Art, Put Your Eyes Back In Your Head
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Most Canadians know next to nothing of the great artists of the Renaissance and the Modern Era – with the possible exception of the guy who drew the naked women on the washroom stalls at the Louvre. This latter-day artist usually worked in ballpoint pen and often included bawdy limericks and phone numbers of girls available for a good time either for free or for a nominal sum to cover the cost of the motel or phone booth.
Why is it then the most common street urchin in European countries can readily recognize the classic redheaded beauties of Titian and the Moulin Rouge dancehall girls of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, while dedicated university art students on this side of the pond have difficulty deciding which is Butthead and which is Beavis?
It isn’t that the Ontario school system has failed us, in spite of what the loyal members of the Opposition tell you. Our appalling lack of sophistication concerning the fine arts hinges on the simple fact most paintings worth studying, particularly those of the early years, were of nude women. Unfortunately the vast majority of these masterpieces were usually in-depth studies of dropouts from the Jenny Craig program. Regardless of the girth of the models, the average teenage boy of today is not going to listen too closely to a lecture on the artist’s clever use of turpentine and oils when there are feminine accoutrements to study. He will be off somewhere in a fantasy so lewd it will require an hour under an ice-cold shower just to bring his body temperature down low enough to send him to the principal’s office.
As I recall, co-eds don’t learn much either. They spend most of the period rolling their eyes in disgust at the woo-woo-wooing of the Neanderthal with the red spiked hair and the safety pin through his eyebrow sitting beside her.
Let us take a couple of weeks to discuss the men and women whose paintings and sculptures now adorn the walls and corridors of the finer art galleries of Europe. This is by no means a complete list since my encyclopedia is a tad outdated and even Whistler’s Mother and Norman Rockwell are missing.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853- 1890)
Vincent was a Dutch postimpressionist painter. Whether he painted the post or the impressionist is not clear. Had Vince bothered to learn English we might have been able to find out from his memoirs. As it is, we might as well read the label on the side of a block of Edam cheese.
Oddly enough, Vincent did not decide to take up painting until the final ten years of his life, so there’s still hope for dolts like you. Van Gogh is best known today, not for his art, which was a little scary, but because he lopped off his own ear. Rumour has it Vince did it to impress his ladylove, who must have been a bit of a weirdo too by the sound of it. However, modern scholars now dispute the story and believe Vincent found an earring and rather than waste it, he… well, you know how Dutchmen are with a buck.
Van Gogh’s most famous painting, The Daffodils (or was it The Tulips? – they were yellow anyway) was peddled for three million dollars. On the other hand, it could have been Wordsworth’s poem, Daffodils (or Tulips) that was sold.
Regardless which one was pawned off on some sucker for three million; that’s a hell of a lot of money for a bunch of wild flowers. I think we should all get in on the scam. Imagine if we combined the works of Titian and Van Gogh. We would then have a dozen or so bare naked women cavorting through fields of wild flowers.
Now that, my friend, is what I would call art.
Despite periodic fits of insanity and a missing ear (most people who passed him on the street, assumed he was signaling a left-hand turn) Vincent Van Gogh became a famous artist. His works are on display in the washrooms of many Holiday Inns around the world, usually over the sign Please do not throw cigarette butts in the urinals.
Titian (1477 – 1576)
Perhaps the most famous painter of the 15th century was the Venetian, Titian (not his real name. He was christened Tizianio Vecellio, but you won’t remember that and even if you do everyone will think you are a pretentious ass trying to impress them with useless information which you probably are). Titian had a real hang-up for redheaded women. In fact, rumour has it the morning he died in his 99th year; he had been hanging over the balcony spying on a titian-haired beauty doing her yoga exercises in the next apartment.
A confused man, Titian was either painting religious works or kinky mythological scenes. As an example, in 1545 he painted both a portrait of Pope Paul III and the Rape of Europa. It’s not too hard to imagine which painting sold within the hour and which one is still standing in a corner of his loft covered with an oily rag and 481 years of dust. Had His holiness been redheaded, Titian, no doubt would have torn the man’s Pope robe off and a full colour rendering of his papal bum would now be hanging in the Guggenheim, or on the back wall of a bath house in downtown San Francisco.
This is fascinating stuff! We will finish this next week.
(Image Supplied)
