His potrait of himself is so decadently honest. If this is how he expressed his vainity, with his smug but curious expression jotted out by thousands of layers of oil strokes, it made me wonder: why the hell did he worked so hard to paint himself but did it with full-brand honesty. Why didn't he paint like other artists of his generation, whom had exeggerated their features and basked in baloney angles and shading.
Simply because he grew from inside out. More importantly, he grew. He grew smarter and more expressive when he discovered the golden reality of truth. Truth about himself. Truth about his personal canvas, where he painted himself silly until he was able to inspire others. Even though his paintings costs millions now, he never sold a painting in his lifetime.
Frida Kahlo painted her misery, she painted her pain, she painted her anguish, she painted her monobrow!
She learned that beauty lies in truth and how we make the best of it, whether it inflicts pain or joy. The important thing being, we learned from it.
Andy Warhol was critisized for being a put-on artist, a hoax but what the critics didn't realized is what hoax to them is a symbol of reality to many. The infamous designer of Campbell's Soup and Coca Cola proved the purity of his art when his 'work' reached everyone, the poor and rich, the beautiful and ugly. That is how he potrayed truth, by implying comical relief that were reached by many, making it closely relative. That is how he 'made' his designs beautiful.
And we see ourselves today. Many of us are entrapped by our delusion of beauty, delusions imposed by the plaster-friendly media; newspapers, magazines, you name it. Truth to us is embarassingly private. It is a lingering flea that has to be kept hidden in creaking crevices. We are so fascinated by our delusions that we'd simply stopped growing. A simple truth to this is our friendster profiles, yes yes, you and me (I am of no exception). Many of us learned to edit pictures to edit ourselves, to appear flawless and beautiful to standards pre-determined by 'them'. If we don't edit them, we pose in a certain angle that hides our facial feature flaws.
How does this imply our perception on beauty, growth, age and truth?
If we're so ashamed of our faces, God knows how we're ashamed of our body, family, living conditions, etc. The many facades that shaped our mentality, or so we think.
The cool thing about our brain is, really, that it is not conditioned by surrounding factors, contrary to many of your philosophical mumbo-jumbo assumptions. It is there and it is square. And it is up to us to shape it from within, for it to fully embrace its beauty. Only then will the beauty leak from our thoughts to our actions, and from there on, to others.
My take on things, as usual.
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