Related WorksNo related works found. |
| WorkSchool of Veronese
| Image Notes
Alternate Title: High School (Artist's original title). Reference Veronese (Paolo Caliari, b. Verona 1528-30 d. Venice 1588). The Triumph of Venice 1584, The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine c. 1575, and Juno Lavishing Her Treasures on Venice 1553-54. | Artist's Notes
It may have been the dog standing at the bottom of the composition in Veronese's Triumph of Venice that led me to choose this painting as the source for my School of Veronese. Seeing the dog standing there, the viewer's eye is pulled up into the heavens with a rush such that you realize with a shock that you are actually looking up into the (cloud-covered) underside of the arch. This is like the experience of Caravaggio's Conversion of Saint Paul, a painting in which the entire action takes place under the belly of a horse. Veronese's Triumph of Venice is a painting for a ceiling, made to be looked at from below with the head tilted back. Although my painting could be placed overhead to be seen from below, it is intended for hanging on a wall. Its forced perspective is a means of lifting my schoolroom scene high up into the heavens for all the crowd of people below to see. The figures seated at and lying on the school desks float by on a cloud, weightlessly. Everyone looking up from below is aware of this weightlessness. The green chalk board is suspended from the hands of an angel. A nude woman with her back to us and a man in yellow and red have their eyes turned to the green chalkboard, the site of instruction in a schoolroom, the site perhaps of learning and knowledge. Veronese celebrates the Triumph of Venice. In my painting the apotheosis of Venice becomes an apotheosis of the schoolroom. (George Deem, New York, June 25th 1999).
| ExhibitionsEvansville Museum of Arts and Science, Evansville, Indiana The Branson School, Ross, California
Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana |
Works
| WorkSchool of Veronese
| Image Notes| Artist's Notes| Exhibitions |
