I am very proud of this piece. Perhaps it’s the best thing I ever painted.
This little bust is an allegory, an here it goes the explaination:
Topic is : “Allegory”. The title of the piece is “Padre di Ogni Menzogna” (Father of All Lies), a little bust from Jérémie Bonamant-Figone. Based on the concept of the “clean face of evil”, i chose a baby-like skintone with red blushes, perfect mask for lies. The face is conceptually divided in two: On one side, a cold diabolic eye and a slightly enigmatic smile and allusive expression, with ambiguity, alterity and a point of derison. The other side, still under the sing of ambiuity, is sad and moves to compassion. The eye is warm and brown, marked with a Pierrot tear tattoo.
On this side of the face, a little hiddin from the viewer, flows down the Lie, allegorised as a viscous violet fluid coming from the mouth, the place of orality, where lies are expressed the most.
Following the fluid line down the chin and the chest, you reach the plinth, where the allegory is completed placing this seemingly living statue (memory of the Veglio da Creta found in Dante’s Inferno, a living statue made of five mtals, crying the tears of human sin) in an alluded historical and geographical context : the plinth shows on his 4 sides alphabetical charachters, starting from ancient to msot modern: Cueinform, Hieroglyphic, Hebraic and Greek.
So the context is ancient and Mediterranean. The allusion is that civilization, pointed out in place and time by the cultures of it’s “classical” cradle, is corrupted ab origine by diabolical deceit.
While cuneiform is simply random, hieroglyphs are taken from the painted ceiling of the tomb of Senenmuth (the oldest star map known, with some interesting “mysteries” around it’s representation of the Orion Belt); hebraic chrachters are taken from Genesis 31:7 and read, more or less “and your father has deceived me”, while the greek part reads “pater panton pseydon”, “father of all lies”.
Last but not least, the title echoes St Augustine, itself echoing John 8, 44 : “cum loquitur mendacium, ex propriis loquitur, quia mendax est et pater eius “.
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