The Guggenheim was packed on Wednesday. Crowds overflowed the white circular swirling ramps of the Upper East Side Museum, everyone jollied by the free admission and voraciously consuming the art on display.
The featured collection at the Guggenheim is by Wassily Kandinsky, an artist whose career spanned from the abstract to the linear, and from Germany, to Russia, and finally to France.
Kandinsky, like many artists, had repititive images that appeared in many of his paintings. One of these was the horse and rider. One of his most popular paintings, circa 1907, is called “A Couple Riding.” This painting shows entangled lovers on a white horse. The man looks tenderly down at the woman, as if at the end or at the beginning of a romantic embrace. The Guggenheim, in reflection on this painting, suggests that, “Here, as elsewhere, romantic love may be perceived as the way to spiritual redemption.” The Guggenheim defines spiritual redemption as “a better and more spiritual future,” as spirituality was one of Kandinsky’s main influences (music being the main other).
If one looks closely at the painting, the brilliant dots littered all over the backdrop of the city, and the horse and couple themselves, seem to light up the painting, creating the essence of spirituality and redemption that he was trying to portray.
As one who defines spirituality as an indescribable feeling that is more personal and internal than anything else, I put this blog out to you to give me your opinion on the subject.
This site, Recovery is Sexy, (I know, pretty great title huh) gives an interesting survey of how spirituality means different things to different people. They say (The recovery experts, I’m assuming) that:
“Spirituality is a word used in an abundance of contexts that means
different things for
different people at
different times in
different cultures.”
This being said, and I suggest you read the whole post before posting your opinion, what does spirituality mean to you? And how, if so, do you think it relates to romantic love?
Good question!
Who knows it better than Khalil Gibran?
“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”