Laugh at Yourselves!

As if on cue, the tall, handsome figure of Leonardo wafts elegantly into the room. He pauses at the top of the stairs to sweep his luxurious cape to one side, glances to his right, then left. A mischievous smile flickers, and he turns to approach our little group. 

Da Vinci
Well, well, well. What have we here? You look like one of those groups of old men who gather every day to gossip over coffee.

Velazquez
Welcome Leonardo. I suppose we were gossiping ... Pablo was just giving us his impression of the Biennale. Essentially – please correct me, Pablo – he feels that there is nothing new here, that it has all been done before. Is that a fair summary, Pablo?

Picasso
As far as it goes, yes.

Da Vinci, his smile broadening
Look at you! Look at yourselves! (begins to laugh aloud). You think that the Biennale needs more innovative art? Ha ha ha ha ha. Sour grapes, my friends. You're a bunch of painters, for heaven's sake! You've been left out in the cold with your shrouds of irrelevance, making pronouncements about the art of those in the 'salon.' (Now he is laughing so hard that he has trouble catching his breath, he bends over, and wipes tears from his eyes).

Heads are swivelling as the rest of us begin to take in our little group. Da Vinci's laughter is infectious, and as we all realize how ridiculous our situation is, grins and chuckles erupt until, like a gang of fifteen-year-old boys, we are howling with laughter, slapping each other on backs and knees, and shaking our heads in disbelief.

A distraught guard bounds across the floor wagging a finger, and breathless, delivers a stern scolding:

Guard
Signori, signori! Dovete rispettare la quiete di questo spazio! You must not do this; it is too loud. Please leave now. Andate all'uscita immediatamente. Come, come ... this way. Go now.

Properly chastised, but still snorting and harrumphing, the adolescents make their way past the ticket booth and gift shop, and into the brilliant sunshine that awaits them on the steps outside.

San Rocco Again

Picasso sits in one of the red canvas director's chairs that line the perimiter of the room, at the end of the upper floor of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Above his right shoulder is Tintoretto's depiction of the Temptation of Christ, and beside him, the chapel that holds the magnificent Crucifixion. A mirror rests on his knee – he has been examining the ceiling paintings – and beside him sit two men who look astonishingly like twins. 

http://www.fondazionevedova.org/en/node/349

They are Tintoretto himself, and Emilio Vedova, the Italian expressionist painter. I have chosen to stand, the better to hear the conversation among them, and hopeful that I may have something worthwhile to add. The four of us chat quietly. This appears to be a mutual admiration society. Respect is exchanged in every word.

Just around the corner, Velazquez once again tries to take in the magnificent Crucifixion. He is somewhat annoyed by the apparently unstoppable droning of a tour guide who addresses a small group of French tourists.

Vedova, referring to his visit to the Giardini and the Biennale:

I enjoyed the English artist's work. Jeremy Deller ... That was his name, yes? The bit about William Morris returning from the dead as a colossus, to chuck that idiotic yacht into the lagoon was very funny. And did you not find the clarity, the resolution of images in those films of his quite startling?

Tintoretto

Ah, yes. What amazing choices are now available to artists. In my day, one was a polymath, a Renaissance Man they now say, if you practiced painting, sculpture and architecture. Today, a young artist can work in all of those areas plus performance, installation, video, photography. The variety must sometimes become distracting. 

Newkirk

I enjoyed the British pavilion too, although in other instances I do sometimes have a problem appreciating all the variety when it shows up in one artist's work. Rather than trying to say SOMEthing, it seems that the artist is trying to say EVERYthing. It reminds me of some very enthusiastic but unfocussed high school students I once taught: "and this colour means love, and this shape means eternity, and this emptiness means death ... " The result just feels too broad for my taste, and perhaps unkindly? I often see it as immature. Then again, just as Leonardo dabbled so brilliantly, some artists today are able to do so successfully. But the work of the Dutch artist, Mark Manders, I loved. So clean and so powerful ... great stuff I thought. And wonderful juxtapositions of such varied sculptural materials.

Picasso
When the immediate impact of art is weak, diffuse, the artist has not succeeded in moving from the vague impulse at the start, to the specific punch at the end. There is a place for subtlety, but too much can be tedious.

Vedova
What are you saying, Pablo? Did you enjoy the Biennale, or did you not?

Picasso, raises his eyebrows, shrugs and extends a hand as if to say "Is this this really worth commenting on?"
So much energy. So much crap. Too much to wade through to find the few gems that may be hidden in the mess.

Velazquez, returning from the side chapel:
Pablo! You sound like a reactionary curmudgeon. You of all people should appreciate that these artists are searching for new ways of expressing themselves.

Picasso
There's nothing new here – at least nothing that demands my attention. Refinements, perhaps; but new? No. Film, photography, performance, collage, assemblage, painting, sculpture ... what is new? These are all disciplines whose limitations have been reached. Aside from some 'fun-house' computer-generated stuff, it makes you want to sigh, scratch your head and walk away. Where is the punch?

Spoleto and Umbria

Assisi: Basilica Di San Francesco: Cimabue, Giotto's game-changing frescoes, and others.

Spoleto's Duomo with frescoes by Lippi.

Others are in conversation as well. This in the Spoleto modern art gallery. Nice room here by Sol Lewitt.

A sacra conversazione in Montefalco.

The view from Montefalco, Balcony of Umbria.

No cameras allowed in the Uffizzi (many wonderful examples of the sacra conversazione - Piero della Francesco so great to see again) or at the Academia (the David, the unfinished slaves). The human scale of Florence is welcome after Rome's overpowering, hectic commerce.

Technical trouble.

Thick walls, stone floors ... wifi cannot penetrate. Unless I discover a fix, updates may have to wait until after Oct. 8. Loading photos is the problem. Check in again to see if I have found a solution.

Act 5

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1, on April, 10, 2013.
To access all scenes, scroll to the blog archive at the bottom of the page.

It seems ridiculous. It is ridiculous. I am sitting in bed, looking across the hall at my camera bag, my small backpack, and my suitcase, all standing in a neat row against the wall, almost ready to be lugged to the limo that will take us to the airport ... eight days from now.

I have been planning this visit to Italy for the better part of two years now. For all that time, this trip has been the carrot at the end of the stick that is daily routine. And ridiculous as it is, I started packing a few important things several days ago. Could I be a bit excited?

My partner, seems to be grateful that I have approached the adventure with such enthusiastic obsessiveness. She knows that our flights and hotels have been booked for nearly a year. As soon as the functional windows opened for other things, I booked those too. Train passes, for example, would have expired had I ordered them too early. Ditto for city passes (museums and transit) for Rome, Florence and Venice. We have tickets for the Vatican Museums, tickets for a performance in Rome of Coppelia,  tickets for a program at a small church in Florence of famous opera arias. I have reserved a rental car, I have maps printed for every conceivable permutation of our week on the road in Tuscany and Umbria. You get the idea.

And at some point, this trip (and more specifically this blog) became an integral part of the exhibition of my recent paintings that opens in March next year, at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham Ontario (Canada) and then travels to The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford BC in 2015. My interest in art as conversation has motivated my work in the studio, and has also become manifest in the form of this blog. While in Italy, I'll be seeking out examples of the Renaissance convention of the sacra conversazione. These won't be hard to find.

From previous visits, I am somewhat familiar with Florence and Tuscany, Umbria, and Venice. And although my most recent trip to Rome was in 1975, with eighteen teenage high school students and my then recently retired father in tow, I still retain a good deal of what I learned at that time, and between about 1970 and 2000 while teaching unnecessarily detailed art history lessons to thousands of (mostly) forbearing art students. The map will illustrate how much more there is to see, but this trip will focus on the areas I mentioned above.

http://www.planetware.com/map/italy-italy-republic-map-i-i37.htm

So here we are in Act 5, and for the next little while, I have decided to dispense with individual scenes in favour of posts that will, for now at least, concentrate on the reality of our upcoming adventure in Italy. Who knows though? When we do arrive in Rome, Florence and Venice perhaps the characters who enlivened the first part of this blog will reappear with more insights, or perhaps in friendly barroom brawls. I am content to let the blog lead me, and together we'll find out what happens. See you in Rome in a week or so.