Tuesday, April 03, 2007

No Klimt for the Married


The New York Times has a light piece by Joyce Wadler on people being turned off by their dates' weird home decorating. One of the examples she found was from a guy who was interested in a woman until he saw that she still had a poster of Gustave Klimt's "The Kiss," as well as a poster of Robert Doisneau's famous French photograph from the '50s of a couple kissing. He acknowledged that they were romantic, but “It’s romantic when you’re 16. At some point you need to outgrow it.”

Which raises the question: what is romantic art for married people? You could have any theme at all, of course. There is no reason that married people's art need be about marriage. We have a poster of Steichen's photograph of the Flatiron Building in the mist in our bedroom – which, I admit, we have had since college. Time, I suppose, for an upgrade.

Still, I think it would be perfectly appropriate, even romantic, for married people to have wedding art in their homes. One of my favorites is shown above, of the bride in the Victorian registry office. Can anyone identify it? I can find the image, but not the painter. Ironically, this one was recently the subject of controversy. The Liverpool Registry Office decided it might be politically incorrect to have this on the wall when homosexual couples came by, so they took it down.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a large black and white print hanging up in our bedroom of me in a beret and sunglasses, standing in front of a beautiful monument from a local cemetery. It was made by my husband. Not the traditional romantic notion...but we like it.

Anonymous said...

Anything about the couple seems like appropriate marriage art.

Anonymous said...

A friend found identified the painting as "Signing the Register" by Edmund Blair Leighton, for which I am grateful.