Minnesota graffiti artist protects Titian’s Venus from the northern cold
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The Minneapolis Institute of Arts picked Titian’s “Venus Rising from the Sea” as its outdoor poster girl for the traveling show, which opened Feb. 6 in the Twin Cities.
For those of us whose knowledge of Minnesota consists largely of what we’ve heard from Garrison Keillor, it only makes sense that at least one graffiti artist in the North Star state turns out to be … considerate.
Above is the original billboard. Click below to see what was done with a can of spray paint.
Advocates of graffiti art call its practitioners daring individualists; critics call them vandals. Witty, too, as these images of untouched and embellished billboards advertising the Minneapolis stop of the touring “Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting” exhibition attest.
A publicist for the traveling exhibition of paintings from the National Gallery of Scotland (next stop: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) gave Culture Monster the heads-up on this unauthorized adornment of Venus, following our recent report lamenting that the show won’t be coming to the West Coast.
The goddess, a native of sunny Mediterranean climes, reportedly endured two weeks of full exposure to the upper-Midwestern winter before pity was taken; the museum staff, we’re told, “is highly amused.”
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-- Mike Boehm
