A record-breaking 2.43 million viewers tuned in to the Love Island finale on Monday evening. Rise Art team members may have added one or two to that number. Cough. Okay maybe a few more. Let’s just say that we can confirm that post-Love Island blues is a thing.
So what got us so hooked? No doubt the bronzed bootys and sculpted six-packs have much to do with it. Let’s admit, a villa-load of sexy singletons battling it out in a blindfolded snogging contest is head turning stuff.
But maybe the Love Island sensation is about more than just indulging in guilty, voyeuristic pleasures. Beneath the catfights and the self-tan, the bromances and bulging muscles, is an age-old human drama. Love. We spend our lives seeking it. We find it, we lose it. We fall head over heels in it. We get love struck and love sick.
If there’s anything that makes us human, it’s our capacity to love. Over the centuries, poets and playwrights have lyricised about love, musicians have sung about it, and artists have depicted it. Think The Kiss by Auguste Rodin or Pierre-Auguste Cot’s Springtime. Love is an inexhaustive subject, though perhaps impossible to fully capture. And ever impossible to grasp.
In the spirit of love and to combat the post-Love Island slump, we've selected five artworks to slobber over, ITV 2-style.
1 Promise by Sarah Harvey
2 Calm by Peter Hawkins
3 The Proposal by Diana Rosa Latourt
4 Perfect Match by Julia Blackshaw
5 Kama Sutra by Agnese Taurina