Le Désespéré

The look of a man seeing a dead corpse. Probably someone he accidentally killed. Or perhaps the look of a man witnessing a horse giving birth. Maybe a man who found a secret alley in his basement filled with gold treasure. While all of these scenarios draw a different narration, they all come down to the same crux. The Desperate Man.

Eyes plunging, half open pink lips, pale skin rushed with blood, loosened navy blue scarf in correspondence with his black hair reflecting light from the top left. Hands pulling his hair up and a ruffled up white shirt. This painting got its name because a friend called it, "Courbet with a desperate expression."

While he has painted himself with a black-dog, why paint one with a electric expression. What was he desperate about? This is the threshold moment. He is desperate to do something, but he failed, and it is gone in this exact fraction of a second. Le Désespéré is that moment. An expression when a glass falls infront of your eyes, but you are two steps too far to reach it.

But it is not as simple as a broken cutlery. His breath is stopped. His neck bone peeping out like a pillar of a canopy. A 24 year old man, from a small town, drowned in the Romanticist works, and desperate to find his place. He is aware he is capable, but the some door has to open for him to prove. And as a desperate young man, he breaks open the wall and sets foot using this painting. The most unconventional portrait ever in landscape setting. He grabs attention with the immediacy in his expression and hooks them in by looking them straight in the eye, and suffocating them to feel like part of the crime.

This painting is a performance. The theatric expression, the cinematic lighting, elevates the drama with no objects or narrative. While this is immediate, dynamic, and urgent painting- the artist, the creator was calculative to bring the emergency. He bid on his features, he strategically branded himself, using his face, but like never before. Under X-Ray there is a hidden layer of a man and a woman sleeping in a park. He has layered panic over peace. He has also stated in one of his letters to his friend, "Through this laughing mask that you know me with, I hide the sorrow, the bitterness, and the sadness that grips the heart like a vampire from within."

Le Désespéré is a planned perturbation. It was his desperate measure. The irony is he was aware that his desperation is the path breaking art and he executed it with finesse.