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Lot Essay
Mural-like in its imposing size, Botero's Los amantes (The Lovers), 1969, is first and foremost a monumental exercise in the plasticity of form. The dominating female nude, as always with this artist, has ties to sensual European precedents by Titian, Rubens and other old masters that he assiduously studied in museums over the years. Ultimately, however, tactility is sacrificed to sculptural mass and in that respect this figure is more related to female figures in the frescoes of Michelangelo and the Mexican artist, Diego Rivera. Although executed in oil on canvas, the medium more resembles fresco because of the surface dryness, the expanses of pure color, and the light outline surrounding the primary forms that look like giornata. Profoundly moved by Renaissance painters such as Piero della Francesca and Uccello, Botero appears to emulate their quiet and slow-moving sense of drama. Furthermore, the abstract quality of the volumetric body seated on the rectangular bed resembles a sculpture mounted on a plinth and foreshadows Botero's eventual move into the actual carving and casting of sculpture in the 1970s.
In addition to the actual copying of famous works of art, Botero has a large repertoire of favorite subjects including bullfights, whorehouses, family portraits, religious scenes, still-lifes, musicians, dancers, etc. Los amantes is an example of his enduring interest in the theme of amorous couples engaged in a variety of intimate activities. A boudoir scene in pastel colors, one cannot help but think back to François Boucher's rococo interiors where rosy female nudes suggestively posed amidst soft clouds of silk and satin to arouse a male viewer. Upon closer inspection, however, a predictable and explicit eroticism is absent here. As a diminutive man sleeps, tucked in bed like a content child, a woman with long dark tresses removes her chemise. The garment mysteriously obscures most of her face, with the exception of an enigmatic and sweet smile. Like a contemporary Venus of Willendorf, she is all swollen torso, with her tiny breasts and an improbably-crossed right leg added on as superfluous afterthoughts. The jumps in scale (another Renaissance devise employed by Botero) alert us to possible allegorical and psychological content. Is this goddess-like creature real or an apparition of desire emanating from the dreaming man's psyche? Is this a self-portrait of the artist dreaming of his muse? Or has the presence of this literally larger-than-life archetypal mother instigated the unconscious reversion of the man into a childlike sense of peace and security?
Small details play an important role in this work as well, serving to punctuate and make light of the weightier aspects of the composition. The tiny pink roses on the curtain are echoed in her little painted red toenails. Delicate and meticulously rendered tendrils of hair dot the armpits and pubic area of this boulder-like woman. The gold necklace around her neck gives off a subtle metallic glint as we wonder what the light source actually is. The antique brass bed is as insubstantial as doll's furniture and threatens to dissolve into the golden-colored walls. A fragile rosary hangs on the bedpost, most certainly not strong enough to ward off this sensual nude that flies in the face of the prudery inherent in the Catholic pictorial conventions favored by the bourgeoisie in Latin America. In this honey-toned chamber where people and furnishings are painted in the palette of wedding cake icing, two flies hover over the bed. In spite of the fact that Botero claims that the purpose of the flies is to " create space when they fly over a flat field of color,"(1) one also suspects that they offset some of the saccharine sweetness of the picture.
The different fabrics and drapery are rife with art historical allusions that speak to a discerning audience. The homey and banal window curtain on the right is pulled back to reveal the scene as in Baroque painting--its modest and unobtrusive appearance no match for the more theatrical prototypes of crimson velvet. The white ruffles of the sheet, tucked so neatly about the sleeping man, are reminiscent of the white frilled collars of Spanish gentlemen. The scalloped edge of the pink bedspread brings to mind Aphrodite's pink shell. The dainty lace of the woman's chemise forms a halo around her symmetrical face with its beneficent expression and brings to mind colonial Virgins painted in Cuzco and other regions of the Viceroyalty of Peru.(2) Botero has often spoken of the profound influence religious art in Colombia had on him, being virtually the only art he saw as a child. These Virgins were often depicted as statues in niches, dressed in stiff embroidered splendor, and their gilt and opulent surfaces propelled an almost mystical vacillation between two and three dimensions.
In general, Botero's work is anything but naïve and can be appreciated on many levels. Conveying a love of life and an acute observation of the world around him, his oeuvre also abounds with European and Latin American art historical references. Although extremely popular around the world, his work continues to gain a greater critical understanding within the art establishment.(3) Unmistakably contemporary with a sly wit that delights, Los amantes also possesses the solemn archaic aura of a scene from Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries. This is the dual nature of Botero's vision, a vision that makes him a bridge from the past into the future.
Susan L. Aberth, Annandale-on-Hudson, 2006
(1) M. Moorman, 'A Gift for being Different,' ARTnews, February 1986, p. 75.
(2) Other Latin American influences noted in his work have been pre-Columbian pottery and 17th century Spanish colonial devotional statuary.
(3) In particular, the rotund dimensions of his figures and objects have baffled critics, who have often assigned them a purely satirical meaning. The artist has protested this reductive interpretation: "Why don't people laugh at the proportions when they see Romanesque art or pre-Columbian art? For centuries there was this kind of form. And now all of a sudden it is necessarily a satire. In the very beginning, some of my paintings were done with a satirical idea. But these were almost exclusively in the beginning, as when I did the presidential family, and the dictators. My deeper interest is in the sensual, plastic language of painting and in the expansion of form." Ingrid Sischy, 'An Interview with Fernando Botero,' Artforum, May 1985, p. 73.
In addition to the actual copying of famous works of art, Botero has a large repertoire of favorite subjects including bullfights, whorehouses, family portraits, religious scenes, still-lifes, musicians, dancers, etc. Los amantes is an example of his enduring interest in the theme of amorous couples engaged in a variety of intimate activities. A boudoir scene in pastel colors, one cannot help but think back to François Boucher's rococo interiors where rosy female nudes suggestively posed amidst soft clouds of silk and satin to arouse a male viewer. Upon closer inspection, however, a predictable and explicit eroticism is absent here. As a diminutive man sleeps, tucked in bed like a content child, a woman with long dark tresses removes her chemise. The garment mysteriously obscures most of her face, with the exception of an enigmatic and sweet smile. Like a contemporary Venus of Willendorf, she is all swollen torso, with her tiny breasts and an improbably-crossed right leg added on as superfluous afterthoughts. The jumps in scale (another Renaissance devise employed by Botero) alert us to possible allegorical and psychological content. Is this goddess-like creature real or an apparition of desire emanating from the dreaming man's psyche? Is this a self-portrait of the artist dreaming of his muse? Or has the presence of this literally larger-than-life archetypal mother instigated the unconscious reversion of the man into a childlike sense of peace and security?
Small details play an important role in this work as well, serving to punctuate and make light of the weightier aspects of the composition. The tiny pink roses on the curtain are echoed in her little painted red toenails. Delicate and meticulously rendered tendrils of hair dot the armpits and pubic area of this boulder-like woman. The gold necklace around her neck gives off a subtle metallic glint as we wonder what the light source actually is. The antique brass bed is as insubstantial as doll's furniture and threatens to dissolve into the golden-colored walls. A fragile rosary hangs on the bedpost, most certainly not strong enough to ward off this sensual nude that flies in the face of the prudery inherent in the Catholic pictorial conventions favored by the bourgeoisie in Latin America. In this honey-toned chamber where people and furnishings are painted in the palette of wedding cake icing, two flies hover over the bed. In spite of the fact that Botero claims that the purpose of the flies is to " create space when they fly over a flat field of color,"(1) one also suspects that they offset some of the saccharine sweetness of the picture.
The different fabrics and drapery are rife with art historical allusions that speak to a discerning audience. The homey and banal window curtain on the right is pulled back to reveal the scene as in Baroque painting--its modest and unobtrusive appearance no match for the more theatrical prototypes of crimson velvet. The white ruffles of the sheet, tucked so neatly about the sleeping man, are reminiscent of the white frilled collars of Spanish gentlemen. The scalloped edge of the pink bedspread brings to mind Aphrodite's pink shell. The dainty lace of the woman's chemise forms a halo around her symmetrical face with its beneficent expression and brings to mind colonial Virgins painted in Cuzco and other regions of the Viceroyalty of Peru.(2) Botero has often spoken of the profound influence religious art in Colombia had on him, being virtually the only art he saw as a child. These Virgins were often depicted as statues in niches, dressed in stiff embroidered splendor, and their gilt and opulent surfaces propelled an almost mystical vacillation between two and three dimensions.
In general, Botero's work is anything but naïve and can be appreciated on many levels. Conveying a love of life and an acute observation of the world around him, his oeuvre also abounds with European and Latin American art historical references. Although extremely popular around the world, his work continues to gain a greater critical understanding within the art establishment.(3) Unmistakably contemporary with a sly wit that delights, Los amantes also possesses the solemn archaic aura of a scene from Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries. This is the dual nature of Botero's vision, a vision that makes him a bridge from the past into the future.
Susan L. Aberth, Annandale-on-Hudson, 2006
(1) M. Moorman, 'A Gift for being Different,' ARTnews, February 1986, p. 75.
(2) Other Latin American influences noted in his work have been pre-Columbian pottery and 17th century Spanish colonial devotional statuary.
(3) In particular, the rotund dimensions of his figures and objects have baffled critics, who have often assigned them a purely satirical meaning. The artist has protested this reductive interpretation: "Why don't people laugh at the proportions when they see Romanesque art or pre-Columbian art? For centuries there was this kind of form. And now all of a sudden it is necessarily a satire. In the very beginning, some of my paintings were done with a satirical idea. But these were almost exclusively in the beginning, as when I did the presidential family, and the dictators. My deeper interest is in the sensual, plastic language of painting and in the expansion of form." Ingrid Sischy, 'An Interview with Fernando Botero,' Artforum, May 1985, p. 73.