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Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts

My Valentine To You: The Evolution Of The Kiss In Art.




Ah, the kiss. The most romantic expression of love and tenderness. You may think that kissing as a subject in fine art is trite or cliche, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been depicted beautifully by many of the world's most well-known and respected artists. As my Valentine to you, I have rounded up some of the most interesting and iconic expressions of "The Kiss"  (Le Baiser, Der Kuss) by established artists over the past 150 years.

THE KISS:
The Kiss has long been a favorite subject for painters but no one has captured it quite like the pieces shown below, many of which have been reproduced over and over again. Here are some very famous - and not so famous - versions in chronological order starting with one of the most well-known examples that inspired many of the others, Francesco Hayez' The Kiss.

Francesco Hayez, The Kiss, 1859:


Auguste Rodin, The Kiss, marble sculpture. The piece was initially commissioned by the French State in 1888 and carved between 1888 and 1898. It was cast in bronze by Rodin as well:


William-Adolphe Bouguereau's most famous painting, Cupid and Psyche as Infants, is often incorrectly labeled as Le Premier Baiser (The First Kiss, 1873), 1890:


One of the earliest known paintings of a same sex kiss is that by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He actually painted two works of the female couple in a lip lock in the same year and the two are often confused.

The Kiss, 1892:

In Bed, The Kiss (1892):


Edvard Munch also created multiple versions of his own interpretation of The Kiss in oil paint, lithography and woodcut as shown below.

The Kiss painting, 1897:

The Kiss lithograph, 1897:

The Kiss woodcut, 1897:


Easily the most well-known of Austrian painter Gustave Klimt's work is his The Kiss, painted between 1908 and 1909:


Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi's modern interpretation in stone as well as plaster. He created many versions of The Kiss, further simplifying geometric forms and sparse objects in each version, tending each time further toward abstraction.

The Kiss, stone, 1907-1910:

The Kiss, plaster, 1907-1910:


Rene Magritte's surrealist Interpretation of The Kiss, 1951:


Pablo Picasso actually created many pieces (at least 10) named The Kiss (or Le Baiser) during the years of his life.

First, his figurative version of The Kiss (also known as The Embrace), approx 1905:

His abstracted version of The Kiss in 1925:

His surrealist version of The Kiss  (also known as Figures By The Seaside) in 1931:

In 1969, Picasso painted a series of three pictures on the theme of 'The Kiss' (artist Jeff Koons owns one the momochromatic version on the left of the second photo) a day before his 88th birthday at his home at Mougins along the Côte d'Azur, where he lived the last fifteen years of his life:


And yet another painting of The Kiss by Picasso in 1969:


Joël Peter Witkin, an American photographer whose work often involves corpses, created this grotesque version of The Kiss in 1982:


South African artist Tracey Rose, who works with photography, video installations and performance art, created this live installation of The Kiss in 2001 of which 6 editions of Lamba prints were made:


William Cobbing further contemporized The Kiss by adding yet another medium, video, in 2004:


Inspired by a journalist's photo of then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker sharing a kiss, Russian artist Dmitry Vrubel, painted his version of it on a surviving portion of the Berlin Wall in 2009:


And lastly, The Kiss, 2013 as seen by contemporary artist Erwin Wurm:


Interested in an even greater art selection of kisses? Check out The Kiss: A Celebration of Love in Art

And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my selections and I wish all of you a very Happy Valentine's Day with lots of kisses.

I Think I Am In Friend-Love With Yumi Sakugawa's New Book.




I have a confession to make.
I think I am in Friend-Love with you.

What's friend-love?
It's that super-awesome bond you share with someone who makes you happy every time you text each other, or meet up for an epic outing. It's not love-love. You don't want to swap saliva; you want to swap favorite books. But it's just as intense and just as amazing.



I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You is one of the sweetest little books I've ever seen and would make a fabulous Valentine's Day gift for anyone with a BFF (of the same sex or opposite gender).



Originally published online in Sadie Magazine in 2012, comic-book strip artist Yumi Sakugawa's charming illustrated tale has been published as a hardcover book by Adams Media.



The 128 page book is perfect if you've ever fallen in friend-love and want to show that person how much you love them...in a platonic way, of course.




PRAISE FOR I THINK I AM IN FRIEND-LOVE WITH YOU

"Look around. You won’t find anything sweeter than this lonely little book anywhere in your immediate vicinity. Unless for some reason there’s, like, a bunny knitting a scarf for a puppy. That might be sweeter. Aside from that, this book is definitely your best bet." —Avery Monsen, coauthor of K is for Knifeball and All My Friends Are Dead

"This is one of my favorite comics ever, a sweet ode to platonic love that will echo through the ages." —MariNaomi, author of Kiss & Tell

"Funny and beautifully drawn, I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You is the bittersweet tale of friendships in the age of social media in which many can relate.” —Esther Pearl Watson, author of Unlovable

"The warmth of Yumi’s soft brushstrokes and vulnerability of her words make me feel less alone in this weird world. I think I am in book-love." —Lisa Hanawalt, author of My Dirty Dumb Eyes

"Yumi Sakugawa’s small, sweet hardcover I Think I am in Friend-Love With You (Adams Media) feels so necessary. Sakugawa’s one-eyed, vaguely socklike protagonist fantasizes a future of book-swapping, Tumblr post–reblogging, coffee-sipping platonic love, but reveals the most simple of needs in the book’s simple black-and-white illustrations.” - Bitch Magazine

“I Think I am In Friend Love With You…chronicles a bashful cyclops with a good old fashioned friend crush. Sakaguwa’s comics, while being hilarious, are imbued with a quiet magic that somehow makes a glowing computer screen as ripe with beauty and mystery as a night sky full of twinkling stars.” - Huffington Post Arts

The comic…expresses all the delightful, little things we hope our best…pals will do for us…. [Yumi’s] work has an eerie, wondrous quality to it, blipped with panels that will make your heart soar and dip and soar again. Themes of space and love pull readers into a pensive world of fantastical creatures.” - NPR’s Code Switch


Yumi Sakugawa is a comic book artist and illustrator based in Southern California. A graduate of the fine art program of University of California, Los Angeles, Yumi is a regular comic contributor for The Rumpus and Wonderhowto. Her illustrations and comics have been featured on Buzzfeed, Lifehacker, PAPERMAG, Apartment Therapy and all over Tumblr. Her short comic story "Mundane Fortunes for the Next Ten Billion Years" was selected as Notable Comics of 2012 by the Best American Comics anthology editors. I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You (Adams Media, Dec 2013 release) is her first published book.

Visit her on the web at www.yumisakugawa.com.



Buy I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You

'Till Death Do Us Part', A Couple's Engagement Photos Emulate Friday The 13th.




Van Lawson and her fiance Josh Morden, both from Parry Sound, Ontario, have a great sense of humor - albeit a sick one. For their engagement, instead of posing for clichéed, gooey-eyed, cheesy photos, they posed for a series of 26 photos taken by professional Toronto photographer Brandon Michael Gray, that emulate a Friday the 13th horror film. Van even painted the Crystal Lake sign herself.

Here are all 26 photos, in order, of course:




























Now, theirs is one wedding I'd like to attend.

Photography by Brandon Gray
Assisted by Oceana Jordan
Jason Voorhees played by JP Borchardt

•Buy/Download Friday the 13th movies, boxed sets and DVDs here

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