Love

About

Love in art covers devotion, courtship, marriage, longing and loss, and the love of friends, parents and children. Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (1514) sets two women, one richly dressed and one nearly nude, either side of a fountain, and scholars still debate its exact meaning. In 18th-century Rajasthan, painters at Kishangarh idealised the divine lovers Radha and Krishna with long, curving eyes and lotus-filled lakes, and in France Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted The Progress of Love (1771–73), a garden romance in four canvases.

Modern artists often pictured their own relationships. Marc Chagall floats above the floor to kiss his wife Bella in Birthday (1915), and Frida Kahlo painted herself hand in hand with her husband in Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931). Félix González-Torres made love as spare as possible in “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) (1987–90): two identical wall clocks, set to the same time, that will eventually fall out of step.