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It is very difficult to talk about love without being precious or dogmatic. On one hand, it is thought that love is ineffable, that it is a domain where reason ignores the heart’s expectancies. Hence, everything becomes flowery and eventually turns into an eternal repetition in a world of kitsch imagery. On the other hand, some approaches based upon great theories claim: “love must be so,” giving the impression that any feeling not complying with the rule can be only illegitimate. On one hand imagery and folkloric songs, on the other all the Platonisms. It would appear that a last resort would be to show, rather than to comment. |
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Nous Nous Sommes Tant Aimés – Sébastien Planas, director of the Collections de Saint Cyprien
It is very difficult to talk about love without being precious or dogmatic. On one hand, it is thought that love is ineffable, that it is a domain where reason ignores the heart’s expectancies. Hence, everything becomes flowery and eventually turns into an eternal repetition in a world of kitsch imagery. On the other hand, some approaches based upon great theories claim: “love must be so,” giving the impression that any feeling not complying with the rule can be only illegitimate. On one hand imagery and folkloric songs, on the other all the Platonisms. It would appear that a last resort would be to show, rather than to comment. If love is an unsolvable equation as those who have experienced it know, it is most likely best to keep the problem whole and complex. It would perhaps be better to concentrate on some artists, those not claiming to have philosophical solutions, but simply wanting to show something. This is what the exhibit “Nous Nous Sommes Tant Aimés” proposes to do.
The couple is, without doubt, the experimental environment where love reaches summits. Because humans are not just pure spirit, the body’s representations are major components of love. Thus, to see people kissing or making love (as in Wim Delvoye’s or Adel Abdessemed’s works) is part of what psychoanalysts call “scopic drive.” See at all costs, without ever being seen. To observe intensively and to discover if the essence of love can be found through the discovery of nude bodies. However, if this type of beauty is continuously lauded in classical imagery through the symbol of Eros, it is nevertheless sterile (in spite of its beauty). This is what Camille Henrot also shows in her short film, Deep inside: pornography and amorous melancholy are sometimes the two facets of the same feeling. Ambiguity is omnipresent in this field, as demonstrated in Béatrice Cussol’s watercolours, counterpoint of Virginie Barré’s characters.
Another recurring aspect of love’s components is death. Who hasn’t claimed to love until death or beyond? Which Juliet has never dreamt of her Romeo? Some, such as Araki, have followed their beloved until the end. Death is the irreparable unfairness ending love. Others choose to succumb voluntarily like the heroes of great novels, as one can imagine by looking at Andres Serrano’s magnificent pictures of mortuaries. We do know that the combat of love and death is central in our lives, plainly because it is the first and final cause of our existences. Love becomes a spark between two voids. Such as the theme of vanities that represent the combat between Eros and Thanatos taken up later by the interpretations of the subconscious.
But another kind of love, more common, is what we feel for those who surround us. If we don’t kill one another, it is also because there is a form of empathy inducing us into not being indifferent to our fellows. Rousseau called it pity, and understood it as a specifically human feeling. But this common kind of love is also one of the most impossible: like Benchamma’s characters who seem to be lost, seeking and avoiding each other at the same time. Let us not forget that the silent or declared war between one another, or even within ourselves, is never far. Miri Segal crystallizes this ambivalence in those of her works in which kindness and violence mix in a difficult, sometimes even political, dialogue.
Finally, the most primary kind of love: the love we have for our children and our family: filial love, in a way. Larry Clark or Alberto Garcia-Alix show in a subtle way this intimate and carnal link. Closky’s collages also represent childhood as one of love’s axes which are, like the souvenirs mentioned by Proust, tinged with past and present, with the trivial and the essential. But what links us to ourselves is self esteem, core of our desire to live, but which can go beyond our understanding and this is personified in Jeff Koons’ and Morimura’s auto-reverential works. As they deal with love, they are never far from glamour.
