FAMOUS PAINTINGS EXPLAINED No.2

Bill Hammond - The Fall of Icarus, 1995. Acrylic on canvas.

Tears of acrylic seep down the canvas, sliding desperately down the painting into a white abyss, eternal nothingness. The drips remind me of a desperate man clawing for purchase on a cliff face. Unsuccessfully. The painting is meant to represent man’s effect on these elegant birds’ habitats - they sit powerless in the dead trees as pollution melts their world away, a despairing view of hopelessness through watery eyes.

But that’s what Hammond wants you to think. What people don’t realise is that he’s actually one of Anna Wintour’s harshest critics. You see, Hammond has an unfounded and totally irrational hatred of her, but has disguised this for years behind the ingenious veil of worrying about climate change and all that la-di-da. All the birds are in fact sullen little Anna Wintours watching her aging face in the mirror droop down the canvas (her cheekbones). So in fact, the abyss is the irrevocable past, and the long trickles of paint are Wintour's looks cascading into it, where they will remain. Ouch. 

As in The Merchant of Venice - 'truth will out'. Other interesting revelations that have come to light this month include the news that John Flaxman's Athena in the form of Penelope’s sister tells the queen of the return of her son Telemachus (1810), contrary to its lengthy title, actually depicts the most bodacious happy-slap of antiquity - the famous 'diving bitchslap' pioneered by the Athenians in the 5th century BC (below). 

THOMAS