Opening later this Summer at the Royal Academy there will be that hardy annual, the Summer Exhibition, followed by a David Hockney show that will help balance the books. Hockney’s latest riff is portraiture.
I went to his last (big) exhibition at the RA. Some of his stuff was right out of the top drawer but it was a huge show and some not so good. I saw a small exhibition of his portraits last year in a commercial London gallery and they were fine but I have just seen better at the RA in an exhibition that closes in a few days: In the Age of Giorgione. Let’s get one thing straight, Giorgione is not a five syllable name. It is two syllables – george-ownie; that’s why you buy the audio guide. Next, more crucially, this Giorgione show has two attributes. One, very few of the pictures are by him and even they are often “attributed”. He died, probably of the plague aged about thirty, whereas Titian lived until he was about eighty-seven, explaining the paucity of the former’s work. Even more importantly, the show is stunning because all the work was executed in the first decade of the 16th century. Well, we must take that with a pinch of salt but, nevertheless, to see a body of contemporaneous portraits, landscapes and religious pieces is quite something.
Besides the Big G, there are Bellini, Dürer and Titian. Others were less familiar (never ‘eard of ’em) but their work chosen for this show makes me think they are well up to the job. The portraits are the most interesting. There is a compelling case that Giorgione learned from his elders like Bellini but made his own improvements. To put it in a nutshell, Giorgione was technically not much better, but where he advanced portrait painting was by his portrayal of emotion. All the portraits show real people displaying visible emotion, usually wistful, melancholy. His artistic heir was Bronzino whose work combines the best of Bellini and Giorgione.
Go the to the RA for the Summer Exhibition or to see the Hockney portraits and I doubt you will see anything better than the Big G and his contemporaries did five hundred years ago.
When we next meet (tomorrow night I think) you must show me how you manage to squeeze “George-ownie” into only two syllables. Is the “nie” silent? Perhaps you could attach an audio clip.
I agree that it was a remarkable exhibition. Top notch.
You are right, it is often stretched to three syllables but in the Tuscan patois can be compressed to two. I will demonstrate tomorrow.
Tuscan patois?? Venetan possibly.