Mona

Mona

huile sur toile, 100×100 cm

I, whom my sixty-eight years qualify as an old painter, although I am still young in painting, invited Mona for a hike in the royal forest. She agreed on the condition that I paint her portrait. I did my best. The touch is, of course, ideal; this is not a trivial matter. But desire surrenders to it. To Beauty, everything is permitted. Even the fluorescent pink canvas (which I did calm, that’s true) of a trendy brand backpack and the red cardboard cup from a vending machine… Her gaze and her smile, that famous smile we’ve dreamed of since da Vinci, as if it were addressed to us. But if Beauty looks at us, we know it gazes until the blue where no one is left—neither you, nor me, nor Leonardo. And we enjoy glimpsing our absence in this gaze. Face or not, Beauty is the figure of our absence.