WHAT the artist writes

YOUR WORLD IS ENDING, DON'T BE HORRIBLE ON YOUR WAY OUT

The image is a visual shock. You can roughly make out the composition of a women splayed into quarters. Each style is bold in its form, jostling and jarring for your visual attention. You may recognise the black and white drawn abstraction of figure as the style of Picasso, or the colourful ‘ignorant’ figures of Jean Michael Basquiat, or the roughness of paint and flesh by Francis Bacon. Simply inserted over the top is the realistic depiction of a woman. It stands out against the other three styles as the familiar ‘Nashville’ Instagram filter applied to her image, reminding us of our current time. The other three quarters however, are infamous depictions of the violence of humanity. The black and white section is taken from the Picasso painting Guernica and is a notorious painting that protests the atrocities of war. The middle section is in the style of Francis Bacon and captures his fascination with depicting the violence of life. The top quarter, the forehead, is depicted in the style of Jean Michael Basquiat, as his work examined opposing ideas such as wealth versus poverty in order to examine and provide commentary on power structures and systems of racism.

This painting talks to the violence amongst humans. The meme follows on from the ideas of ‘Black is the ultimate… Black eclipses everything…’. If we as a species understood the inevitable nothing that comes from death, rather than suffering from misinformed delusions, we would understand that this short time on the earth is all that exists. Taking this from another because we have self-justified our supremacism through religion, class and ideology seems utterly insane. Justifications of this type have never stood up against any close scrutiny. This is a plea to reason – violence is not wanted or needed.

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