Diana and Acteon

Bet that title grabbed you! The forum has been a bit quiet this weekend, everyone been busy painting? Anyhow I decided to visit the exhibition of that name at the Compton Verney Gallery just down the road. The title comes from a story by Ovid about Acteon the deer hunter stumbling across Diana and fellow nymphs bathing in the forest. In revenge for his eyeful Diana changes him to a stag and his hounds turn on him. I think that's it; not much to it really, but it was a popular theme in classical painting. So, there was a small collection of works of that theme, including a couple of Picassos. By far the largest part of the exhibition were unrelated works whose common thread were nudes, the twentieth century contigent being, how shall we say, particularly graphic. There was a huge painting of a pair of lesbians, and also a film loop of Bulgarian peasant women dancing in the rain to an ancient ritual, flashing at the camera; the relevance of these to the exhibition theme baffled me. There were several female attendants discreetly standing around, and I felt looking at the exhibits as if an indulgent auntie was watching me viewing a porn film. There are works by several well-known artists, Rembrant, Velasquez, Schiele, Grotz, to name a few but they all seemed devalued somehow by association. I came away with a rather distasteful sensation akin to opening an art book and finding Playboy between the covers. Not shocked, just cheated and a bit grubby. I have just read the Guardian review which expains that the theme is expanded to voyeurism, extended to include the viewer, so that part worked but certainly not a pleasant sensation. So, has anyone else seen it? Was it worth the trip?