Updates, Live: Let's Talk About Love Letters

Rebecca Solomon: The Love Letter (or The Appointment)
oil on canvas, painted arch
signed with monogram and dated 61
(http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com/2010/09/rebecca-solomon-love-letter-or.html)
no copyright infringement intended

I discovered the painting above in a blog whose author (Hermes by pen name)) loves so many good things and loves writing about them. And here is about his penchant for Victorian and Edwardian art. It's a huge treasure: over 70,000 artists, many of them have remained obscure. This could be compared maybe with the painted ceilings of the Baroque - impossible to know all of them, there were far too many, while each one is a superb artwork.

And here is the possible story behind the painting (as imagined by Hermes), the young woman has received a letter from the heavily-whiskered man whose face appears in the mirror, but their relationship and her emotions remain unclear; she seems to be of a certain age, and may well be in mourning; could the man be an adventurer, with designs on her inherited money? And, could be this a self-portrait?

Hermes concludes, a typical piece of Victorian story-telling, with the almost obligatory element of ambiguity.

I would like to put here Rebecca Solomon in dialog with Gonzague Pichelin. A Victorian artist versus a contemporary Indie filmmaker. The universe of love letters has evolved meanwhile. In the summer of 2000 the photo of a Parisian single, fully dressed, was published in Marie Claire, the famous women's magazine. He shared the space with seven other ordinary men, all of them thrown into the forks of the female gaze. There were also some words about his tastes, travels and desires. Female readers willing to engage in a relationship were invited (on magazine's expenses) to meet the man of their choice, and to accompany him on a 25 day vacation. 185 women answered.

Well, the universe might have shifted, but the poetic aura remained mandatory in a piece of art, when it comes to love letters. Here is the pilot of a very short film by Gonzague Pichelin: 185 Déclarations d'amour pour un homme (185 Love Letters for a Man).