Being interested in painting and in particular the not abstract-expressionist or concept or graphic kind, I eagerly anticipated seeing what I heard in this exhibit by Ludovico De Luigi, an artist who claims 5 generations of Venetian painterly pedigree in his bones.
He paints Venice as a palace of the goddess Kali in ruins. A strange lament is his vision of church tower strapped onto a solitary oil rig, the rest of Venice in the abyss or littered by a 50's American coke machine or a can of baked beans, a bottle of ketchup. I was looking for harmonicas, fin tailed Cadillac's and sardine tins in a Canaletto canal. They are presented well, as if trash must, can, should be blended in with the proportions of the architecture of renaissance beauty. Its kitsch yet darkly so, a non-gothic ethereal kitsch giving those who look in on Venice an impression of an heironymous goldfish bowl of Flash Gordon lost and raped in one of the subterranean aspects of the divine comedy and meshed with the wonders of an HG Wellsian Time machine.
Although he is perhaps more famous for his large bronze Horse sculptures, one of which is in a financial square in Chicago, His history is just as intriguing. Luigi is from a long line of Venetian painters but he departs from the Venetian tradition of '"vedutisti" (view painting) landscape painters, he is adding to it a poetic element in "Svedutism" (poetic view painting). It's still particularly Venetian or as he explains "Already imaginary and not perfectly faithful to reality as is commonly believed". His search is for the "soul of Venice, today".
I asked Luigi if he had he heard of the illusive Bestegui ball (1952). He said he not only went to the famous ball hosted by "that Mexican" Charles Bestegui, he was individually invited. It was the last grand private ball or party of the 20th century- Churchill was invited, he declined -it was too decadent- but Lady Churchill went, without him. Salvador Dali was employed to design the elaborate costumes and Cecil Beaton was the only photographer allowed. It was thought to signify the end of the era of grand private parties but Luigi said he'd been to too many parties since that were bigger and better. I felt Venice, in his eyes, was like an eternity of a very slowly sinking ship with all hands loyally on deck. It may vanish but it would not be abandoned.
Upon viewing I instantly imagined and visualised the paintings in this exhibition as being of the strange modus, which is shared by the cinematic - Nosferatu a Venezia comes to mind (the 80's B movie with Klaus Kinski's as Dracula scuttling around the gulleys and canals) - Luigi's style is one of Hollywood Tintoretto. I wasn't surprised to hear that he was a friend of Fellini's - his Casanova film is very Luigi - or vice versa - when one chooses to approach the surreal time may be bent and one doesn't know if one is viewing the tip of the iceberg or just the submerged bit.
