Went to see Titian exhibition at the National Gallery today. It's basically one room. Each painting depicts a story from Ovid. There's a lot of nudity (erotic to minds not shattered by porn), flailing red garments, dogs, stags, putti etc.
At first I walked in and felt the familiar sense of disappointment and confusion re: my lack of enthusiasm for Titian, who is seen by many as the greatest painter OAT.
But after a while I realised that the longer I looked at each painting, the more I discovered in them and the more entrancing and mysterious they appeared.
For my taste, at least, I think Titian's paintings can be very ugly at first sight. In part this is because they're 500 years old and in many the colour has faded to become somewhat sludgy. But there's also a messiness to their composition (or so it seems), packed as they are with people, animals and objects. What it's easy to see is that his use of colour and light balances everything so it doesn't look A COMPLETE mess. But still, there is a messiness to them, in my eyes.
And if you expect him to be the most beautiful painter then you might be confused and disappointed. But if you look at his paintings for subtlety, not sensation (though they have sensation, these bits sticking out a mile, e.g. Bacchus's red cloak frozen over his arching horny shoulder), if you start intently scanning his figures for their expressions and emotions, if you also remember that he is working in a symbolic/allegorical mode, not a naturalistic mode, despite the amazing palpability of some of his textures (e.g. Europa's legs, Europa's wet clothes, the wet hair of Jupiter the bull overlying the shorter fur of his shoulders). Then you'll be a titian fan, my son...
So I left well pleased that I'd got some sort of handle on why he is so worshipped.