The Art of Love: The Romantic and Explosive Stories Behind Art's Greatest Couples

Description

The Art of Love tells the stories of 35 famous couples from the art world, exploring the variously passionate, tender, challenging, loving and tragic relationships that led to some of the world's most famous artworks. Together, Lee Miller and Man Ray discovered solarisation (a pioneering photographic technique), and had it not been for the dramatic breakdown of their relationship, Man Ray would never have produced his most famous artworks: Observatory Time - the Lovers among them. In contrast, Christo and Jeanne-Claude - both born on the same day - would spend almost fifty years (from their meeting in 1958 through to Christo's death in 2009) working together as husband and wife to produce art installations on a scale never seen before. And we all know the story of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, in which Kahlo struggled against her relegation to mere 'artist's wife', and in which multiple affairs on both their parts led to divorce and then eventual re-marriage. Whether long-lasting, peaceful collaborations, or short-lived tumultuous affairs, each story demonstrates the power of romance in art and opens the door on some of the greatest love stories of the twentieth century. Camille Claudel & Auguste Rodin Marina Abramovi? and Ulay Gilbert & George Man Ray and Lee Miller Christo and Jeanne-Claude Ily and Emilia Kabakov Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera Alfred Stieglitz & Georgia O'Keeffe Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid Elaine Marie Fried and Willem De Kooning Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Mnter Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne Robert and Sonia Delaunay Robert Motherwell & Helen Frankenthaler Jean Arp & Sophie T Taeuber-Arp Anni & Josef Albers Barbara Hepworth & Ben Nicholson Varvara Stepanova and Alexander Rodchenko Picasso et. Al Emilie Flge and Gustav Klimt Maria Martins and Marcel Duchamp Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong Antony Gormley and Vicky Parsons

Kate Bryan is an arts presenter, curator, expert guide and writer. She has written and presented television programmes for Sky Arts and BBC2's Culture Show, has been a judge on annual competition programmes including Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape of the Year, and in October 2016 she was appointed Head of Collections for Soho House. She is also an arts mentor, working especially with young women in the arts to help them reach their potential.