CUPID (AMOR VINCIT OMNIA)

Magnus Gjoen
2020
Limited Edition of 50
50 × 72.5 cm
Archival pigment inks on 308gsm cotton rag
Signed and numbered by the artist
From The Allun Lewis Collection

THE STORY BEHIND THE PIECE

Amor Vincit Omnia.

Love Conquers All.

There are certain words and phrases that seem capable of surviving almost anything.

Languages change. Empires disappear. Generations come and go.

Yet more than two thousand years after the Roman poet Virgil wrote the words from which this familiar phrase developed, the idea remains remarkably powerful.

Love conquers all.

And perhaps that's why this particular Magnus Gjoen image resonated with me so strongly.

CUPID AND THE BOMB

At first glance, there is something almost beautiful about the composition.

Cupid — one of the most recognisable symbols of love in Western art — embraces the object beside him.

But it isn't another classical figure.

It isn't a bow and arrow.

It's a bomb.

Magnus describes the work simply as a modern take on Cupid and his bow and arrow.

And that transformation changes everything.

Something traditionally associated with love and desire is placed alongside something created for destruction.

Innocence and violence.

Love and war.

Beauty and brutality.

Two completely opposing ideas occupying the same image.

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

Running across the bomb are the words:

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

Love Conquers All.

For me, those words are what transform the piece.

Without them, you could interpret the image simply as another of Magnus's wonderful collisions between classical beauty and modern destruction.

But the words introduce something else.

Perhaps Cupid isn't frightened of the weapon.

Perhaps he's embracing it.

Perhaps love is capable of neutralising something created to destroy.

Or perhaps the contradiction is deliberately impossible.

That's the beauty of it.

Magnus gives us the image. We decide what it means.

LOVE CONQUERS ALL

This piece also has a natural connection to the four Cupid colourways already within my collection.

When Maria and I discovered those works at an art festival at St Pancras, it was those same Latin words that ultimately sold them to me.

I've always been fascinated by history, classical imagery and symbolism, and there is something extraordinary about seeing an ancient idea carried forward into contemporary art.

The world in which those words were first written is almost unimaginable to us today.

And yet the emotion behind them hasn't changed.

We still love.

We still lose.

We still fight.

We still hope.

And we still want to believe that, ultimately, love is stronger than everything placed in its way.

AN EDITION OF 50

This version of Cupid (Amor Vincit Omnia) was created in 2020 as an edition of 50.

Measuring 50 × 72.5 cm, it was produced using archival pigment inks on 308gsm cotton rag.

Its larger scale gives the image a very different presence from some of the smaller Magnus works within my collection.

Cupid doesn't disappear into the composition.

Neither does the bomb.

You're forced to confront both.

And then you notice those words.

Amor Vincit Omnia.

WHY IT BELONGS IN MY COLLECTION

Looking across my Magnus collection, I increasingly realise that many of the pieces are connected by contradictions.

Beauty and destruction.

Life and mortality.

History and contemporary culture.

Love and vulnerability.

This one may express that tension more simply than almost any other.

A classical symbol of love.

A modern symbol of destruction.

And four words written between them:

Amor Vincit Omnia.

I don't know whether love genuinely conquers everything.

Life is probably far too complicated for that.

But I know which side of the argument I'd rather believe in.

And perhaps that's why these words have survived for more than two thousand years.

Love Conquers All.

From The Allun Lewis Collection