A Synopsis of Love November 21 - December 14, 2019
A Synopsis of Love
"Tinder for Tudors."
That's what I kept thinking as I fell down the rabbit hole of Henry VIII and his court painter Hans Holbein. In 1539, Henry sent Holbein to the northern Rhine to paint Anne of Cleves — a prospective fourth wife he had never met. No photography. No iPhone. Just paint, and the hope that a skilled artist could capture enough truth in a portrait to make a king fall in love.
It's not so different from swiping right, really.
A Synopsis of Love began as a fascination with that methodology — the salaciousness of attraction at a distance, the careful construction of an image designed to seduce. Henry's court and our own age of online dating are separated by five centuries but driven by exactly the same hunger. We have always needed to be seen. We have always curated ourselves for the gaze of another.
Every portrait in this exhibition was painted directly from life. That matters to me deeply. Spending hours within arm's reach of another person — watching, listening, paying close attention — allows something to emerge that no iPhone image ever could. The unguarded moment. The particular way someone holds themselves when they forget they're being looked at. The truth that lives beneath the carefully constructed surface.
Each portrait is also embellished with a historical reference to the 1500s — an injection of contemporary ironic bling. A tongue-in-cheek poke at our enduring need to project worth and wealth through symbols, whether Tudor jewels or a perfectly curated Instagram grid. The gilded, hand-moulded frames by renowned framer Brett Lichtenstein complete the idea — because we have always placed an extraordinary amount of importance on becoming objects of desire.
At its heart this exhibition asks the most human of questions: how do we find real love in a world that is crowded and yet somehow profoundly isolated? How do we see each other — truly see each other — when every image has been filtered, framed and optimised before it reaches us?
Holbein, at least, had to show up in person.
Essay by Ralph Hobbs, November 2019
