Ron Hutt’s paintings (recently featured in a New York Times article) are hipped-up versions of Greek red figure vases, such as the painting above in which we see Aphrodite after her rendezvous with Ares calling her husband Hephaestus on her cell phone to say she will be late getting home.
So why feature these Greek-style paintings and their classical content on eCool, a blog about Rome? First, we at the eCool compound love modern takes on mythology, so we simply can’t resist these witty remakes. More legitimately, it’s a fact that painted Greek vases were a major Greek export to the Italian peninsula. In fact, more such vases have been found on the ancient Italian peninsula than in Greece itself.
Why is this artist so interested in modernizing an ancient art form, as in the painting above in which Heracles battles helicopters which are half human and half machine and is aided by two stem cell warriors, or that below in which the goddess Demeter is depicted as a protective earth mother and is encouraging a pair of endangered polar bears as they take apart a gas guzzling Hummer while Hummingbirds lend a beak to carry off a tire?
On his website, Ron Hutt explains:
The Greek narratives have a unique ability to contain and creatively express the conflicts inherent to life and offer to anyone who takes the time to read and contemplate them the rich reward of a humanized imagination.
We like the blending of the classical world with social critique meant for our 21st-century fast-paced world. If you like it too and would like to see more, Ron Hutt’s paintings are currently part of an exhibit titled, “Wit on Wry,” at the Islip Art Museum in New York.
