“The Botticelli Renaissance” exhibition review by Chetana Nagavajara

 “The Botticelli Renaissance”

Chetana Nagavajara

Just came back from the exhibition “The Botticelli Renaissance” and may have to disagree a little with the critic of the “Cultural Radio” (When are we going to have such a station in Thailand?), who was rapturous and never hesitated to award this event FIVE STARS. Well, in the first place, it was an impossible task to rely much on the originals of Botticelli, because very few museums in the world would be willing to lend the most famous works to Berlin. I am not so impertinent as to say that those originals exhibited in Berlin are not Botticelli of the first order, but their variety is limited. (The first time I set foot on the Art Institute of Chicago, I thought the Americans had followed the example of Napoleon in moving great art treasures from their homes to the capital of his Empire. The Americans at one time used their money wisely, and that was before they discovered Pattaya. Let’s face it, the great museum in Florence can barely beat Chicago in terms of Botticelli!) In the second place, the Berlin curators are bluffing us with their use of the word “Renaissance”. One usually associates the term with the revival of Antiquity by way of recreating works of value. You cannot say that what constitutes the Botticelli Renaissance at this particular exhibition consists mostly of works of great value. But it is out of fashion today to speak of values and evaluation. Not more than 5 works can really qualify as “Renaissance”. I recognized one or two Pre-Raphaelites, and the most distinguished was Ingres’ “La Source”. If they want to justify the presence of those works from the 19th century onward, the curators should find effective ways to do it. I would not object to what I call “the Loquacious Turn” here, that is to say, resorting to verbal explanations. The most daring thing would be to juxtapose the original with the recreations. The curators would not have dared to do that, because that would have been tantamount to murdering the new by using the weapons of the old. So, it’s time to stop sensationalism of all kinds, and just call an exhibition like this, “BOTTICELLI AND AFTER”.