Publisher's Synopsis
The kiss conveys a varied array of human conditions and relationships, from an expression of tenderness between parent and child to the passionate exchange between lovers to the submissive act of an underling prostrate at the feet of a powerful overlord. But whatever its form, a kiss is a powerful engine of emotion that has inspired artists and writers through the ages.
This lovely gift book presents over two hundred artworks including paintings, sculptures, ancient vases, and jewelry depicting kissing scenes captured by anonymous makers from antiquity, the great masters of the Renaissance, and many twentieth-century artists. Artworks by such figures as Rubens, Manet, Renoir, Chagall, and Picasso are paired with quotations by literary and public figures as diverse as Charles Baudelaire, Ingrid Bergman, Bertold Brecht, Raymond Chandler, Goethe, Virgil, and Shakespeare.
Some of the artworks are boldly sensual, expressing the physical truth of a kiss, while in others the contact of two pairs of lips is transformed into a symbol, an allegorical element, or an intellectual allusion. On display are the innocent kisses of children, the chaste embraces of the Bible, hesitations, expectation, and occasionally rejection, as well as vigorous and resounding kisses planted with ardor.
