I remember Shep and I lying on our backs on the floor of the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, staring up at a large Tiepolo ceiling in cotton candy pink and baby blue. That work, which was utterly strange to me at the time, completely outside of my references, must have had a strong effect, because so many of my watercolors today are built around red and blue. Not to mention the pink grounds of the first two shaped canvases.
Giam Battista Tiepolo, Allegoria Nuziale 1757
The following quote from Joseph Conrad might give another perspective on color in Venetian aristocratic decorative art:
“Only the parasites seemed to live there in a sinuous rush upwards into the air and sunshine, feeding on the dead and the dying alike, and crowning their victims with pink and blue flowers that gleamed amongst the boughs, incongruous and cruel, like a strident and mocking note in the solemn harmony of the doomed trees.”
That might be a good example of bad art history, the kind of thing that suppresses the strangeness of the work with a social interpretation. And no doubt Tiepolo can be strange.
