Title: O: Portrait of Oscar Wilde
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 60×48
Year: 2015
The past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought to be. The future is what artists are. – Oscar Wilde
In 1882, Oscar Wilde lectured throughout the U.S. for an entire year to support a touring show he wrote starring a caricature of himself. In the process, he made of himself the first modern celebrity.
My usual altarpiece-like centering of the chakras anchors the subject and allows me to take liberties with symmetry, and to hint at 19th century Orientalism, which was being imported to the UK at the time. Oscar would have appreciated the care with which his bright and fashionable Victorian
clothing was researched, with the exception of the little clay hat that he bought when he visited Santa Fe. But he’d never admit as much. The orange and green colors reference his Irishness, the blue and red, his Englishness. The starry sky references a comment he once made, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
With our thoughts we make the world and with our love we can change the world. Oscar’s words, not mine. And not George Harrison’s either (Within You Without You), because he also plagiarized Oscar. And the Chiffons (My Sweet Lord).
Hare Krishna. Hare Rama. Rama Rama.