Lusty Look at the Art of Seduction : Exhibit: The allure of the lure is being celebrated in Rome in paintings and sculptures from the 18th Century to modern times.
Mighty Mars, helmeted for war, his hand outstretched in come-hither appeal, sweet-talks an almost persuaded Venus.
An ivory statue by Pygmalion bursts into life with russet hair and commanding gaze, reaching for the sculptor who lovingly created her.
A cowboy Elvis by Andy Warhol aims his six-shooter with smoldering appeal.
The game, as old as man and woman, is seduction. Over the centuries, it has preoccupied princes and paupers, and inspired some of history’s greatest artists. Now, the story of seduction is being graphically celebrated here in a display of 60 paintings and four sculptures from the 18th Century to modern times.
Sponsored by high-fashion designer Valentino and other Italian businesses, the exhibition is called “Seduction: From Boucher to Warhol” and continues to Feb. 14.
“Without artistic seduction there would be no creativity; seduction is my filter, it is the Third Eye. It’s the thread that ties and assembles the clothes that I create,” says the show’s host, Valentino Garavani.
The show’s message is more implicit than explicit: The array of veiled, old-fashioned erotica is refreshing anodyne to the onslaught of pornography from every Italian newsstand and television channel.
And why not? Getting there is half the fun, according to Alessandra Borghese, one of the show organizers.
“To seduce is to dream and to live, to sally forth to conquest, to flee from reality,” she said.
The show is organized as a journey from seduction to conquest, says Borghese. An initial section called “Myths” swarms with randy gods, fauns, satyrs and their ilk. Francois Boucher’s “Apollo Revealing His Divinity to the Shepherdess Isse,” painted in 1750, is a Mannerist swirl of allegory and lust.
Mars importunes Venus in Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini’s textbook work from the first half of the 18th Century, and other paintings in the section include Giovan Battista Tiepolo’s “Satyr and Cupid,” Pelagio Palagi’s depiction of the rape of Helen and Giulio Bargellini’s witty 1896 “Pygmalion,” on loan from Rome’s National Gallery of Modern Art.
The second section of the show, “Meetings,” abandons the gods for flesh and blood men and women on the threshold of deeper relationships. In Nicolas Lancret’s “Rendezvous” from around 1750, the swain is on his knees before a flustered maid on a garden bench.
Two women friends are meeting, maybe to swap some gossip, in Tamara de Lempicka’s 1928 “The Two Friends,” which is used for the exhibit’s catalogue cover. Other works in the section create a sense of delicious anticipation of meetings to come: Vittorio Matteo Corcos’ piquant 1895 “Young Lady With a Small Dog”; Klimt’s 1916 “Bust of a Woman”; Emile Bernard’s 1925 “Young Venetian Man,” and Modigliani’s 1918 “Reclining Nude.”
More people are dressed in the small third section of the exhibit, “In Society,” which runs from a sensual and crowded 18th-Century garden skirmish by Jean Honore Fragonard, to a lone woman walking her dog by Giuseppe de Nittis, to a stiff, middle-class 1936 party on an Italian beach by Giuseppe Capogrossi.
“Dreams and Stars,” the final section of the show, is a lively pastiche that opens with Canova’s marble bust of “Beatrice,” dances through frolicking 19th-Century bathers by Emile Bernard and Corcos’ enraptured young woman in “Dreams.”
Alberto Savinio lends a bright, Cubist note with the 1928 “Here Is My Dream,” and Paul Delvaux presents four women metamorphosed from tree trunks in the surreal 1937 “Break of Day” on loan from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
Ernst contributes the dream-nightmare “Dressing of the Bride,” and the puzzling, seduction-less “The Airplane Catching Garden” en route to Warhol’s larger-than-life 1962 silkscreen on aluminum of a double-image Elvis.
As a complement to the show in his palazzo , Valentino offers a photographic display of famous actresses and models, Audrey Hepburn to Iman, seductively arrayed in his clothes these last three decades. The photographers, including the likes of David Bailey, Cecil Beaton and Helmut Newton are equally famous.
“Seduction: From Boucher to Warhol,” Accademia Valentino, off the Piazza di Spagna (between McDonald’s and American Express) in central Rome until Feb. 14. The exhibition is open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays until 11 p.m. Tickets cost about $7.50. The catalogue costs about $26.