Farewell to Arms

2004

mixed technique 100x75 cm

Dedicated to Ernest Hemingway

‘That timeless classic beauty-pageant contestant, the Venus de Milo, who has held the job of greeting generations of art worshippers at the Louvre Museum altar, received in 2004 a major re-adjustment. It consists of no more than a semantic shift, or caption- just enough to tip the scales from reverence to laughter. Who, after having witnessed the act of immaculate vandalism which Lorenzo Scaretti inflicted on this unarmed, unbikini'd and defenseless divinity, will ever be able to look her in the eyes again without stifling a smile? Yet the sly artist has done nothing more than to detach the title of a well-known novel of Ernest Hemingway and apply it to the goddess: Farewell to Arms.’

Alan Jones