If summer sun is supposed to turn thoughts to romance, this year’s washout must be making the unattached feel as downcast as the overcast skies. But rather than moping, you can now look for love in places full of light, warmth and colour, but away from the whims of the elements – galleries. It used to be only in art-house films that romance sparked in, well, art houses. But every gallery-goer has sometimes found their attention drifting from a stunning artwork to an equally stunning fellow admirer. Imagine being able to answer the old couples’ question about where the two of you met with “In front of a large abstract, actually”.

Cue art2heart. Inspiration for Ranjit Majumdar’s agency came at a private view in 2004, where he noticed how many singletons were enjoying the combination of wine and stimulating atmosphere with a ready-made discussion topic on hand. Why not be upfront about the romantic possibilities?

London’s leading galleries have been keen to help. Last Wednesday, art2heart held an event at the Wellcome Collection, which serendipitously is currently staging an exhibition on the heart. Outings last year included the Wallace Collection and the Saatchi Gallery. “Charles Saatchi thought it was a hoot,” Majumdar revealed, as a happy hubbub went on behind us at a Hayward Gallery event earlier this year.

The crowd at the Hayward was a spritely mix, from business suits to bohos, although, as the champagne-fuelled conversation flowed, one woman laughingly confided that, an hour into the proceedings, nobody had yet asked her what kind of art she liked. While Lisa turned out to be a postimpressionist girl, those with more left-field taste might prefer to attend a Quixotic event. The inaugural night of this alternative to mainstream gallery dating was held last November at the Rich Mix art centre in London’s East End, with visual stimulation from DegreeArt.com, a leading online showcase for newly graduated artists.

Now, having taken time to establish a real-world presence with its own gallery on London’s Vyner Street, Quixotic will bring regular events to this East End area, which has become a burgeoning alternative to the West End gallery heartland of Cork Street. “Quixotic won’t just be a dating event or a private view,” says DegreeArts co-founder, Elinor Olisa. “It will gather people who like art in a relaxed atmosphere without gimmicky dating tactics.”

Before the internet and social-networking revolution, the main alternative to an introduction through work or friends or striking it lucky in the bar chat-up stakes was the lonely-hearts columns. Things got off to an unromantic start with the first personal ad, which ran in 1727. Tired of living a spinster’s life, Helen Morrison persuaded the Manchester Weekly Journal to accept a tiny advertisement to the effect that she would be happy to make the acquaintance of a pleasant gentleman to spend time with. Unfortunately, scandalised readers saw this plea as barely one step up from soliciting, and poor Morrison found herself committed to an asylum for four weeks as punishment.

Today, the lengths that singletons have to go to in order to meet new people are still maddening. What on earth would the 18th-century folk have made of speed-dating? Yet the cry of so many, after a singles night or an unsuccessful date, is that they could find “nothing in common” with the person with whom they were matched.

This is, of course, where cultural dating holds the aces. While galleries are providing one romantic forum, music provides another, through agencies such as Classical Partners. Its events typically involve a preconcert meal, then drinks or coffee afterwards to chat about the performance. Trips to overseas events, such as last weekend’s jaunt to a Munich Rigoletto, add glamour to a mix that, over the next couple of months, includes theatre, a prom concert and a flamenco recital in London, and concerts in Birmingham and Manchester. “A shared love of music and the arts is such a good starting point for a relationship,” enthuses owner Caroline Boon. “And people who love those things often share other interests – a love of walking, reading, other cultures.” The agency now boasts a wedding a month.

Personals, too, have taken on a new cultured sheen. When the high-minded London Review of Books decided to give ad space to Cupid, it was, according to advertising director David Rose, “a simple exercise to help people with similar literary and cultural tastes get together”. Nobody was quite prepared, however, for the first ad: “67-year-old disaffiliated flâneur picking my toothless way through the urban sprawl, self-destructive, sliding towards pathos, jacked up on Viagra and on the lookout for a contortionist who plays the trumpet”. Later came: “Public-school failure. Insipid, directionless, probably poor in bed” and “Tap-dancing classics lecturer. Chilling, isn’t it?” The tone was set for a gloriously British cult of comic self-deprecation that has now produced a book and reportedly attracted interest in Hollywood.

If their personal ads were scary, what might the advertisers be like in the flesh? The magazine decided to find out in 2005 when it ran its first singles nights at the LRB bookshop. “You’d be amazed at how easily a bookshop can be turned into a pot of simmering romance and sexuality,” says Rose. “And everyone was quite beautiful really.”

Rose believes the ads have been a force for good, as well as hugely entertaining. “People have become lazy about dating. They fill out a questionnaire and wait for the work to be done – like pressing a vending machine and waiting for the goodie bar to fall out. Cultural events, by asking people to think creatively and talk intelligently, require effort.

“The meeting of minds is more important than physical attraction in the long term,” he continues, before stating a truth often lost in the dating game. “After all, the brain is the largest erogenous zone.”

www.art2heart.biz
www.quixoticevents.co.uk
www.classicalpartners.co.uk
www.lrb.co.uk/classified

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