Hugs and Kisses
Embraces and kisses in art, from sacred greetings and lovers' partings to modern icons of intimacy.
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About
An embrace or kiss is the plainest image of closeness, and art has used it for greeting, reconciliation, romance, farewell and grief. In Giotto's Meeting at the Golden Gate (c. 1305), Joachim and Anne kiss at the gate of Jerusalem, a tender moment standing for the conception of the Virgin. Francesco Hayez's The Kiss (1859) wrapped a lovers' parting in the colours of Italian unification.
Around 1900 the kiss became a modern emblem in three very different forms: Auguste Rodin's marble lovers, Gustav Klimt's gold-patterned couple of 1907–08 and Constantin Brâncuși's blocky stone pair, whose bodies merge into one form. René Magritte's The Lovers (1928) veils both heads in cloth, making intimacy strange. Gran Fury's Kissing Doesn't Kill (1989) used same-sex and interracial kisses to confront AIDS stigma, and Patricia Cronin's marble Memorial to a Marriage (2002) shows the artist and her partner asleep in each other's arms.
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