La Donna Vergine della Grotta Oscura

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I hate the Virgin of the Rocks. The rocks don’t look geological at all. They look like aquarium furniture, and that’s an issue I have with a lot of art.

It’s like old Star Trek episodes. You’re supposed to be on another planet, but from the geology and vegetation you can tell it’s somewhere in California. It spoils the whole alien effect for me. It’s too familiar to be alien.

I’ve been trying to get over it, trying to come to terms with the fusion of places, histories, plant species invading locations where they never could have grown, and geological eras collapsing into one another. I guess I’m just too obsessed with context—the relationships among species, landscapes, and time. I need to feel that everything depicted could plausibly live there.

To me, it’s like mixing dinosaurs and mammals together, or putting cavemen and dinosaurs in the same scene. It only bugs me because I’m constantly looking at the ecological and geological context and asking whether it makes sense.