CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/31/2020

For the new year, we wish you "so much more than we can express in a lifetime…"

We can think of no better image to express everything we've gone through in 2020—and all that we dream of in 2021—than D'Angelo Lovell Williams' "The Lovers" (2017). Reproduced from Young, Gifted and Black—named one of the Best Holiday Gift Books of the Year by Vogue, Essence, New York Magazine's The Strategist and The New York Times, among many others—this image seems to simultaneously presage all of the pain and longing of the pandemic, the unstoppable rise of Black Lives Matter, and the overthrow of a corrupt government that asked us to wear blinders and accept lies. Originally intended to appropriate and subvert the iconic 1928 Magritte painting of the same name, "The Lovers" was, in fact, made as a "blunt expression of black gay love," according to the artist. Viewed now, in light of the astonishing year that we have all endured together, it truly is "about so much more than we can express in a lifetime."