Bo Lessing Artist - digital painting

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Work ID: 98-52-v01

Some critics have judged this series as among the weaker works of Bo Lessing, arguing that the naming of the characters shown appears volatile and more than a cheap joke but a serious work of art. Well, it definitely doesn't have a punch line, and if it's "only" humor than it might be seen in the tradition of the dark and silly works of "Monthy Pythons Flying Circus" - and thus can be enjoyed even by more serious high art circles.

Others consider this painting and its versions a good example of Lessing's sense of humor - and why he is often related to the great neo expressionist Martin Kippenberger who also like dark humor, provocing and even silliness.

None of the four heads shown look any familiar to us. Lessing names them to create a number of eight hilarious groups.

What could be easily misunderstood as a cheap gag conveys the prediction that in a future, where the heirs of long dead people don't have any rights to shield the famous names of the deceased from being used for any purpose there'll be a number of uses with "funny intentions" that not everyone might find that hilarious. By surrounding oneself with copyright free celebrity robots one can create a biography meme of any kind of quality - and more often than not the sophistication of such staging will be limited.

It will be chic to own robot celebs that most people haven't heard of.

Lessing is sure that even in the field of professional humor we'll see a lot of robot impersonators, and, since their use will often be a matter of fashion, there'll be ample opportunity to purchase second hand satirical Lincolns, Mozarts and Maos for very little money.

"Karl Marx" stands for the socio-romantic idea of a humankind that has overcome a vast set of genetically determined behaviors that create a economically unfair world of casts and dynasties.

In "Friedrich Engels" Lessing sees the sidekick of the Marxism show. "V. I. Lenin " has transformed the lovely, unrealistic ideas of Marx and Engels into a different form of tyranny. All three used to be depicted in the iconography of the 68 movement, to whom we owe a lot of social progress, though they worships the wrong gods.

Also a god, vastly worshipped by childish masses, is "Britney Spears", an artificial human (though not a robot), created and exploited like a circus robot by her parents. A tragic figure who has not and will never contribute anything to the advancement of human culture except maybe as an example for a victim of bad parenting and still incredibly untamed capitalism. In some of the paintings Britney is depicted as the bimbo blonde that she represents in real life; in others she more looks like a grey man, unhappy and with little personality only.

Britney spears as a human living in 2271 realistically means that she has been frozen after her demise and recently be defrosted to life. In all of Lessing's versions of this painting Britney doesn't seem to be happy. Why?

The fourth person in this series of paintings is the least famous, the fictitious "Bunifa Latifah Halifah Sharifa Jackson", an egoistic black Karen character that carried a series of extremely funny MAD TV skids. Mrs Jackson interprets everything happing around her as meant to target and harm her, and she fights against it.

Labelling Bunifa as a "human" is an act of artistic freedom. Bunifa stands for the constantly complaining egoist feeling entitled, a rare breed in the future (must have slipped psychotherapeutical healing) but not impossible.

Depending on who are the robots and who his their owner all eight versions of this work tell their own, completely different story. To cover them all would fill a book.

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"Rebellists"