Titian and the Photo World Press

The last, incomplete work of Titian hangs in the walls of la Galleria dell'Accademia in Venice, in a relatively narrow corridor that makes it more confrontational, more direct if you will. The bold brushstrokes that were not meant to be that near to us.
The loneliness of the Pieta. The incomplete, interrupted condition of the painting is while not intentional in this case, very near to the bold brushstroke style of the late Titian. Titian is that aspect has more proximity to Tintoretto than to Veronese.
The beauty of the colours in the Venetian paintings of this trio is really musical.
 The truth is, the image, the first time I saw it in the last page of a book about Titian, wasn’t much of a thrill; the composition, the proportion of the portal to the figures, the movement of the latter, all of this when compared to other works of the artist.
Along the years, while my appreciation for work was growing conforming I was learning more and more about his work, the image really never caught on in my preferences.
Maybe I was looking for beauty, a classical beauty. And none of that is something you will find in this work, disordered by the very force of its expression.
It has modernity in its rawness, in its concealed anti-academicism, which let you remember the most desolate scenes that our contemporary reality can offer us in the photographic war journalism. In the same sense, photo war journalism is a mixed bag when appreciated. What do we appreciate? The scene? The beauty? The risk? The importance?. Photo war journalism is by those reasons a very complicated object of appreciation, as the polemic created by the award given to the pictures of the murder of the Russian ambassador in Turkey some years ago proves.
The power of the shock, the old romantic notion of the sublime are there, leaving to the pass of time the efflorescence of the contemplative, the reflection, and maybe, who knows, the transcendence. But still. A man was murdered.
The immediacy of the image left nothing to elaboration but the risky seconds the photographer had to take the images. For sure, the eye is not an impartial observer, framing the moment subjectively. Yes, but still. Actually, both artists were part of a system of image creation.
Titian feeding the palaces of the rich and powerful, Burhan Ozbilisi part of the news coverage system that needs to be fed 24 hours, 7 days with images. In the margin of action, they have is where they find the space to declare. Something, anything.
A little space indeed. What will be the image of system creation in the future is anyone's guess. But we know that the images created will be subjected to the perennial question: What is the very essence of art?. And maybe, maybe not that far of what were said of Velasquez portrait of Juan de Pareja- I am here paraphrasing it-something along the lines: everything else was art, but this, this was life”.
Death in one image, and the sorrow over the death in another. And in that painting, certainly, humankind is dying in the arms of Saint Mary.

The fact that Titian’s is an incomplete work, just makes it work more alive, like the sculptures of Michelangelo, the colossal contemporary of the Venetian master. The lady with the torch, the complete silence of the scene. This is desolation. This is art.