Term 1: Love
It started with a kiss
Whether in work by Brancusi, Rodin, Klimt or in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photograph of a sailor on V-J Day in Times Square, the kiss is a powerful motif.
The Cult of Venus
Immortalized in painting by Botticelli, Titian, and Velasquez and in sculpture by Maillol and others, the Roman goddess of love has been represented over the ages, her function changing as a symbol.
Courtly Love
Representations in Medieval art and beyond.
Great Romances
Fictional lovers like Orpheus and Eurydice, Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde have all been represented in artworks which reveal as much about the artist’s era as the original story.
Courtship Rituals
Seventeenth century Dutch, French rococo and academic painting such as Adolphe- William Bouguereau’s The Proposal all explored the rituals of courtship.
Term 2: Marriage
A Social and Family Institution
Works such as Pieter Brueghel the younger’s Wedding Dance in A Barn, Laurits Tuxen’s A Royal Wedding, and John Lewis Krimmel’s The Country Wedding show how depictions of the wedding ceremony reflect the concerns of the societies in which they were made.
The Marriage Portrait
From Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage, Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Married Couple, Frans Hals’ The Portrait of the Artist and his Wife, Gainsborough’s Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, to contemporary manifestations like Patricia Cronin’s sculpture Memorial to a Marriage, the marriage portrait is a useful indication of changing attitudes to ‘the couple’.
Artistic Couples
Explores Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe; Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock; Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin; Tim Noble and Sue Webster and other couples whose personal and working lives intertwine.
Here Comes the Bride
The figure of the bride which still captures the contemporary imagination is explored in her various guises (the virgin bride, bride of Christ, the jilted bride and so on) in works such as: Millais Speak! Speak!, Vladimir Makovsky, Goodbye Papa, Thomas Hovenden Bringing Home the Bride, and Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors.
Broken Vows and its Consequences
Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode and Paula Rego’s contemporary version, the Victorian mistresses depicted by Holman Hunt, Augustus Leopold Egg’s triptych Past and Present, Calderon’s Broken Vows all speculate on the darker side of marriage.
Term 3: Desire
Religious Ecstasy
Artists have explored the notion of religious ecstasy in ambiguous works such as Bernini’s St. Theresa.
Fallen Women
From Venetian courtesans to Manet’s Olympia to Picasso’s infamous Demoiselle d’Avignon, the “fallen woman” is a useful trope through which to explore societies’ attitudes to morality.
Objects of Desire
The paintings of Fragonard, Boucher, Courbet, Degas, the sculpture of Meret Oppenheim and Louise Bourgeois and the photography of Man Ray have all sought to create female objects of desire for the viewer.
The Male Nude
Examines artworks from Michelangelo’s David to Thomas Eakins’ young men, Caillebotte’s bathers, Orlan’s The Origins of War, or Sarah Lucas’ sculptures to see whether there is a convincing parallel sexualisation of the male nude.
The Exotic Other
Whether Ingres’ harems, Gauguin’s Tahitian women, Alfred Jacob Miller’s Native Americans, the sexualisation of black bodies has been informed by discourses around colonialism.
