“Probably due to their dimensions,” wrote the Surrealist artist Man Ray, “the two lips resembled two bodies embracing. It was very Freudian.” He is describing his Observatory Time—The Lovers (1936), an eight-foot-wide painting featuring an elongated pair of flame-red lips hovering in a pale sky, an observatory visible in the distance, perhaps bearing witness to a fiery passion. Man Ray’s work was a cri de coeur over his dashed love affair with the siren and muse Lee Miller. Decades later, in 1970, he transformed the red lips of his painting into the gold lips of a pendant brooch, a talisman to love. Like so many artists, Man Ray was using jewelry as a new medium for creative expression. Paintings and sculpture could become precious metal and gems—sculpture to wear. READ ON

In Leos Carax’s new film, Annette, which premiered at Cannes, Adam Driver’s character, Henry, carries on crooning while he performs cunnilingus on Marion Cotillard’s Ann in a sweaty love scene, giving her what might be called “good vibrato.” The song that Driver is singing is one of many composed for Carax’s brooding pop opera by musicians Ron Mael and Russell Mael. READ ON