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" A twisted fairytale romance  I love modern art. Well, most of it. Some of it&amp;#039;s complete guff, but a lot of it is brilliant. Take the new &amp;#039;Sleeping Beauty&amp;#039; installation by Ukrainian-Canadian artist Taras Polataiko, on show in the Ukrainian National Art Museum, for example. Every day from 22 August until 9 September five different women take it in turns to lie motionless as if they were asleep on an elevated bed inside the museum for two hours at a time. Nice, huh? Now before you punch your angry &amp;#039;but that&amp;#039;s not art!&amp;#039; fists into the air, here comes the arty bit: members of the public are invited to &amp;#039;participate&amp;#039; in the exhibit by kissing the sleeping beauty. But there&amp;#039;s a big fat catch. You don&amp;#039;t just get a cheap thrill kissing a sleeping woman, oh no. To kiss the girl you have to sign a contract confirming that you will MARRY the sleeping beauty if she opens her eyes while you&amp;#039;re kissing her. And she will have signed one herself confirming that she&amp;#039;ll marry whoever is kissing her if she opens her eyes. Both men and women are invited to take part, but if she opens her eyes while a woman is having a smooch the new couple will have to get hitched in a country that allows same-sex marriage, as Ukraine doesn&amp;#039;t. It should also be noted that all participants undergo a test for oral herpes at the door. (Mmm\u2026the very definition of romance.) Now if that isn&amp;#039;t a debate-worthy piece of modern art then I&amp;#039;ll eat my gingerbread house. I think it&amp;#039;s pretty clever. And a bit scary. Taras is basically saying that all love and commitment is a risk. A gamble. A punt in the dark. He&amp;#039;s asking whether you can ever truly know someone and is also raising questions about choice. The sleeping beauty has a choice \u2013 whether to open her eyes or not \u2013 but she&amp;#039;s making it blind. The person who has signed the contract also has a choice \u2013 whether to kiss her or not \u2013 but they at least know what she looks like and that she&amp;#039;s a woman. The sleeping beauty doesn&amp;#039;t even know the sex of the person kissing her (unless they have a huge beard, but even then\u2026). She&amp;#039;s not quite a damsel in distress though because she can choose whether to accept the kiss\u2026You can argue the piece touches on arranged marriage and responsibility. Two strangers have both made a commitment to each other based on an instant connection. Do they see it through? (It&amp;#039;s also interesting that only women are acting the role of the sleeping beauty when the piece is modern enough to allow both sexes to risk a kiss\u2026) Does the piece make a mockery of marriage? Or only traditional notions of marriage? But the very phrase &amp;#039;traditional notions of marriage&amp;#039; evokes images of two point four children and women being gifted to men via a dowry a la Middlemarch. What is modern marriage? How long is an acceptable time to know someone before accepting a proposal? Also, it&amp;#039;s worth noting that neither the sleeping beauty nor the &amp;#039;prince&amp;#039; have proposed to the other. They&amp;#039;ve both agreed to the marriage in a somewhat business-like manner. Some might say (not me, though, lawyer folk) that it&amp;#039;s a less sordid version of Kim Kardashian&amp;#039;s marriage to Kris Humphries. The fairytale element is crucial to the piece \u2013 is love at first sight real? How about love at first kiss? And will they get their happily ever after? To have signed the contract in the first place surely means all participants are willing to give the marriage a chance, so is this any less romantic than being &amp;#039;betrothed&amp;#039; to someone you&amp;#039;ve never met when you&amp;#039;re born or being expected to settle for any old fool or bear the &amp;#039;old maid&amp;#039; stigma of the Middlemarch era? There is a political agenda to the piece too, surrounding the failure of the Orange Revolution in 2005. The Ukrainian people are waiting, patiently, for something new to &amp;#039;wake&amp;#039; them and create change. But the comment on love, commitment, romance and marriage affect everyone. Is he denigrating the institution of marriage? Or is he encouraging everyone to embrace it? Let me know what you think about this or about anything - even what you just had for lunch - on Twitter at @Jousmar K-STEW AND R-PATZZ DILEMMA: SO WHAT CONSTITUES CHEATING? A REAL LIFE SEX AND THE CITY REVELATION WHY THROWING UP ALL OVER HIS SHOES IS THE TRUE TEST OF LOVE "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/love-sex/sex/a1830/a-twisted-fairytale-romance/>