Titian, teasing our modern age of moral certainty where metaphor is dead

Here is an interesting article by Holland Carter in the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/arts/design/titian-isabella-stewart-gardner-museum-review.html?action=click&module=Editors Picks&pgtype=Homepage

 

It is pretty self-explanatory so I will not add anything except to say that for me, Painting lives in the domain of Metaphor, and Metaphor is the driving force in Art. Where Metaphor is not present, Painting becomes mere technique, almost always exploited by Politicians (the Church of the olden days) but also now, it has been commandeered by social scientists, (of the New Age) who have hijacked Art to freely message any, and every number of issues of our contemporary life. 

I know it sounds like I am against Contemporary Art. I am not, but what I am against is the exploitation of Art (as metaphor) used to push agendas (social, political, gender, and politically correct whatever-have-you). For me, all of this today, is the same social machinery of propaganda which the Church used to hold Art in its Christian grip for hundreds of years. And yet of course, extraordinary Painting came out of it nonetheless. And certainly, it will be the case for this era too, no doubt. The question is: will we survive this current zeitgeist of moral superiority?   

If we still have a habitable earth upon which to live, thrive, and create by the year A.D. 2100, there will surely be magnificent objets d'art in this world but they may not come from the current system of the art school/gallery and corporate elite. Rather, they might just spring up like wildflowers from a chaotic and untilled underground.