In Peter Behrens’s celebrated Art Nouveau woodblock print The kiss, two faces are framed by an entwining, serpentine mass of hair. From the 1860s, abundant, eroticised hair had become a motif for artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who applied it to various feminine archetypes. As the century progressed, the iconography shifted to encompass a broader spectrum of desire and identity. In Behrens’s image, the androgyny of both faces, paired with their creeping tresses, half animal, half plant, suggests an amorphous relationship between nature, gender and sexuality. The hair forms an inescapable web of erotic enchantment, and in the absence of traditional markers of gender difference, the two subjects exist as fantastic, fluid forms onto whom diverse desires might be mapped.
Peter Behrens
German 1868–1940
The kiss (Der Kuss) 1898
from Pan, vol. 4, no. 2, July–Sep. 1898
colour woodcut, edition of 1100
27.2 x 21.6 cm (image and block), 37.1 x 27.6 cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Ruth Margaret Frances Houghton Bequest, 2020
