The Prominence of Love and Romance within Art, Literature and Television

Love and romance are highly inspirational subjects for so many artists and writers, and have been for many centuries. This article looks in detail at the role of the strong emotion of love within art and literature and focuses on the careers of several key cultural contributors. Despite the rise in modern and abstract art there still remains a continuing interest in romance and traditional artistic methods, both for artists and the mainstream public alike.

JW Waterhouse was a great example of an artist who achieved success which stood the test of time and has lasted all the way up to the modern day, with frequent exhibitions of his work continuing in North America and Europe where his remaining supporters reside. Waterhouse created masterpieces such as The Siren and Lady of Shalott which all had interesting tales behind them and would normally involve romance in some way, be it with a positive or negative light.

The image of love within art has varied massively right across the centuries as well as the different art movements. In most cases romance will be used to create a highly positive and uplifting feeling, but on other occasions artists will focus on the negative impact that broken relationships or romantic knock-backs might cause. Either way, the emotions are strong and the scene always interesting and that makes the emotion of love very useful as a stimulant to art and creativity.

Love poems are a well studied topic and underline the best known use of romance within literature, with William Shakespeare being one example of someone who has achieved academic success and public approval from his creative and high class stories. Besides the love poems, romance also features regularly with in most narrative novels as it is such a fundamental part of modern life with so many people driven to obtain a life with a settled romance and seeing it as a key element towards stability and personal happiness.

Photographers have also recently started to use romance within their work and Frenchman Robert Doisneau is one great example of this, creating The Kiss within a famous part of the city of Paris which itself is very well known as a location for love. The Kiss was earlier a very famous painting for Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, featuring intertwined lovers in a highly memorable work which continued his consistent technique of combining foreground and background together. Klimt continued this method into Water Serpents I as well as several others.

There can be no doubt that romance will always be a major element within art and literature and the image of love can be seen across the covers of most modern magazines and newspapers, with film and television now also swamped with the latest romantic gossip and story, be it true or fiction. Despite the rise in these media types there is still great interest in art and traditional literature and several artists have been aided by their concentration on this emotion within their work, which is still very relevant and popular today.