Cops and lovers

Today Instagram is aflood with red hearts, declarations of eternal love, schmaltzy quotes and unmissable promotions. And while swathes of people around the globe enthusiastically celebrate romance, it would appear that the origins of Valentine's Day are rooted in unspeakably gruesome rituals performed by the ancient Romans.

So here I am jumping on the bandwagon with this Banksy piece, which first appeared on a wall next to Prince of Albert pub in Brighton, the LGBTQ capital of the United Kingdom. Two policemen lock lips in a passionate embrace, and I can't help but think that this image would have been far more relevant and provocative if it had popped up somewhere in the less open-minded North East of the country. Anyway, I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about has nought to do with love (sorry) and everything to do with coppers. Last week, Cressida Dick, the former Commissioner of London's Met Police resigned over a string of scandals culminating in a serving officer murdering a young woman (see my post). To make things worse, a recent report uncovered a widespread culture of institutional racism, misogyny, bullying, corruption and sex harassment. The commissioner's position had become untenable, she simply had to go.

However, I find myself thinking that Dick, who happens to be an out gay woman, may in some way have been a victim of said culture because of her gender and, possibly, her sexual orientation. Despite her responsibilities, it's hard to see how the first female leader of the UK's largest police service could have ever succeeded in bringing real change to a male-dominated environment that is so evidently tainted with toxic masculinity.

#valentinesday #loveislove #murales #streetart #banksy #urbanart #art #artblog #beyondthecanvasblog

Banksy

Kissing Coppers, 2004

Appropriating Jacopo Pontormo is a really bad idea

"Good artists copy; great artists steal." - Apocryphal quote

The history of modern and contemporary art is littered with instances of appropriation. Picasso famously adopted cultural imagery from African art assimilating, not without controversy, tribal art aesthetics into his Cubist works. Later on, albeit in different ways, and to name just a few, Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman all purposely borrowed and incorporated elements from other visual cultures in their work.

There is however a thin line between original and transformative appropriation and lazy, formulaic appropriation. Blame it on my Italian background and my blind veneration for Renaissance art, but I get particularly nervous and unforgiving when artists ransack the work of the Old Masters in search of a quick win. Ah but it's a tribute. Ah but it's a reinterpretation. Ah but they are challenging old tropes. Ah but it's a dialogue. No.

The Carmignano Visitation, Pontormo's Mannerist masterpiece, had already been subjected to Bill Viola's excruciating pseudo-existentialist slo-mo spectacularisation when the video artist produced The Greeting in 1995. Today I ran into a much less offensive homage painted in 1985 by a minor Italian painter I had never heard of before. I liked the use of modern architecture in the background, but those grumpy looking women looked stiff like cheap department store mannequins and lacked any of the spirituality that the depiction of a visitation demands.

Pontormo, on the other hand, razzle-dazzles us with a stunning range of almost fluorescent colors and exquisite details. The swirling fabrics alone are a head-spinning symphony, the delicate embrace, the interlinked arms, the elongated hands, the knowing look between Mary and Elizabeth, the contrasting indifference of the other women, the intertwining of the figures, one of Pontormo's trademarks. It's an extraordinarily bold, powerful, imaginative and moving painting. If only they would leave it alone.

#pontormo #mannerism #appropriation #art #artblog #beyondthecanvasblog

Jacopo Pontormo

Carmignano Visitation, c. 1528-30

Francesco Giuliari

Natura morta con rivisitazione, 1986

Bill Viola

Still from The Greeting, 1985

Throwback to Rudolf Stingel at Palazzo Grassi, Venice

Current rabbit hole update: scandals and crimes in the art world, of which I am delighted to inform you there is an abundance of. One episode of Ben Lewis' superb podcast ART BUST tells the story of American art dealer turned fraudster Inigo Philbrick's spectacular fall from grace. It's a compelling listen, during which Lewis also points out the dismally shoddy due diligence and the opacity of the resale market that de facto enabled the jaw-dropping magnitude of Philbrick's scam.

While Philbrick awaits his sentence in a Brooklyn cell after admitting he did it "for the money"(duh), I am reminded of the artist whose work is at the centre of this lawsuit: Rudolf Stingel. In 2013, during the Venice Biennale, Stingel's work took over the the atrium and the upper floors of Palazzo Grassi on Venice's Canal Grande, turning it into an immersive site-specific exhibition, which perhaps is more aptly described as an environment. The entire space was covered in kilim rugs wall to wall, a clear nod I believe to Venice's ancient ties to the Ottoman world. Despite its monumentality and arresting visual impact, the atmosphere in the halls felt hushed, almost meditative.

This painting I have chosen is a hymn to appropriation and reinterpretation of visual and textural magnificence. Stingel has applied stencilled patterns made of what looks like scorched Styrofoam to the canvas, giving life to a lace-like effect that shrouds the figure underneath it - it conceals and it reveals at the same time. Before it was embraced as an independent and broader aesthetic in its own right in the XVI century, the grisaille (monochrome) technique was used for devotional art, which is why this work feels both intensely spiritual and sensual.

#rudolfstingel #palazzograssi #venice #painting #appropriation #grisaille #monochrome #contemporaryart #artblog #beyondthecanvasblog

Rudolf Stingel

Untitled, 2006

Pinault Collection