Some images keep coming back to you, walking around galleries is an amazing way to pass time and the more the more art you see the more you appreciate the really good stuff. One of the nicest galleries I have been to is the Norton Simon in Pasadena California, walking in past the garden of Rodin's “The Burghers of Calais” is an experience in itself. There is a room filled with Degas’ bronze dancers and other great works like Van Gogh's “The Mulberry Tree” which when viewed in person answers any questions about why his work is brilliant. I hope never to be mad enough to able to apply paint in this way though I would love to be smart enough to understand the technique. Walking down the hall past some of the Rembrandt’s and Picasso’s, Manet’s and Monet’s, the whole gallery is a fantastic living history of art, but there is one painting that keeps coming back to me.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s “The Triumph of Virtue and Nobility Over Ignorance” is so dominating, in part because of its size which at 126”x155” is massive with a big thick over the top guilt frame, but the subject matter; The Triumph of Virtue and Nobility over Ignorance, this is arrogant stuff. There is no point in going into all of the compositional niceties as they are flawless, the same goes for the draftsman ship and painting which are just breath taking. I love how the painting is created for the viewer and not for the artist, when looked at from the ground, up the twenty or so feet to the base of the frame the painting feels as if you are looking through and window into another world. The perspective is your own and there is a world beyond hidden by the frame, a perspective which is repeated throughout Tiepolo’s work. This is lofty stuff and just stinks of upper class indulgence I can’t imagine the patron as much of a laugh on a night out. Even the artist is quoted as saying;
"...Painters should aspire to succeed in great works, those in which they may be able to please noble Lords and rich men, because these make the fortune of professors; and not [to please] other people, who cannot buy Paintings of much value. Therefore the mind of the Painter should always aim at the Sublime, at the Heroic, at Perfection."
Not something you would expect to hear from a modern artist who creates representations of deeply emotive subjects and social commentary, for example Tracy Emin’s “ Everyone I have Ever Slept With”. Art from the heart, keeping it real, but it is all still for the pleasure and fortune of rich men; and while the perfection of great work and heroic subject has become kitsch, modern art is definitely not for the other people who cannot buy works of much value.
The only way to judge the importance of and artist like Tiepolo is to look at the effect their work has had on the world of art that came after them. When you are confronted with work like this, where the painting and the narrative is in your face, boldly and aggressively it becomes obvious that art is still recovering.
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