3 Inspiring Paintings That Will Win Your Heart and Mind
Contemplating human relationships in art
Why do we look at art?
Speaking personally, I often turn to art to refresh my perspective. I enjoy letting my eyes flow over a painting, just looking and taking in the way the artist has chosen to reproduce the world.
Take this captivating painting, made in 1892 by Toulouse-Lautrec. Titled In Bed, The Kiss, it features two women enfolded in bedclothes, lost in a momentary embrace.
What I really like about this image is the way Lautrec has hatched and scribbled the paint, creating not only a visual excitement on the surface of the work but also adding to the sense of spontaneity — and so the impulsive, uninhibited kiss is given added freshness by the very medium in which it is painted.
Lautrec made more than a dozen paintings like this — his “Bed Series” — all based on the women who worked at a Paris brothel on the rue d’Ambroise.
The artist had been commissioned to decorate the brothel’s salon. He became a friend and confidant to the prostitutes there, which is how he was able to make such…
