“How can love’s spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable?” [1]
Love is such a small word for an idea that is so immense and powerful. Love inspires, eludes, and enrages us. It is used to mean so many things, from friendship to romantic bonds, parental love, self-love, as well as love of things and ideas. It is everywhere and yet nowhere. We are often embarrassed to mention it, yet we mostly agree that bonds between individuals contribute to our full flourishing.
The nature of modern love is confusing. On the one hand we are “dominated by a background picture of love that belongs to a certain sort of Romanticism that hasn’t changed in its essentials since the late 19th century.”[2] Love is selfless, love is unconditional. On the other hand, modern times seem in part to have transformed love into a form of rampant hedonism - we resist commitment, demand quick satisfaction, and untethered from sustained human bonds engage in what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid love.”
Love, it seems, needs reconsidering.
The works in this show explored different aspects of the nature of love. The assembled artists consider several interconnected and overlapping themes: sexual desire and the encounter with the stranger; romantic love and fantasy; friendship and being together; loving the self and loving the other; and mother love and loss.
1: Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, 1995. Vintage Books, xviii.
2: Simon May, Love: A History, 2011. Yale University Press, xi.
Love is such a small word for an idea that is so immense and powerful. Love inspires, eludes, and enrages us. It is used to mean so many things, from friendship to romantic bonds, parental love, self-love, as well as love of things and ideas. It is everywhere and yet nowhere. We are often embarrassed to mention it, yet we mostly agree that bonds between individuals contribute to our full flourishing.
The nature of modern love is confusing. On the one hand we are “dominated by a background picture of love that belongs to a certain sort of Romanticism that hasn’t changed in its essentials since the late 19th century.”[2] Love is selfless, love is unconditional. On the other hand, modern times seem in part to have transformed love into a form of rampant hedonism - we resist commitment, demand quick satisfaction, and untethered from sustained human bonds engage in what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid love.”
Love, it seems, needs reconsidering.
The works in this show explored different aspects of the nature of love. The assembled artists consider several interconnected and overlapping themes: sexual desire and the encounter with the stranger; romantic love and fantasy; friendship and being together; loving the self and loving the other; and mother love and loss.
1: Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, 1995. Vintage Books, xviii.
2: Simon May, Love: A History, 2011. Yale University Press, xi.
ON LOVE: DONNA CONWELL IN CONVERSATION WITH LEAH AMMON
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