts into explorations of androgyny, Aryan activity, gender roles, imperialism, race and lesbianism.  FROM frieze.com

The Coquette I (1923-1925)

Hoch began the Love series as early as 1923, and worked on it intermittently through about 1931. Each of the six or seven works in this series depict sexuality in some way. My understanding is that the following pieces were in this series:

Love in the Bush (1925)
Peasant Wedding Couple (1931)
Love (1926)
Love (1931)
The Coquette I (1923-1925)
The Coquette II (c.1925)
The Large Step (1931)

MoMA’s catalog for their 1997 exhibition “The photomontages of Hannah Höch” is available to download in pdf format~
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/241

Love (1926)

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Love & War~ May 19

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Windsor Castle: The Quire of St George’s Chapel by Charles Wild

1818 / Watercolor and bodycolour over pencil / 9.8”x8.3” / Royal Collection

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle in Windsor, near London, England, Saturday, May 19, 2018. (Danny Lawson/pool photo via AP)

On May 19, 2018, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding took place in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. Prince Harry was baptised in St George’s Chapel in December, 1984.
FROM https://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/news/royal-wedding-2/

Engraved illustration from Harper’s Weekly newspaper of the wedding of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Alexandra of Denmark / Harper’s Weekly newspaper dated 11 April 1863 / Artist unknown

St. George’s Chapel was built in the 15th century and is a towering piece of Gothic architecture. It is lauded for its stone fan-vault ceilings, but the intricate stained glasswork along each of its walls, and the tall arched windows, intricate woodwork, and ironwork doorframes add to the historic feel of the grand room. The tombs of ten sovereigns also lie within the chapel, including Henry VIII and Charles I. FROM https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-will-marry-at-st-georges-chapel-at-windsor-castle-this-may

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Love & War~ May 17

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Paul A. Juley/Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Love and War

Two years after [her] accident, in 1927, [Kahlo] met the painter Diego Rivera, whose work she’d come to admire and who became her mentor. In 1929, despite the vocal protestations of Kahlo’s mother, Frida and Diego were wedded and one of art history’s most notoriously tumultuous marriages commenced. 
FROM https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/04/19/frida-kahlo-diary-love-letters/

Kahlo…believed that her relationship with Rivera transcended the bodily, physical, even painterly world. “It’s not love, or tenderness, or affection, it’s life itself, my life, that I found when I saw it in your hands, in your mouth and in your breasts,” she [wrote] to him. “I have the taste of almonds from your lips in my mouth. Our worlds have never gone outside. Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.”
FROM https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frida-kahlos-love-letters-diego-rivera-reveal-volatile-relationship

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Love & War~ May 15

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Venus de Milo / Musée du Louvre

Venus de Milo, the ancient statue commonly thought to represent Aphrodite…was carved from marble by the artist Alexandros* about 150 BCE. It was found in pieces on the Aegean island of Melos on April 8, 1820, and was subsequently presented to Louis XVIII (who then donated it to the Louvre in 1821).  ~https://www.britannica.com/topic/Venus-de-Milo

*Alexandros of Antioch (2nd-1st century BC) was a Greek sculptor of the Hellenistic age. His dates of birth and death are unknown. ~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandros_of_Antioch

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What Happened to the Venus De Milo’s Arms?
http://mentalfloss.com/article/62722/what-happened-venus-de-milos-arms
The Mystery of What Venus de Milo Was Once Holding
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/3-d-printing-offers-guess-what-venus-de-milo-might-have-been-holding-180955176/

Love & War~

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Mother’s Day: Love

The artist’s mother, comtesse Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec, at breakfast, Malromé Chateau
by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
c.1881-1883 / Oil on canvas / 36.8”x31.8” / Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, France

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by Vincent van Gogh
1888 / Oil on canvas / 16”x12-3/4” / Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

The Artist’s Mother by Paul Gauguin
Between 1890 & 1893 / Oil on canvas / 16.1”x12.9” / Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany

The Artist’s Mother by Pablo Picasso
1896 / Pastel on paper / 19.6”x15.3” / Museu Picasso, Barcelona

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by Henry Ossawa Tanner
1897 / Oil on canvas / 29 1/4”x39 1/2” / Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mrs. Robert S. Cassatt, the Artist’s Mother by Mary Cassatt
c.1889 / Oil On Canvas / 38”x27” / Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Woman with Plants by Grant Wood
1929 / Oil on upsom board / 20 1/2”x17 7/8” / Museum of Art Cedar Rapids, Iowa

The Painter’s Mother IV by Lucian Freud
1973 / Oil on canvas / 10 3/4”x 7 1/3” / Tate, London

Julia Warhola by Andy Warhol
1974 / Silkscreen ink and synthetic polymer paint on canvas / 40”x40” / The Andy Warhol MuseumMum by David Hockney
1988 / Oil on canvas / 16 1/2”x10 1/2” / The David Hockney Foundation

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