The Art of Beauty?
Beauty and art have always been connected. Sometimes, by trying to reflect what is considered beauty for society and sometimes by turning ugliness into something beautiful.
Beauty can be too simple, by lacking expression, something only useful to be contemplated and then forgotten. Youth has always been related to beauty: young and perfect bodies, smooth skin, bright light in young eyes, full of hope, the charm of their naiveté…It has served as an inspiration for many great works. And…on the other hand, we have the old age.
People used to admire these geniuses who created wonderful work and then died leaving a beautiful and young corpse. But it seems that old artists despite creating real works of art –matching up to the transgressor like Kurt Cobain or Francesca Woodman-, fruit of their maturity and wisdom, don’t look so attractive.
John Coplans’ Courage
When John Coplans was 60 years old, already retired from art critics and photography, he started to take pictures of his body, a body with no fakes, showing wrinkles and sags, baldness, and varicose veins. Coplans went beyond provocation and controversy. He wanted to express his life experience, his coexistence with his shield, the part of him which years ago was the fruit of narcissism and self-indulgence.
In front of common photographers who use perfect bodies to communicate more or less deep ideas, John Coplans showed us his entrails without letting us view him as a human being. He used human bodies as a sculpture, like ancient Greek artists, but showing the opposite of beauty, and reacting against a society that only appreciates those bodies and perfect smiles suitable for commercials.
Observing the passing of time in the shocking pictures of Coplans’, in the charming former capital of the Roman Empire you can’t escape from the past. Don’t waste any time and rent a comfortable and cheap accommodation on Apartments in Rome. You can follow the marks of time on your partner’s skin or in the walls of the Colloseum.
