A seeing glass that feeds, a sameness that strips, a sacrifice that revolts. Occupying both sides of a boundary of visual language and non-language, a ferocious line that is as demanding as a seer. We are perpetually obsessed with the unknown, and with the word love. A  curated record of couples who existed in the space of Modernism as a movement, and more compellingly, who existed as the actual definers of modern relationships. Barbican is set to stage ‘Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde,’ continued from its conception at Centre Pompidou, and it is perhaps entirely the place to start. This is an exhibition that ultimately documents partnerships in art beyond the concept of the romantic couple, especially in France, the safe bed of alternate sexual orientations and belief systems as well as, arguably, the gathering of the minds that formed Modernism in art.

Partnership is a more accurate description, as there is movement in these love stories. Not just movement of sexual orientation, but movement of politics and aesthetics that are inextricably linked. A sameness that chokes oneness. Man Ray, as many art recantations state, met Lee Miller as a pupil; she rapidly morphed from pupil to muse, then to love. In his film ‘Indestructible Object’ an eye that belongs to her has been isolated and dissected. His portraits of her as a beguiling silver gelatin beauty cannot be challenged and yet end in conceptual destruction. This master, this man, to whom we owe a debt, accelerated experimentation that arguably invented the birth of photography and its boundaries—crumbled under Miller’s weight when she left him.

To understand partnerships, we must also indulge the friendships that bind this conception. In a different stroke, Man Ray had a double marriage in Hollywood to Juliet Browner alongside Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. Ernst met Tanning on a studio visit as he pursued an exhibition of women’s art driven by Peggy Guggenheim, his then-wife. This is not a matter of shared beds gone astray, this is the raw truth of the double game that has been played for centuries by artists of every medium. It is not a dismissal of rampant gestures, it is the demonstration of humans that live in multiplicity and are inextricably bonded by the making of their work. Sophie Calle and Paul Auster matched each other in a conceptual and literal desire that is still in the analysis stage. Calle created a document of their relationship and actions named ‘Double Game’ as Auster wrote her into his book Leviathan and she, in turn and in return, demanded his artistic instructions.

In this exhibition, there are innumerable love letters, poems, secret scants between the subjects on display. It feels imperative to remember that these were written simultaneously from the perspectives of lovers and artists: across a blurred line. The deeper truth revealed is that of being a mirror, before Warhol made his world mirrors. This is a mirror exemplified by Klimt: his mirror image was Emilie Flöge, an immensely progressive fashion designer with whom he had a 27-year-long relationship. It is critical to make this distinction: theirs was not defined as love in the modern sense, but it was a devout partnership. Klimt fathered 14 children by multiple women. It has never been historically documented that Flöge was his lover. The fact that her clothing and persona are steeped in his body of work should thus be examined in a far different, perhaps detached, respect. This demonstrates the very point that friendship can transcend traditional love and exist entirely as its own entity.

‘Modern Couples’  creates a dizzying effect, a constant evaluation of the shared aesthetics of a couple and their influence on each other. We can glance at Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson and see a transparent message of presence where there is absence, and vice versa. This is precisely the point. The language of love in art is fleeting, sacrificial, devout, destructive and, most clearly, a revolution.

This print feature written by Brit Parks appeared in UNPOLISHED BOOK 6, The New Romantic.