Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and some of us here at Flavorpill are feeling silly. Or, you know, nauseated and glum. Sigh. So, what are we going to do? We’re going to play the Famous Artworks Matchmaking Game! Yay! Remember when you were kid and you’d smack your Barbie and Gumby together and pretend they were a couple? It’s like that. We’re pairing up the classic, contemporary, and pop culture works of art — and their subjects — that we think should go on a date and have a nice time together. Feel free to rain on our silly love parade in the comments section. We realize that it could be quite cathartic this time of year.
Ah, Leonardo da Vinci’s mysterious Mona Lisa and her famously confounding facial expression. Clearly, a gal like this would torture any normal beau into madness. Is it a half smile or a half frown? Huh?!!… Let her meet her match in Rene Magritte’s surrealistic gent from Not To Be Reproduced. Now that’s a poker face! Let’s pluck them out of their respective centuries and let them intrigue one another.
We’d love to see Yayoi Kusama’s dots get together with Damien Hirst’s spots. Sure, Kusama’s signature bright polka dots have been around since before Hirst was born — and there’s almost a feud there — but this is one star-crossed May-December romance worth fighting for. Hirst’s rigid, up-tight spots — colored by a computer-algorithm — could learn a lot of Kusama’s wild and free-spirited dots. Loosen up and live a little!
Honorary Radiohead member Stanley Donwood’s bear is so famous. Takashi Murakami’s Kanye West Bear from their “Good Morning” music video collaboration knows what we’re talking about. These two bears could make one of the best romances of all time!!!
We know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. See, these two public works both offer poignant, vulgarity-charged, sociopolitical commentary. Maurizio Cattelan‘s giant hand with strategically broken fingers points derisively at the Italian Stock Exchange building. David Černý’s permanent sculpture at the Futura Galley in Prague lets one climb up the ladder to peek inside at a video installation of two politicians feeding each other slop to the sound of “We Are the Champions.” What a complementary pair, philosophically and in aesthetic composure. And you were thinking that we were making a crude joke… Heh heh heh.
Pipilotti Rist’s performative video art ego is very, very fond of glass. She makes love to it with her face for the entire duration of Be Nice To Me . Marcel Duchamp’s artwork The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) is a large glass. This romance would be so natural, so effortless, almost masturbatory. Just watch out for those cracks, Pipi!
There’s an infinite number of pairings that could be arranged between the word paintings of Ed Ruscha and the work of Barbara Krueger. Unlike most other couples, they’ll have no problem communicating. Just think of the hot, hot epistolary romances!
Speaking of hot, hot epistolary romances, we’d like to imagine that these two were an item — Gabriel Metsu’s Man Writing a Letter circa 1662 and Pieter de Hooch’s Woman Reading a Letter circa 1664. Yes, that’s two years. What? The post took a while back then. It must have a been a letter worth waiting for.
If Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura, or rather — his many alter egos — could go on a speed dating session with all of Cindy Sherman’s multiple personalities, we imagine that there would be a lot of role playing.
A romance between one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s saucy ladies from the Moulin Rouge and Van Gogh on absinthe à la that catchy Ron English ad would go something like Leaving Las Vegas . So, yes, that’s not very healthy, per se, but wrought with engaging mutual masochism and dramatic developments.
“The dog who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis.” Finally, David Lynch’s Angry Dog can find a soulmate in the also misunderstood executioner from David Shrigley’s Axeman, but who’s surprised?