Bloody Hell! Toxic Power in King Charles’ Portrait of Planet … Confronting the Colonial Mindset

Bloody Hell! That was my first response when the Jonathan Yeo’s portrait of King Charles III floated into my feed. If Machiavelli and Lady Macbeth had a baby he would look something like this…

As a creator, my first thought was to the artist and his intent, especially of a commissioned work. In the ‘he said, she said’ world of reporting which tentatively threads the path of this product of two of Britain’s most acclaimed artists, the painting – not unlike the King’s depicted seeming blood-scrubbed hands – reaches through the noisy rhetoric around the office-holder, to stark and visible truths that cannot be brushed over, endowing responsibility, demanding action!

Truth in Art

Despite the relationship between artist and sitter, art reaches for authenticity, finds and defines its own truths. As creators, beyond the artistic imagination or intent, we know that our art can often land us in hot-water as it defies censors and censure, fatwa and exile, statelessness and sneering. Yeo’s painting of King Charles III, not just blends and neutralises the King’s distinctive tunic, it strips the Monarch off his benevolence to assert His Majesty, might and right. It makes him subject and subjective to history’s greater truths – the apocalyptic legacy of Empire which he inherited and claimed when he morphed into the role of Monarch.

And with that comes the colonial legacy in its destructive planetary proportions, that, try as he might to brush off glibly, hands and faced already stroked in blood that cannot be altogether scrubbed off. His/story would not be suppressed as it churns up clumps of human ugly that loom-up to consume him in a karmic conflagration of responsibility.

So here’s another installment of …with BBC Gone (read previous in this link here

Inside the Empire – Behind the Scripted Narrative

Art defies artistic intent, sitter’s expectations to define its own truths. Like the morphing butterfly, hands, face, tunic, use of colour, every image and symbol in the painting resonate beyond the attempted justifications the artist and sitter have given in explaining their intent and reverberate with karmic echoes of this toxic, noxious and nauseating legacy.

Morphing Monarch

The artist and the King might have discussed incorporation of a hint of the King’s previous role as the Prince of the Princes’ Charities who champions environmental conservation morphing into the role of Monarch, through the image of the Monarch butterfly on his shoulder. That message of heroism, too, dissolves and instead a desperate endangered Monarch butterfly seeking refuge from a planet on the verge of annihilation flutters with a furore over the shoulders of the Monarch himself engulfed in the conflagration of planetary doom.

Portrait of a Monarch

The furore and uneasy shifting at the unveiled portrait of Britain’s King Charles are perhaps not the kind of reactions the King anticipated when he commissioned artist Jonathan Yeo. Or was it?  As Yeo is the go-to artist for celebrity and public figures, the King, a painter himself, is known for his idyllic pastorals. Both their works have been known to reach into six digits on the art auction houses that have succeeded the auction blocks of slaves. Yeo’s flair for tarring and feathering public and political figures through his art is no secret. Did the King not take a cue from Yeo’s past blasts of Bush and Blair? – Read on for more on this below…

Apocalyptical Burning Bloody Planet

If the King’s expectations on commissioning and subsequent discussions with Yeo for a portrait as the softened sultry features Yeo imbued into his painting of Queen, Camilla, then His Majesty must be surely having nightmares, as much of the world who has since seen his paintings with its apocalyptically disturbing strokes that jump out beyond the canvas or the artist’s or its sitter’s intents.

Nothing short of apocalyptical, the red of a burning planet, the bloody red of a world engulfed as it currently is in numerous wars and multiple other crises, it may yet be an iconic and quintessential marker of the Anthropocene, whose ode is represented as an excerpt in Her Majesty Meets the Maharani linked here.

Glimpse inside History & Heritage of Empire

In fact the painting for me resonates through the near 500-year old manuscript of the pioneering British privateer known as Sir Walter Raleigh in his semi-fictitious Discovery of Guiana, holding up an image of his Queen Elizabeth I to the people he encountered and assumed their reaction was of admiration…

I shewed them her Majesty’s picture, which they so admired and honoured…

Sir Walter Raleigh – The Discoverie of the Large Riche and Bewtiful Empire of Guiana ….,1895

This marks the British entry and presence in the region as a colonial power, the impact of which we still are feeling today, not the least of which is in the Venezuelan threat to Guyana’s sovereignty, and new and neo mercantilist practices embedded in current day trends in trade in physical resources as with cultural resources, education, publishing, research, from which our hapless institutions are struggling to surface.

Intent vs Impulse – Art Defies The Artist

Jonathan Yeo’s Portrait of King Charles III defies and reinterprets most of what he and other artists have said about art, creation and relationship to the subject. The painting unveiled with full authority of the King, visibly mocks all the artist has reportedly said about the intention in its creation.

 Visual Distraction? Or Traction to Attract?

So I wanted to minimise the visual distractions and allow people to connect with the human being underneath

Jonathan Yeo, on the Portrait of King Charles III

While the artist might have been aiming for a muted background, so the King in all his stature could stand out, the end result of the art is a backdrop with hues that dominate and consumes the subject, shouting out apocalyptical doom in which the subject, the King is figured as dominant and sole arch-villain — well, if Machiavelli and Lady Macbeth had a baby….

Mocking Metamorphosis Monarch Morphs

Primarily a symbol of the beauty and precariousness of nature, it highlights the environmental causes the King has championed … a visual contrast to the military steeliness of the uniform and sword. In the context of art history, a butterfly often the symbol of metamorphosis and rebirth, and thus also parallels the King’s transition from Prince to monarch during the period the portrait was created

Jonathan Yeo, on the Portrait of King Charles III

The painter and the King might have envisioned a compassionate monarch sheltering the endangered butterfly through his conservation efforts. What the beholder sees is a butterfly’s desperate attempt to message the King and fleeing the flames engulfing all oblivious to the King’s steely face, steadfast gaze and blood-scrubbed hands. His Majesty’s stony posture, in contrast to the agitated Monarch butterfly, cuts an aura of indifference that absorbs rather than absolves the King’s authoritative role in the plight of planet and Empire. The Monarch butterfly hovering over the King’s shoulder, not unlike Commonwealth citizens as at the Wall of Greatness, is urgently nudging His Majesty to action for the many ills and ailments that point to physical and metaphysical planetary annihilation which the painting not just prophesies, but presents.

Toxic Noxious Blinkered Power

Instead of a Mighty and Royal figure, the portrait is one of human ugly. It depicts toxic power, position, prestige at its most macabre and nihilistic.

It mocks at Queen Camilla’s reported endorsement, “Yes, you’ve got him!” Indeed, that approving  comment attributed to the Queen resonate with a deeper foreboding horror, almost akin to the horror evoked by deeds of Lady Macbeth – that those closest to the King, in whom he seeks counsel are just as oblivious to the creeping dangers and function only as a flatterer and adoring fan. This certainly is an occupational hazard of leaders ascended or in ascension who become so enraptured with and wrapped in the praises of adoring fans who drown out the wisdom of other critics and counsel and distract from the real issues of the day.

Off With His Head, Then!

His world might be going up in flames as his painting might be pointing to and detouring into radically varied directions to his stated intent, yet, Yeo for his part, is unapologetic, as he cheekily told the BBC, ‘if this was seen as treasonous, I could literally pay for it with my head … which would be an appropriate way for a portrait painter to die — to have their head removed.”

Blast of Bush and Blair

Controversy is nothing new to Yeo’s work, nor are his political jabs. From his rebellious representation of US President George Bush through a collage of clippings from porn magazines titled Bush, after a commissioned work of the US President was cancelled, to his setting of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the mire of the messy Iraq war wearing a red poppy which one critic described as,

 ‘…a splash of colour that invigorates the painting. But it also reads symbolically – a commemoration of the dead from two world wars, but equally those who had died in the Iraq War and Blair and Bush’s nebulous War on Terror… Here in a few vivid red brushstrokes was a symbol of hope, victory, fragility, responsibly and death.’

Honesty Truth To Power in Art

And so the world sees him, far different from what he, or the Queen, or those whose visions are blinded by the garb of power, gaze on the portrait.

Art in its honesty unveils truths, often despite its creator. It removes our optical illusions of our nature, our sense of self, of place, of position, of power. It stripes naked and asks us to take a second look, challenges knowledge, authority, understanding. It breaks down barriers to truths! 

These are lesson I try to convey in my journalistic and formal and non-formal developmental teachings and creative activities for lifelong learning , from Pre-School to Policy-Making (Any ages, any interest, sector, locale, industry).

The creative force is stronger than the artist or the artistic impulse. It pulls on us with its power, leaving us powerless and sometimes floundering, left holding the form as unreal, negating the fiction, while we gaze at the creation and the creative power manifested before us.

Art is creator. Artist is medium. Art revolves on its own axis. It generates its own truths and self-truths. Now tell me, in this world of art, is there a place for AI? Can AI generate such truths and self-truths?

Vision of the Anthropocene

I shewed them her Majesty’s picture, which they so admired and honoured…

Sir Walter Raleigh – The Discoverie of the Large Riche and Bewtiful Empire of Guiana ….,1895

It is an occupational hazard that persons of position and power – princes, kings, politicians and priests – are often in danger of interpreting their world and meanings of  those serving them  through their own colour eyes, blinkered to a different reality. The thoughts of those they perceive as their subjects really resonate different tones.  

I have always seen the resonating irony in Raleigh’s self-absorbed description of his encounter with peoples of our regions, which is why his work is treated as fiction in LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction (support/sponsor/partner in its multimedia renderings/mappings/journeys and development of the LiTTscapes global editions. Make contact here!)

On reading Walter Raleigh’s Discoverie, I envision the natives chuckling behind his back at the image of the pale and frail Queen Raleigh so adored. Reading irony into such works pawned on us as authentic history in a still colonially-entrenched education system in the neo-colonial renderings of British Literature across the Commonwealth. To peel of the layers of colonial conditioning you would have to commission – request our  Teas, Tours, Talks or Tributes (ang age, locale, interest), order copies of the LiTTscapes to support these musings and sponsor the ongoing development of LiTTscapes: The global edition.

Narrative turned on its head – Common Weal of Destiny

In the painting, the King’s once-Princely passion for the environment becomes a portraiture of the human race to annihilation, even more profoundly speaking to the distortion of the development path for climate action by a skewed agenda presented through refracted lenses of the developed world, where a Commonwealth is less of wealth and more of weal for former colonies.

In this, the Monarch and his inherited Monarchy itself are represented as the leading agent of destruction unleashed by colonization. This sharpens with the artist’s poignant realistic depiction of the King’s hands and reflected in the blood-popping veins on his face so visible with realistic potency in the painting. The narrative of the Common-Wealth, through which he practices this passion, also gets turned on its head and exposed as the bear bones of fiction of one’s own making.

Much like the poppy-wearing PM Blair of another of Yeo’s portraits, it injects more into the image of those hands and face than is paint deep.

Art at its best escapes even the artist imagination when it springs from forces and sources larger than the individual.

Portrait of Artist

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter, writes British Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a work with which both King Charles III, the sitter and painter Yeo must be intimately familiar. The Portrait of King Charles III hauntingly conjures up many of Wilde’s most memorable expressive pronouncements on Life and Art, yet, more than jus portrait of artist or sitter, art here is seen to be more than the sum of both its creator or subject to something more expansive and as infinite as the creative imagination!

Of course, all this is from viewing the portrait from photographs. Opinions are likely to be radically different if standing before the real creation, for such is the nature of art and its relationship with the beholder! Open the invitations for crictal followup and revisions lol!

(For more on this, join our reading room outside the reading room, sponsor/partner Commission development of the Global Caribbean Literary Salon with live and interactive interview or request a LiTTalk LiTTea,LiTTribute, LiTTour of British, American or other literatures in English, or request one of ours LiTTscapes and experience the reality make requests, orders and contact here).

About Dr Kris Rampersad

Dr Kris Rampersad, is an independent global thought leader, multimedia content innovator, journalist and scholar who created the world’s newest creative genre, the MultiMedia MicroEpic, which adapts the long form classical epic for new short form media. It was introduced to Commonwealth Scholars’ Association, Association of Commonwealth Scholars and British Council annual forum in its biopic form at the height of the Pandemic lockdown.

Former Chair of the National Museum and Art Gallery, art and literary critic, Dr Rampersad is a UNESCO heritage facilitator devising ways for the conceptual Global South, developing world and Latin American and the Caribbean to engage with old-world institutions and instruments. The first sitting journalist/editor in the region to complete a PhD, she is a certified National Geographic Educator devising new learning models, modules and materials to bridge the divides between teaching the arts and sciences and integrating the discipline of media, culture, education and gender exemplified in Story Science.

She is a multimedia pioneer and pioneer of communications for development and regional environmental journalism. Her blog Demokrissy being named an early winner of Development Policy Blogging For New Media by development partners UNESCO/BBC/DFID and other supporters of the Communications Initiative.

She supports networks for gender and conscientious uses of technology as a Woman Techmakers’ Ambassador, Google Digital Skills Ambassador and WorldPulse Digital Ambassador and is a founding expert of the International Institute for Gastronomy, the Arts, Culture and Tourism.

She is former Vice President of the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association, President of the UNESCO Education Commission, Vice President of the UNESCO Programme and External Relations Commissions, UNESCO InterGovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage as an independent member of its Consultative Body. To support, sponsor, partner, order, book or commission works make contact through this link here or through social media channels – LinkedIn , FaceBook.

Find Out more about the MultiMedia MicroEpic here

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Her Majesty Meets the Maharani

Take a joyful journey as the King’s Mama meets Ma, the Maharani in that other place in a Commonwealth Games of Queen and Mouse … see this link here

Cultural Conservation & Surviving AI

Listen to excerpts Dr Kris Rampersad on Cultural Conservation Challenges in the Digital Age to Women TechMakers’

Sneak Peak MotherContinent – The MultiMedia Microepic in Development

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