Delicious Secret

#73015     29 X 42″      mmp

• Titian: “Venus with a Mirror”, 1555. National Gallery, Washington D.C.
• Paris-match: photo of Nixon and Brezhnev

Titian’s Venus again is put to service. The arrangement is similar to “Love above Confrontation”, the Picassoesque head is derived from no specific painting. Reduced and made the least significant of the figures, it still serves as a foil for Venus as it did in the other picture. But a buddy-buddy photo of the American president and the Russian premier dominates. Either one of those female heads is more beautiful than they.Before the 20th century, Europe (Britain, France, Germany – individually and collectively) was the superpower that controlled the world. Now European superpower is broken. The flags of England, strongest nation in Europe are half-mast. Two new superpowers have entered Europe from outside, an irony that Chen underscores with the backward reading sign over Nixon-Brezhnev: Entree Libre.

– Lawrance Jeppson