Day 41 - It Isn´t Fair!!

Couple of reasons for coming to Venice - seeing the place to get a sense for how colour informs Venetian art and also specifically to see Titian´s ´Assumption of the Virgin´. I got to see the painting today in its original context in a church and it was wonderful (the painting only went back to the church in the 1980s). It is over the alter with orange light coming infrom the left through stain glass and makes the canvas actually glow.

While I was there, I tagged onto the back of a college group who had a professor giving an interesting discussion. Most of the students had eyes glazed over and bored. The teacher noticed me being all interested like and directed most of her talk at me - strange.

But just having all these great paintings in the church and being able to talk about them insitu is so much more powerful then studying them through a book and/or slides. I´ve occassionally come across these uni students doing a ´field trip´ like this and don´t think most of them realise how lucky they are (probably the worse thing I´ve seen is a kid playing a gameboy in the Colloseum) and so not getting the most out of the opportunity.

It just so isn´t fair, I should just swap them - here you go and lie on Bondi Beach and I´ll appreciate this great stuff. Try to console myself that anything that comes too easily isn´t worth it (doesn´t work)

The lecturer was giving great information but you could tell she had to dumb down the content so they could understand - nooooo! Thank goodness I have some great art history lecturers who could make a lecture about a rock seem interesting.