Love, Hardcover

Elegant gift book, celebrating the themes of romantic love through art

This charming book features a selection of the most touching and transformative expressions of romantic love in Tate's collections. Divided among key themes such as courtship, passion, symbolism, enduring love, and even loss, each of the 50 works of art has been selected for the way in which the artist has attempted to capture the ineffable, affirmative, and devotional aspects of love. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, illustrations, and installations are punctuated by brief captions adding background detail about the art, artists, and their subjects. Sometimes chaste, sometimes frenzied, often passionate, and occasionally heartbreaking, placed together, these beautiful images create a fascinating and enlightening journey through the visual portrayal of love and sexuality in Western art.

Alex Pilcher is the author of A Queer Little History of Art (2017), also published by Tate.