Boy and Girl

As an avid student of art history, Francesco Clemente’s knowledge and enthusiasm on the subject ranges from the storied traditions of Indian miniature painting to the Western canon of the twentieth century. Inspired by Hans Baldung Grien’s Death and the Woman from circa 1520-1525 Clemente’s Boy and Girl takes the Greek mythological subject of Thanatos and Eros and presents it to the viewer within a contemporary setting. Drawing out the Freudian connotations of this trope, Clemente plays on its psychological implications. The figures play out the struggle between death and life as Thanatos, with his destructive instinct to return organic life to an inanimate state, hovers behind Eros and her impulse towards life symbolised by the kneeling lovers. Death’s lifeless leg appears to slowly merge with the seated female implying that he is not just a passive observer but on the brink of intervening in the blissful union. The whole vignette is captured in a blood red framing device, which floats above a flatly executed black ground, simultaneously evoking a coffin and a heart, driving home the correlation between love and death.