“Martha was my first ever pet. I never had a dog or cat at home.” Paul McCartney paid ten guineas (about $29 at the time) for the Old English Sheepdog, saying she resembled “a huge, tangled ball of wool.” She was born on June 16, 1966, in High Wycombe. He drove her home in his Aston Martin DB6 to his new mansion in St. John’s Wood. The song “Martha, My Dear,” from The White Album, was named for her. In 1981 Martha died at Paul’s High Park Farm in Scotland after fifteen years together. Paul said he and Martha talked often of “love, business, and music.”
                                    
                                 HAPPIEST OF VALENTINE’S DAYS
                                       TO YOU AND YOURS!
                                        Much Love (of course!)
                                                   GENE
                                   

This mural appeared on a wall in Bristol’s Marsh Lane early on February 13, 2020. It depicts a little girl with a slingshot shooting red flowers into the air. Her target is a point on the wall that is already an explosion of red roses and poppies, shooting their beauty--and messages of love--in all directions. She adds to what is actually a 3-D construction of sticks and paper and plastic petals. The image is reminiscent of Banksy’s world-famous Girl with a Balloon, an icon of hope. On midnight of the 13th (today), as the clock ticked over to Valentine’s Day, street artist Banksy confirmed the mural as his own on Instagram.

How can we possibly conclude without a nod to, a glance at--a wink at?--the grand master of Rococo art, Jean Honoré Fragonard? C’est impossible! Alors…in this wild, shadowy, other-worldly  forest, a young man and woman eagerly rush at (almost fall into!) an overflowing fountain of magical liquid, a cup of which two putti thrust at them with glee. This is the fountain, first appearing in classical lore, in which Cupid himself dips his arrows. See how the lovers thrust themselves forward like avid Olympic (how appropriate, this month!) XC skiers leaning for the finish line, mouths and eyes wide open. Perhaps, in this case, both will win the trophy?

​Edmund Dulac, a famous British book illustrator (Inferno, Jane Eyre, Tempest, etc.) here cheerfully makes a double portrait of two friends and fellow artists he dresses as Dominican friars. Of course, he signals, monks and committed couples like Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon both share lifelong vows. Meeting as art students, they shared over 40 years together. Oscar Wilde called their home “the one house in London where you will never be bored.” Dulac presents the men in the flat, elongated style of Gothic figures, feet in Y’s, so often found in medieval churches. Don’t their deadpan expressions add to the fun? Now, can you find the bluebird (imagination), peacock feather (aestheticism), quail (loyalty), and hare (same-sex desire)? Extra credit if you can explain the bat!

This fragile watercolor from New York’s Metropolitan Museum, using ink and gold, is small, just 4x7 inches. However, its sensual nature was striking for its time, heralding a fresh attitude towards sexuality in Iran. The hand inside the dress, the exposed navel, the cup of wine on the knee, the carafe and grapes in the foreground, all join to create a certain atmosphere. The artist’s delicate calligraphic line can barely contain the building emotion. What should we make of the similar, relatively calm, expressions on their faces--and the fact that three out of four hands touch or approach head or face?

The so-called “Arundel Tomb” depicts in marble (once painted) the knight Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel, and his second wife, Eleanor of Lancaster. She died in 1372, he in 1376. While their joined hands, both ungloved to show intimacy, are highly unusual, they are not 100% unprecedented. Eleanor’s crossed legs, turning her towards him, are. In his will, FitzAlan stated that he wanted them buried together “without pomp.” The renowned British poet Philip Larkin wrote a famous poem on the pair, which ends: “…The stone fidelity/They hardly meant has come to be/Their final blazon, and to prove/Our almost-instinct almost true:/What will survive of us is love.” The last line is often quoted.

​Hold your breath. Shhhh…. Mustn’t interrupt what may happen in this classical Greek or Roman setting…as the suitor works up his nerve. Only a wall and a few steps separate the lovers. Clearly, as the title implies, she will accept his engagement ring. But the clasped hands with her girlfriend, dead center in the picture, show she, too, is anxious. And that wall has a tall, hard edge. Beyond, the artist paints a broad, open sea, suggesting, to us, the glorious, expansive future awaiting them together—if only….

In this photograph, Lawrence appears in his WW II Coast Guard uniform. He was just sixteen when the two met in Harlem in 1933, where Knight was employed by the WPA and studying art under sculptor Augusta Savage. Born in Barbados, Knight emigrated to the U.S., attending Howard University until the Depression. Married in 1941, the couple honeymooned in New Orleans; Lawrence had never been to the South. In 1946 the couple was invited to Black Mountain College, where Lawrence taught art, and Knight, dance. When Lawrence was offered a tenured position at U. Washington in 1971, the couple moved to Seattle, where both were influential and beloved as artists. They were married for nearly 60 years. Lawrence is best known for his 60-panel Migration Series (half at MOMA, where Knight is also collected). Knight is best known for her colorful, lively figurative portraits.

​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.]