The warm spring breeze and flowers put people in a good mood and perhaps evoke thoughts of spring romance.

Fittingly, a love-themed art exhibition is opening at Seoul Museum on March 14, or White Day, a romantic day celebrated in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea where men give presents to women in return for what they received on Valentine’s Day.

Love has always been a major theme for movies, art and music. The museum, which opened last year in the northern part of Seoul, has combined romantic movies and art under the theme of love at the new exhibition.

The exhibition “Love Actually” (taken from the movie title) presents six themes of love such as new love, pure love, everlasting love, passionate love and past love with movies that best represent each theme with matching artwork. 

“People watch movies and talk freely about what they thought about the movies. We thought why couldn’t art viewing be as easy as watching a movie? The new exhibition will have viewers comment freely on what they view just like when they watch films,” said Yi Ju-heon, director of Seoul Museum.

To make the exhibition approachable to the public, the museum borrowed titles from Korean pop songs such as “Shall We Love?” “With You Forever” and “Sonata of Allurement” as titles for each section.

The first section “Shall We Love?” portrays the moment when a man and a woman fall in love.

Oh Jung-sun’s “Another Way of Seeing II,” an installation of different strength eye glasses, depicts the moment when a man and a woman become attracted to each other in the movie “Tokyo Tower.”

“The different strengths of lenses recreates the experience of falling in love at first sight. You only see the person you fall in love with and don’t see others, like the saying ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’” said Kang Anna, curator of the museum.

The “Boy Meets Girl” section features Robert Indiana’s number series that symbolizes the kiss scene of Thomas and Vada in “My Girl,” where they count down to the first kiss to avoid the awkward moment.

Koh Sang-woo’s “When Sun is in Love 1” is a negative film image used to capture the image of everlasting love. With butterflies and flower motifs, Koh’s photography creates a world where just the couple exist in a loving embrace.

The museum has installed a kiss zone at the end of the exhibition where couples can take pictures together with the “Mae West Lips Sofa” by Salvador Dali.

The museum also runs lectures and free movie screenings during the exhibition period. A lecture by art and movie critics on art and movies that share the love theme is scheduled at 2 p.m. on April 13.

The museum will run a free film screening every Saturday. The movie schedule is available at www.seoulmuseum.org.

The exhibition runs from March 14 to June 16 at Seoul Museum in Buam-dong, Jongno, Seoul.

For more information, call (02) 395-0100.

By Lee Woo-young  (wylee@heraldcorp.com)