Mario Verta's Work is Beautiful

When I'm altered and ready to look at some cool images, I head over to Artbreak. Thousand of "artists" and I sometimes spend HOURS surfing and bookmarking work I like.



I've only just met the work of Mario Verta. His work includes an oil of Hitler in a red jumpsuit with serial number on his chest -- a guest of the US government at Guantanamo Bay. The number though -- one immediately ties Dachau to Guantanamo. Or at least that's how it struck me.


I gasped when I first saw the image. To me, it was Hitler as astronaut, a US icon of heroism. I looked closer. My Rorscach impression was then the Francis-Baconesque vertical color streaks behind the Hitler. Reminiscent of Bacon's nightmarish Pope, as inspired by Valazquez's 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X.

Then I absorbed/felt the ultra-saturated red of his uniform. If this were a portrait of a young girl in a dress of the same color, we would feel a warmth for the subject, but on Verta's Hitler, the red can only remind us of blood and slaughter, and so we throw up a little bit in our mouth.

Verta has also produced a metaphorical indictment of the epidemic of US violence with the painting, "Young Americans".



Because in the random world of the internet(s), there is a great possibility to encounter beauty if one knows where to look and is patient, Mario Verta' work is WHAT'S BEAUTIFUL #015.