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From: <mrspraycan.an@edtec.com>
Newsgroups: alt.torture,alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Subject: Review: Tiepolo, by MrSpraycan



	I know that all of the readers of (alt.*) newsgroups are highly
cultured artlovers. I mean, just look at the huge amounts of fine Asian
illustrations they have attracted, from generous-minded young ladies in
what used to be called the Far East, until it came nearer. The Ming
emperors would have been jealous.

	For those with more mainstream tastes, may I recommend...
	Usual stuff: Copyright (c) 1997 Baton Rouge Thoughtscapes and its
author, MrSpraycan, who chooses to remain 'anon.'


MrSpraycan Review: Tiepolo At The Met

	If you should get a chance to visit, the Tiepolo exhibit currently
showing at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fifth Ave & 82nd St,
$8,closed Mondays, through April 27) is very interesting. If you won't have
time or are too far away, try to get your local library to buy the
associated book! [* details below]

	Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) was a contemporary of Handel, Bach
and other Baroque musicians. This era, to me, was the best in every sphere
of art.
 Many of his works are huge ceiling paintings, multiple sets of giant
paintings for ducal palaces in Venice, Madrid, Wurzburg. He worked in
Italy, Germany, Russia and Spain. His technique is excellent, and he
painted both religious and secular scenes, with a special twist of humor. A
painter who 'got it' about perspective and composition.

	Oh, and he liked women with no clothes on.

	He was also very 'into' myths (pagan and Christian) and had a good
eye for making scenes of unpleasantness come alive.

	Particularly wonderful at this show:

	i. His neurotic, tortured looking female saints (Catherine of
Siena, with a huge, vicious-looking crown of thorn branches; Sta. Lucia, at
her last communion). He has them with ashen complexions, tearful eyes, and
they really look at though they're suffering. In a large painting of Lucia,
she's just miserable; in a study for it, also on show, she has a huge
dagger thrust through her neck. A study of Catherine features her with what
seems a ten-pound thorn branch crown. You can almost feel it.

	ii. His 'peeking' boys (eg, there is one quite clearly holding his
cock under his cloak in excitement with both hands during a 'Flagellation
of Jesus' scene)

	iii. A fat, masturbating naked nymph in the foreground of 'Diana
and Actaeon.' The women in this small painting are particularly funky, and
cool in a baroque sense. It's amusing to watch the expressions on the faces
of malnourished stick-figure women at the show, realizing that their
scrawny looks are just another fashion foisted on them by men who prefer
boys. Or maybe they don't get it, poor things.
	With Tiepolo, it's all in the set-up. His 'Europa and The Bull,'
from the same series, is another knockout. There's a rather insipid,
nervous looking woman (the rather prongable Cecilia Guardi, also Mrs. T, as
it happens), half undressed, sitting on the back of a huge white bull
(Zeus, in metamorphosis). An unsubtle approach would have her being pronged
by this big slab of beef, but the whole ambience is "guess what happens
next? We know, she doesn't." And in the background, there's Cupid, pissing
on Zeus's "arrows of love" (real arrows, not his dong) to cool them down,
his tiny little pee-pee whizzing away and smiles all round...It's very
1740s, very Italian, wonderfully vulgar.

	iv. Lots of women in later paintings (mostly young, some on the
spammy end of the weight spectrum) with amazingly well-rendered
freshly-fucked, or sloppy drunk, looks. They really seem to be having a
fine day, hanging out with pot-bellied grizzled old geezers epitomizing
'time' or suchlike. I think Mr.T was telling us something about himself
here.
	She's scarcely a favorite of mine, but 'Venice' in an allegorical
picture of her being given gifts by Neptune, is without a doubt, Ms. Glenn
Close in an earlier incarnation.

	v. "Susanna And The Elders." Not PC. A rape or coercion scene. But
Susanna is stunning, dressed in about a snatch-covering's worth of sheet,
being haggled with by two randy old goats. She has a very lickable look to
her.

	vi. Perhaps the most startling: Sta. Agatha, ashen, hysterical,
wrapped in a bloody sheet, praying. Her severed breasts are being presented
to her on a platter, nipples upward, like an entree. The thuggish torturers
and the onlookers are quite unmoved by her plight. To her right, a scowling
mustachioed gothic thug is gesturing with an unmistakable "Now, drag her
over here, and I'll cut off her . . ."
	It's interesting to watch people's reactions throughout the
exhibit. But the Sta. Agatha in particular sends female visitors into
instant shock, and tongue-tied incoherence! It takes a second or two before
most people notice what's being held up on the platter. (Is that ...? Looks
like? Surely not!? Oooh!!!) I watched several women turn deathly white,
walk away, come back, shake their heads, mill around, check the description
on the wall, leave, sneak back again, and again ... My guess is, how they
react depends on how recently they've been scared by the witchdoctors, and
the mammogram industry fraudsters.

	All in all, I bet the exhibit prompts a lot of hot whispering in
bedrooms. Did in mine! I love the Met. You can't beat it for a dozen
reasons, mostly genuine and cultural.

	But the dirty-minded will appreciate that it is the #1 place in the
world capital for people-watching, if what you like to watch is arty young
women, students, beautiful NY socialites, cool European tourists,
hot-looking 'Asian babes,' all reacting unguardedly to nude pictures and
sculpture, giggling and whispering among themselves. Oh for a better grasp
of languages and a sonic enhancer!
	But to watch is good enough.

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