The Beethoven by Evo Love
Title: The Beethoven
Artist: Evo Love
Dimensions: 12.5 in. tall x 10 in. wide x 6 in. deep
Medium: Mixed media
Details: In every carefully arranged detail, Evo Love’s visual biography on Beethoven is an eloquent and expressive composition that conveys her talent for storytelling through assemblage. Look closely for details culled from the fascinating life lived by Beethoven, a prodigal genius with whom Evo Love identifies for his personable complexities. In this assemblage Beethoven is seen sitting at the piano looking at a bust of Napoleon, conjuring the moment time when the leader was named emperor, Beethoven, who hated emperors and was in the process of composing his third symphony, re-titled his new work “The Dead March.” A lesser known fact about the composer is that he had five dogs, which led to his arrest once because police thought he was a vagrant. Beethoven had some peculiar idiosyncrasies: he was in the habit of tossing ice over his head before playing the piano and counting out exactly 60 coffee beans for a cup. Evo Love includes masonry jewelry in the piece to represent Beethoven’s talent as a practicing mason, a money bag to symbolize his success as a well-paid musician of the time, the letters J and M for his parents Johan and Maria, and a woman, his immortal beloved. The red-headed child has double meaning, as Beethoven was a child prodigy himself and also parent to an adopted child — his nephew, in fact, whom he adopted when he felt his sister could not give him a proper upbringing.