This is one of two works which were commissioned by Blackburn Art Gallery, UK, as the artists’ contemporary response to their significant collection of early illustrated European and Eastern manuscripts know as The Hart Collection.

Love Lost
2001
28.6 x 40cm (11.25 x 15.75in)
Poster colour, gouache and gold dust on mountboard
Artist: Amrit K.D.Kaur Singh

This painting reinterprets the classic Persian legend of star crossed lovers, Laila and Majnun. Exploring the universal concept of ‘true love,’ the artist recreates a scene (the meeting of two lovers) in which the main subjects are juxtaposed within an environment whose various components collectively transcend cultures and time. The interrelationship between cultural histories is stressed through the particular parallel which is made with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet - a great classic of Western Literature which some believe was inspired by the earlier Persian classic. Pointing to the sustained popularity of both versions within popular culture and art, certain elements within the work refer to various ways in which the story has been told, modified and retold against an ever developing global communication technology and cultural media.

Other details within the painting take a more satirical look at how modern society (with its tendency towards non committal, fickle relationships based on materialistic and individualistic needs) falls short of the kind of selfless, all consuming ‘true love,’ that legends are made of.

 

copyright the artists