Love Is No Idyll.
Valentine's Day, but right after: Please pay attention to the symbol ECN (Economical). In the counter of the intricate pattern on Wonderful love. The pattern was invented while waiting by Isore Isou, the imperative and charming leader of the Parisian letrists. It would seem that these cruelly avant-garde young men were not interested in anything but direct action (e.g. a mess for Easter 1950 in Notre Dame; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_Affair) and drawing your own signs wherever possible. In the early 1960s, Isou began to more and more clearly exploit the sign power of sexuality, love, and feelings. And from the beginning of his Parisian career, he had quite specific beliefs about women ("Isou ou la mécanique des femmes", Paris, 1949).
The introduction of the symbol of economics into the strict formula defining ideal love is not meaningless. We perceive "Valentine's Day Lovers" on the background of idyll far from economics. Meanwhile, maybe not Love itself, but the image of Love is largely based on the rules of marketing, without thinking sharpening the contours of the sign. The power of the relationship between the body and the sign returned to the European imagination in 1996 in "Pillow Book, a film by Peter Greenaway.
The first thing that is noticed in the iconography of "lovers" is the asymmetry between the number of female and male bodies. Feminine, especially put together with completely illegible signs, is not difficult to find. Male bodies many times less, if there is any formula of miraculous love describing the male, it is illustrated by a rather non-anatomical picture.
We can't calculate whether Love is balancing, we still only guess whether it pays off for us. At least since the myth of Psyche and Eros, the image of love has been based not on symmetrical balance, on fulfilled union, but on an asymmetrical game of opposing forces, each of which tries to achieve domination.
Do you have someone on hand, do you have an eye on Someone? Put your stamp on it. It can be pretty nice. Who knows, maybe you will have something to read, in a duet for many evenings.
Graphics: Isidore Isou, “Formula de l'amour prodigieux", 1960, Serigraphy
Isidore Isou “Initiation à la Haute Volupté”, 1960-1989, serigraphy
Isidore Isou “Initiation à la Haute Volupté,” 1960-1989, serigraphy
Peter Greeneway, "Pillow Book”, 1996