Omar GallianiThis Italian painter's first show in the U.S. brings us an up-to-date reinterpretation of the Renaissance. The Canvases are very large, the subjects allegorical, the figures heroic, and the nude bodies as succulent as if they just transferred themselves from a Michelangelo or Titian. Flames and erupting volcanoes appear in quite a few and the sky is choked with the terror. Scenes and portraits are drawn from or suggested by mythology and legend. The style is a blend of classical figure, the exotic fever of Delacroix, and the tack of a Woolworth velvet tapestry. In This Is Your Fire (1985), a bound Prometheus is about to have his liver gorged by the hovering eagle whose wing span envelopes the body. An angle figure looms in the thick smoke erupting from a fiery volcano in the background whose burning, terrifying lava pours down the side. Flames are just beyond Prometheus' shackled wrists. In this painting, as well as in all the others, the nude figure is painted very well. Taut muscles and velvety smooth skin are rendered skillfully as if the result of much anatomy class. Touches of white highlight the softness of the flesh as the light caresses it. But these figures are contrasted against backgrounds that are much less delicately handled. The contrast is so strong because the figures are done so carefully and the rest of the painting is just quickly filled in obligatorily. Obviously, the figures are what is of interest to the painter but their integration into a scene is practically negligible so the works appear to be studies, sketches that can be solidified only with a more careful treatment of the settings. This neo-classicism also takes the huge risk of its figures being lifted out of Renaissance paintings and being placed in new surroundings. We can admire the skill evident here from studying the figures of the old masters but it's flirting with danger as we retain too much fondness for the old settings of architectural symmetry that perfectly centralized the composition and were so interdependent with the figures. The joke of these new "anacronisti" painters caves in on itself as soon as you look at, say Raphael's The School of Athens and recall that anything less than that ideal is less. It is, however, a treat to see the highly crafted draughtsmanship of classicism (something we can hardly expect anymore) so I, for one, will keep an eye on the development of this very young painter (31) to see how he resolves this synthesis. |