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Botticelli Reimagined review – Venus in the gutter, more beautiful than ever
Victoria & Albert Museum, London By submerging Botticelli and his Venus in the trashy pool of pop and tourist culture they have inspired, this landmark show elevates them both A dolce and Gabbana dress covered with prints of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, a clip of Uma Thurman emerging from a shell in The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, graffiti art, Bulgari, a golden Italian racing car wheel that quotes a Botticelli brooch. I have wandered into some wonderland suspended between beauty and kitsch, where the Renaissance has morphed into trashy pop culture. One version of The Birth of Venus, by Vik Muniz, is literally made of trash, an assemblage of junk…
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Botticelli’s Primavera: The Enigma of a Masterpiece
Primavera is one of Botticelli’s most outstanding works. But when trying to explain the enigma of the scene, the interpretations become astoundingly foggy. It is this very confusion that leaves us at complete liberty to interpret it ourselves, if very vaguely, which perhaps suits Botticelli’s mysterious masterpiece better than anything else. We see a sacred lemon forest, a dark cluster of trees laden with golden fruits, pierced by the whiteness of a pale sky. Eight figures rise at the forest’s edge, on a multicoloured flowery meadow. They seem more like fleeting visions of a dream than actual people. These eight figures are set up in five different scenes and it…






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