Abed (Dani Pudi) is a popular character of the TV series Community. He is a total film nerd, and also a weird guy who doesn’t quite understand what’s going on around him.
Abed is always linking the situations that happen on the series with TV or movie references, while all his colleagues get frustrated because in their eyes they don’t live in a series –although they do.
Abed becomes the favorite guy of the audience for his bizarre perception of the world and because we ourselves aren’t exempt of associating things that happen in our everyday life with well loved films and series.
There are so many alternatives, how should the concept of love be represented? How is this potent sentiment embodied in art?
Love can be tricky to define, as it isn’t a tangible thing, per se, but at least other artists’ perspective can help us in the effort to embody it.
The Birthday – Marc Chagall
The painting is one of the many tributes Chagall made to his first wife, Bella Rosenfeld. It shows love, warmth, affection, and intimacy. It’s Bella’s birthday and in a moment of emotion and passion, her husband decides that the flowers he got for her are not enough, and so, he literally ‘leaps’ to kiss her, catching her by surprise and carrying her away, as explained by GalleryIntell.
The Lovers – René Magritte
“My paintings are visible images which conceal nothing,” said Magritte, “they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does it mean?’ It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.” This way, everyone can make up their mind on what this kiss might mean, in this image where love appears as an impossible, blind, and unreachable emotion.
The Embrace- Egon Schiele
In this painting we see Egon Schiele fusing in an embrace with his wife Edith Harms. According to Stephen Farthing, the tender unity of The Embrace marks a distinct change from the explicitly sexual paintings and drawings that preceded it, and reflects Schiele’s growing contentment with married life. However, at six months pregnant Edith died of the Spanish Influenza, which swept through Europe after the great war. Schiele died three days later, at the age of twenty-eight.
The Stolen Kiss – Jean Honoré Fragonard
In a more obvious tone, Fragonard represented the stolen kiss of a secret love. Although we don’t see nakedness, it seems to evoke the erotism that became famous among the French aristocracy before being hit by the Revolution. The scene maintains an elegance, and as Tom Lubbock suggests, the dilemma of the young woman who rocks from side to side, but her desire wins: the sweetness of a secret love.
The Arnolfini Portrait – Jan Van Eyck
Matrimonial bliss captured in an image. If we disregard the iconography of this work and focus on the surface, we face a contradiction. Although, it may look like the Arnolfini couple are sullen and unreadable, this scene suggests something lies beneath this feeling. Real love may appear simple at a first glance; however, it has multiple layers and any wobbly pillar in the foundation can make it tumble and fall into pieces.
The Bride of the Wind – Oskar Kokoschka
In this self portrait we see Oskar Kokoschka lying awake and lost in thought by his sleeping lover, Alma Mahler. She was the widow when she met him and began a passionate romance.
It is said that Kokoschka finished the painting after their bitter break up, and the image shows what he would have liked to keep alive. The placid body in repose of Alma contrasts with the stiff figure of Oskar and how he is fiddling with his fingers. In the tumultuous surroundings there is nothing to suggest that everything is alright after a night of passion.
Girl with a Pearl Earring – Johannes Vermeer
The girl depicted in the image is believed to be Vermeer’s eldest daughter, Maria. Nonetheless, he portrays her very sensually. The girl gazes at the viewer with wide eyes and a parted mouth, and there is also an air of mystery surrounding her identity. The work is sometimes known as the Dutch Mona Lisa. Maybe Vermeer fell in love with an idea and represented it in the form of a woman with a dangling pearl earring. There is no purer love than the imagination.
The Starry Night- Vincent Van Gogh
This was Van Gogh’s view from his room in the psychiatric asylum. The village he depicted, Saint Rémy de Provence, is said to be more imagination than reality, as apparently, there were iron bars partly covering the view.
We can see the iconic landscape as a love painting, the love for art itself. Each one of Van Gogh’s strokes invites us to melt with the sky’s waves or the rays of moonlight. “Looking at the stars always makes me dream. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star,” Van Gogh pondered.
The Kiss – Gustave Klimt
The Kiss, finished by Klimt in 1908, was enthusiastically received by the public and quickly found a buyer. This is quite the opposite of what happened with his three part Vienna Ceiling series, which were criticized as both ‘pornographic’ and evidence of ‘perverted excess.’ The truth is that The Kiss depicts two sweethearts tenderly embracing, wrapped in the protective golden robes. The sweet face of the female character, and the edge of the precipice upon which they are standing, is a true example of the feelings and the peril we experience when in love.
In a world were everything looks like a copy of something else, cultural references are our way to go back to the origins. Sometimes we don’t talk about our own memories but rather we mention paintings, scenes, and literary works that convey our messages of passion and love.
Translated by Laura Calçada
