Act 2, Scene 1

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

As evening ripens a soft, warm light envelopes the city. Long shadows darken the narrow streets and alleyways. The hot blood of Venice cools, and we hear only the quiet chatter of diners enjoying a glass of wine before choosing from the menus of the many restaurants whose outdoor patios look onto canals, large and small. Wandering away from San Marco, Picasso has invited Velazquez to join him for dinner at a small restaurant in the Dorsoduro. Leaving San Marco, they make their way westward.

Picasso

I'm taking you to a little place called the Enoteca Ai Artisti – appropriate for us, don't you think?

Velazquez
I am in your hands, Pablo. So many charming places from which to choose. The dining establishments I frequented are now gone, it seems. A new cafe´ has adopted the name of a rather interesting place I visited more than once during my second visit to the city. At that time, the Cafe´del Ridotto was in the Palazzo Dandolo, and hosted gamblers, lovely women, and other denizens of the night, occasionally including me, as I said. The new version looks like a respectable, upscale restaurant. Good food, I'm sure; but perhaps not quite as exciting. The Palazzo is now an expensive hotel, the Danieli.

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You know, I am quite hungry. Please be my guest for dinner this evening. I am so enjoying our conversation.

Picasso (nods, accepting the offer)
That's very good of you Diego. Thank you, I accept. Ah, here we are.

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Velazquez

Isn't that our host at the table on the left? He has certainly chosen his dinner companions well!

Act 1, Scene 10

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Titian

CAZZO! CazzINO! You little prick! I should have slit your throat when you first showed up at the studio. (arms flailing, curses, grunts and groans). Get out of the way Giorgio, I'm going to cut him a new asshole!

Giorgione (yelling)

Tiz! Tiz! Stop this – calm down. What the hell is wrong with you? (Tintoretto falls, and this seems to satisfy Tiziano, for the moment at least, as he backs away to catch his breath). Are you alright, Jacopo? No Tiz, stop your kicking. Get up off the pavement Jacopo. Everyone just calm down for a moment. What happened? Why are you two at it again?

Giorgione Barbarelli da Castelfranco

Tintoretto (breathing heavily, accepts a hand from Giorgione, dusts himself off and glares at Titian, nods in his direction)

We met for a glass of wine at Harry's, and of course dick-face here kept refilling his glass until he was completely pissed. He got louder with every swig, and finally up came all the old complaints.

Titian (looking a bit sheepish now, and perhaps a little green)

Yeah, well. You screwed me out of that job at San Rocco, you prick. Stupido! CAZZO!

Tiziano Vecellio

Tintoretto

You know damned well that's not what happened. Your proposal was on the table for four years – four years! – and nothing came of it. Sure, I out-foxed Veronese and the others, but that's no skin off your nose. Giorgio – tell him.

Tintoretto (Jacopo Comin/Robusti)

Giorgione 

Tiz, you're drunk. Oh jeez, don't puke on my shoes. Come on, let's find a place to sit down. Jacopo is right, Tiz. What's gotten into you? And put that damned knife away before the police or the Carabinieri are on us. Here, come around the corner. We'll go to the canal ... you've always enjoyed the walking along Schiavoni. The gondole actually are quite beautiful in this light, but we're going east, and nowhere near Harry's this time. Come along, the air freshens nicely at this time of day – you'll feel better. Jacopo, give us a hand. (... and they stroll away toward the canal, Titian's arms flung over the shoulders of the friends on either side, completing the classic image of pals indulging a drunken comrade)

Act 1, Scene 9

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Shuebrook

And would you say that this particular concern also explains your distortion of shapes like bowls and vases, and even of figures and faces? Where did you find the courage to break so decisively from the observable appearance of things?

Cezanne
Take a look one day at El Greco's Opening of the Fifth Seal, and you may want to reconsider the idea that it was I who had this courage. Oh, I know that what I did was quite different, but one mustn't claim more than his due. I find it so interesting that a painter such as yourself, whose work is so nearly divorced from the things we actually see – except perhaps as a point of departure – that you speak of my efforts as courageous, even today. And your work, from my point of view, is a very compelling balancing act: power and peace, order and disorder; it can appear to be brutal and tender at the same time. I like it very much. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the multitude of interpretive approaches that artists have invented, once it became acceptable to diverge from what we had always thought of as the ultimate truth, the ascendancy of Renaissance window perspective. Courageous? Yes, perhaps. Certainly the critics were not kind to me in general. I think perhaps that these people who write about art have learned something since the early days, no?

Shuebrook
Well, you may be right about some. It's true that most of those who write about art are less likely to denigrate something simply because it seems new, or doesn't fit easily into any identifiable tradition. A few are exceptionally good – those who truly know the difference between a great work of art and a near miss. I enjoy reading Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker Magazine, and some Canadian friends write very well.

Cezanne
Wait! Look over there, directly across the piazza. What is that commotion? Do you hear the shouting? Something is happening at the foot of the Campanile.

http://www.bigfoto.com/europe/italy/venice/

... standing now, and motioning for Shuebrook to follow him toward the commotion.
Three men. Two seem intent on killing each other while the third is trying to keep them apart. I think that is Titian brandishing a knife, isn't it?

Shuebrook
You're right! Oh dear, this doesn't look good. Who are the others? Oh, I recognize Tintoretto, but ...

Cezanne, almost gleefully
The referee is Giorgione! Eternally young and strong – what a terrible tragedy to have lost him so early in life. Come, I love a good argument – all the mores if it comes to blows! Look – I think Titian is bleeding from the nose.

Shuebrook and Cezanne detach themselves from the crowd that has gathered, and continue their conversation as they enter the narrow street on the north side of the basilica and disappear from view.

Act 1, Scene 8

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Cezanne

Well, for one thing, you have to consider the events of the time. Photography had become fairly commonplace, and photographers had begun their own experiments. They were certainly playing with new ideas of perception. Then there was electric lighting. Can you imagine how the brilliance of electric street lamps compared with the gas lamps we had grown up with? Suddenly there were harsh shadows and defined edges everywhere. You could not help looking at a carriage, for example, differently. Motion pictures, and stereopticons ... more and more change in the ways we saw the world. Do you remember playing with your grandmother's stereopticon? These little devices were fascinating ... still are, I think.

source: http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/category/union-square/

So, one didn't have to look very hard to find "new ways of seeing reality." To me, it seemed at first that these were all 'rule-breaking' when it came to perceiving the physical world around us. But then I thought, why not? We may not have been accustomed to these things, but they were here to stay. So, I began to wonder, if this, then why not that? If we can see a three-dimensional representation through the stereopticon, a revolutionary change in the way we saw things, then who's to say that objects in the world might not be analyzed and observed in still other ways?

And of course we cannot ignore the work of Edouard Manet ... a true genius. After Velazquez, we knew that we could take the viewer just slightly beyond the picture plane, into shallow space, and then beyond that into deeper levels within an illusion of three dimensions; and that we could then bounce that same viewer like a tennis ball off the deepest walls in the painting’s space and back to smash through the picture plane again and into the space in which he or she actually stands. And after Manet, we knew that we could also affirm the integrity of flatness. I gradually became more and more fascinated with pondering these various "planes" rather than concentrating on pictorial effects – atmosphere and so on, things that seemed more important to some of my Impressionist friends. But Monet's brush! Marvellous the shapes he could create in his brush strokes. In my own work, each brush stroke became a plane to manipulate. I suppose some would argue that my obsession with this sort of thing relegated other concerns, like colour, to lesser positions of importance; and while one cannot dismiss the power of colour to advance and recede, I do see evidence in my work for that point of view.