Love

Love and its many different forms is the subject of some of art history's most iconic works—and it is an often-cited reason for making art in the first place. Greek and Roman art depicted gods and deities experiencing the pleasures and travails of love, often aided or hindered by the winged cupid. Botticelli further advanced the idea of divine love, as seen in his Birth of Venus. Modern and contemporary works have continued to reveal love in all of its faces, including the anxious confessions of Tracey Emin and the fraught and tragic circumstances of lovers during the AIDS crisis, as depicted by Nan Goldin. At times the social conventions surrounding love are examined or parodied, as they are in William Hogarth's "Marriage à la Mode" series. At other times, art touches on the simplest symbols of love (Jim Dine's hearts, for instance) or the word itself, as in Robert Indiana's iconic sculptures.