Restrained Beauty | Anoush Abrar & Aimée Hoving | 'Mouthflower' 2010

 Being perfect artists and ingenuous poets, the Chinese have piously preserved the love and holy cult of flowers; one of the very rare and most ancient traditions which has survived their decadence.  And since flowers had to be distinguished from each other, they have attributed graceful analogies to them, dreamy images, pure and passionate names which perpetuate and harmonize in our minds the sensations of gentle charm and violent intoxication with which they inspire us.  So it is that certain peonies, their favorite flower, are saluted by the Chinese, according to their form or color, by these delicious names, each an entire poem and an entire novel:  The Young Girl Who Offers Her Breasts, or: The Water That Sleeps Beneath the Moon, or: The Sunlight in the Forest, or: The First Desire of the Reclining Virgin, or: My Gown Is No Longer All White Because in Tearing It the Son of Heaven Left a Little Rosy Stain; or, even better, this one: I Possessed My Lover in the Garden.  ~Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden, “The Garden,” Chapter 5

Other thoughts about flowers to accompany these provocative ‘Mouthflower’ images from Anoush Abrar & Aimée Hoving.

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triump over Christianity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. ~ Emma Goldman

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat. ~Beverly Nichols

Flowers really do intoxicate me. ~Vita Sackville-West

The flower is the poetry of reproduction.  It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.  ~Jean Giraudoux