«Marcia – Vanity Fair»

The painting "Marcia - Vanity Fair" is intended to express that more and more people (including the masses) are getting caught up in the vortex of the constraints of the fashion and success industry more and more quickly due to fashion dictates and digital media. Beauty at all costs. Although young people are beautiful and successful in the prime of their lives, it is no longer enough to satisfy themselves and society. Often very young people spare no expense or effort and take great dangers (infections) just to be "beautiful". This supposed beauty is short-lived. What remains are the external and internal (mental) scars. These injuries, marked in the picture by surgical cut lines, are the high price that the individual, in this case a young woman with pale makeup, is willing to pay for this flawlessness. The frontal portrait is based on the self-portrait of Albrecht Dürer 1500 and on portraits of Elizabeth I of England. (Elizabeth I was also prepared to accept serious health damage caused by the mercury in the bleaching ointments for her "Holy Virgin Look") The portrait shows the young woman in a strictly symmetrical front view and in an idealization that evokes memories of early depictions of Christ and the Madonna. This increases the meaning of one's own personality. The pale, almost white complexion is reminiscent of idealized water corpses, which are an expression of immortal beauty and youth. It could be a self-portrait that was painted in front of the mirror. This is to express how self-absorbed and narcissistic the model is. People are only reflected in given social values ​​and thus become dutiful slaves of modern consumer society. The title "Marcia - Vanity Fair" is on the one hand a reference to the ancient painter Marcia, who worked for Pliny the Elder. Ä. in the 35th book of "Naturalis Historiae" was still called Iaia from Kyzikos and was named by Boccaccio between 1360 and 1362 in his book "De claris mulieribus" Marcia and on the other hand to the glossy fashion magazine "Vanity Fair". Likewise to a millieu study and an important work by the English writer William Makepeace Thackeray with the same title "Vanity Fair - a Novel without a Hero".