​Now, for a brief Classical interlude, brawny statues of the Danube (L) and Inn (R) Rivers commanding the Pallas Athena Fountain before Vienna’s Parliament Building. Geographically, they actually merge at Passau. (Can you still intensify your rich Austrian dessert even more mit schlag--with whipped cream--in that country?) This Baroque duo may be the visual equivalent. Their sturdy legs, powerful chests, hawser ‘dos….their gaze locked as she explains some essential issue he strains to hear…. While the water keeps flowing, flowing from their eternal amphora….

​Based on the 1937 novel Ali and Nino by the pseudonymous Kurban Said, this 26-foot steel sculpture on the Black Sea in Batumi, Georgia, depicts Ali, an Azerbaijani Muslim boy, and Nino, a Georgian Christian princess. Their love story, like that of Romeo and Juliet, was blocked and tragic. Ali died in World War I. Each figure stands at a different point on a rotating circular platform. Every 10 minutes, as it turns, it draws the lovers together. They touch, pause, kiss, then pass through each other, separating once again. The action reflects the tension between their love and religion, Caucasus politics, and war. [Visit YouTube for a time-lapse video of the statue in motion (wait out or skip the ads) at “Ali and Nino,” very first image.]

​Ofili, the British artist now living in Trinidad, won the Tate’s prestigious Turner Prize in 1998 and was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2017. Douen’s Dance, this oil, shows a couple dancing under the spell of a starlit Christmas Eve, Trinidad night. Perhaps they are also visited by a douen, a mischievous spirit child of Trinidad lore. Because it died before it was baptized, it cannot enter the spirit world and so appears with backwards feet. Does the woman’s reversed foot and the lone footprint suggest its magic here? The swooning, expressive curves and the clash of complementary colors blue and orange add even more energy to the scene.

Bonnie Prince Charlie led a 1745 uprising to regain the British throne, quelled at the famous Battle of Culloden. Here the wife of a wounded, captured Scot secures his freedom from imprisonment. The painting by pre-Raphaelite Millais gave him his reputation and his wife, the model here, Effie Gray, then married unhappily to art critic John Ruskin. See how the black background makes the classic red-green contrasts pop. Everyone here is tense, straining--the guard to read the order, the man to embrace his wife, the woman to perform three tasks: carry the child, present the paper, and receive her man. Even the dog strains, physicalizing the excitement of the reunion.

​"Liberation," Stonewall National Monument, New York, NY: By contrast with Kissing Students, Segal’s sculpture appears to be made of plaster, the inexpensive material many sculptors use for a “first draft” of a work. Segal created his sculptures by wrapping models in strips of wet plaster. Its appearance as a permanent installation in a public space is a Pop Art response to “elite” sculptures of bronze and marble. (An outdoor work, it is, unusually for Segal, overpainted bronze). The figures appear seated, in casual clothes. Don’t their hands say a lot--one for themselves, one for each other?

Good Morning! Today is February 1, the first day of the 2026 Art of Love countdown to February 14, Valentine's Day! I hope you're doing well and are ready for a little L O V E! Since we've been doing this for a few years now, the choices have been getting more challenging. There are only so many Fragonards, Rodins, Claudels....But that makes the search and, I hope, the results a little more interesting. So...here we go again..with Kissing Students, by Rein Raud, 1948....

Kissing Students is a sculpture fountain in Tartu, Estonia, proud Home of Tartu University (est. 1632). Erected in the town square in 1948, the statue captures a spontaneous moment of young love. It’s a popular student meeting spot. The bronze lends the figures a timeless, elegant quality. Compare to the common focus of a European square, a martial figure on a horse? “Ah, love, let us be true to one another….”
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A new friend made on the Maine Turnpike....

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