The Artists
The first poem, Titian, is set in Venice with description of the city and its gondolas, and Titian's Venus.
He lifts the felze’s blind. Her undressed hair
Tumbles in Titian waves upon her breast
His naked Venus lies, to be possessed.
Titian
In the first half of Picasso the scene is set, the context for the painting which will become Guernica. The mood changes in the middle of the sonnet, as the market turns into a charnel house, the town dying in the last lines
Market day in April. With one last breath,
The sun filters the dust of destruction.
Picasso
Turner pays homage to his imagery and use of colour, but also refers to his darker moods, leaving us to query our final image.
Reading from 'Turner'
Two more modern artists, Lichtenstein and Hopper, offer a different perspective. We admire both Lichtenstein’s comic book art and his later cubism, Hopper in his cityscape.
The next two poems can be considered as a pair, Reynolds’ Gilded Men and Lawrence’s Painted Ladies. Both offer a jaundiced view of their times and the abuse of privilege, and the poor.
The Men stare disdainfully from their frames
Their casual rape deflowers the virgin gills,
Whose slum families live in fetid rooms
Reynolds - Gilded Men
The Painted Ladies – smug and plain, they are dismissed as we are bewitched by Caro, Lady Caroline Lamb
She is sensual, sexual. Lawrence captures
Her lust on canvas, inhales her allure,
His brush strokes satiate a slut’s rapture.
Lawrence - Painted Ladies
