Venice without James Bond

Cultural discussions outside the academy are so polarized, so simplified and reduced, that there is hardly any position to take that does not react to the NY Times. And then once you leave the scholarly world, the pull of Hollywood seems irresistible.

So the laudatory review in the Times of a new exhibit of Venetian art makes the sixteenth-century seem like a gunfight down at the Grand Canal. Admittedly the curators at the Museum of Fine Arts set the tone with their title, "Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice," but the Times review lays down the narrative as a set of dueling threesomes.

Art history is once again a struggle of gigantic egos and skillful hands, first Titian masters oil painting, allowing Venice to muscle in on the game that Florence and Rome had mastered, as if painting where a contest between rival football teams. Then Tintoretto arrives, and immediately the two greats maneuver around each other, emulating and mocking each other. The wrestling match gets interesting—where is Roland Barthes when you need him—with the arrival of the new kid in town, Veronese. Rich patrons are put all aflutter by his courtly manners, the saloon girls swoon for the young dandy with the quick draw. Have we not seen this movie before?

The Times and the museum, presumably as well, cannot think outside the splashing narrative forms of big screen movies. The complexity of great painting is reduced to the nuance of a tabloid headline. It really does not have to be this way. Plenty of foreign papers give slow, thoughtful art reviews for readers who have heard of Venice before. American papers give in all too quickly to the demand to excite the undergraduate masses.