Issy Wood on Fernando Botero

Not everybody is willing to admit to loving Fernando Botero.
I have enjoyed the Colombian artist’s work for at least 2 of
the 3 decades I’ve been alive, since I saw a reproduction
of Bather (2004) on a greetings card. There is something
excusable about finding pleasure in the paintings as a
child: their comic absurdity, their seemingly shameless
bastardization of more serious modern art tropes. After all,
no weaker currency exists for a child than seriousness.

Only much later in my art education would I learn that
Botero is not only dismissed but sometimes *despised* by
those who make knowing about painting their profession.
One cannot be a fan of his oeuvre so much as an apologist
for it. There is, of course, no accounting for taste. Nobody
should ever have to defend theirs, but I almost believe I had
to achieve some level of painterly “influence” myself before
my Botero fandom could be sincerely taken out for a spin.
That this has coincided with his very recent death is one of
those strange twists of chronology that I could not control,
lending a seance quality to proceedings.

It is impossible to talk about Botero’s paintings without
talking about fatness, which is probably why nobody likes
to talk about Botero. His bodies are neither Rubenesque nor
zaftig, but something else. Since I was raised by medics,
I have often speculated on the Body Mass Indexes of the
figures he portrays, their eligibility for bariatric surgery
et cetera. Compound this with an eating disorder I have
grappled with for years, a pathological fear of flesh, of
taking up space, and Botero figures bring much of my
body dysmorphia and childish horror to life. I think of my
grandmother’s yo-yo dieting, watching her ricochet wildly
between two types of misery: a Botero and an Egon Schiele
one. Her house is where I picked up a penchant for Diet
Coke, a beverage maligned (perhaps in a similar way to
Botero’s paintings) for being a cop-out. But who wants
reality all the time?

—Issy Wood

The fifth presentation of A Lover’s Discourse featured Issy Wood in the company of Fernando Botero at the Aspen Art Museum from December 14, 2023–February 25, 2024. Read more about the exhibition here.

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