CUPID (AMOR VINCIT OMNIA) — RED

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

Same image. Same words. Yet somehow, an entirely different emotion.

This is another of the Cupid — Amor Vincit Omnia works within my Magnus Gjoen collection.

The composition is familiar.

Cupid — the classical symbol of love and desire — embraces an object created for precisely the opposite purpose.

A bomb.

Across it appear the words that first attracted me to this series:

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

Love Conquers All.

But in this version, everything is red.

And for me, that changes the work completely.

THE COLOUR OF LOVE

Red is perhaps the colour we associate with love more than any other.

Red roses.

Red hearts.

Passion.

Desire.

Romance.

But red carries another vocabulary too.

Blood.

Danger.

Warning.

Violence.

And suddenly the choice of colour feels perfectly suited to the contradiction at the heart of the artwork.

The same colour can represent both love and destruction.

Perhaps that's why this version feels particularly powerful to me.

CUPID AND THE BOMB

There's something wonderfully unsettling about the way Cupid interacts with the weapon.

He doesn't appear frightened of it.

He isn't trying to escape from it.

He's embracing it.

That single gesture opens the work up to all sorts of interpretations.

Is love confronting destruction?

Is Cupid somehow neutralising the weapon?

Is Magnus suggesting that love itself can be dangerous?

Or is the image simply asking whether something as ancient and fundamental as love can survive our seemingly endless ability to destroy one another?

I don't know.

And I don't particularly want Magnus to give me the answer.

Because one of the things I've increasingly come to appreciate about his work is that the questions are often more interesting than the answers.

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

The Latin words running across the image have survived in one form or another for more than two thousand years.

Amor Vincit Omnia.

Love Conquers All.

It's an extraordinarily optimistic idea when you think about it.

Wars have been fought.

Empires have risen and disappeared.

Entire civilisations have changed beyond recognition.

Yet generation after generation has continued to believe in essentially the same thing.

That somehow love matters.

That somehow it survives.

That somehow, despite everything humanity throws at itself, love remains stronger.

SAME ARTWORK. DIFFERENT LENS.

Owning different colourways of the same image has made me appreciate something I hadn't necessarily considered when I first began collecting art.

Colour doesn't simply change how an artwork looks.

It changes how an artwork feels.

The green version has an almost sculptural quality to me — as though Cupid and the bomb could be some strange classical monument.

The red version feels altogether more immediate.

More passionate.

More dangerous.

The image hasn't changed.

My response to it has.

And that fits perfectly with the philosophy behind my collection:

The freedom to see through somebody else's eyes without surrendering our own.

AN EDITION OF 50

This red version of Cupid (Amor Vincit Omnia) was created in 2020 as part of a limited edition of 50.

Measuring 50 × 72.5 cm, it was produced using archival pigment inks on 308gsm cotton rag and is signed and numbered by Magnus.

And there's another detail about my particular example that I love.

From the photograph of the signature, this appears to be 11/50.

That individual number gives this particular copy its own place within the edition.

WHY IT BELONGS IN MY COLLECTION

There are artworks that I collect because I love the image.

Others because I love the idea.

This one gives me both.

A classical symbol of love embraces a modern symbol of destruction.

The colour red manages to represent both.

And running quietly between them are four words that have travelled through centuries:

Amor Vincit Omnia.

Perhaps that's the ultimate contradiction within this artwork.

Human beings have become extraordinarily good at creating things capable of destroying one another.

Yet we remain equally determined to believe in love.

I know which of those ideas I want to win.

Amor Vincit Omnia.

Love Conquers All.

From The Allun Lewis Collection