Beautiful! Warts and All
Ah, I found the perfect word for you this
week, to follow the amusement and mystery of Halloween. Being the Scorpio I am,
I identify most with the Halloween witch. Her familiar/muse is the sinuous
black cat, and her striking, discreet beauty mark is a small, comely wart that
lies aside her nose.
Beautiful, or hag? You decide …
First
found in Roman art during the latter part of the Roman Republic, verism
goes beyond beautiful to form a more expressive realism in art; one might say,
as “beauty in the eye of the beholder.”
There
is no denying the considerable artistic talents of the Romans—and their realism
period of verism waxed and waned over the centuries. By the late 1800s,
it began to infiltrate Italy’s operatic productions
that created a genre with such masters as Pietro Mascagni and Giacomo Puccini (Madame Butterfly).
I often go to Wiki for further explanation of
a word or phrase; not as the definitive expert, but as an enhancement to my
definitions. This time, the Wiki editor(s) made a notable observation: Verism, often described as "warts and
all", shows the imperfections of the subject, such as warts, wrinkles and
furrows. It should be absolutely noted that the term veristic in no way implies
that these portraits are more "real". Rather, they too can be highly
exaggerated or idealised, but within a different visual idiom, one which
favours wrinkles, furrows, signs of age as indicators of gravity and authority.
So—applied to the 2016 presidential election, the
“art of politics” today is a particular form of verism at its best … um,
or worst.
Word Challenge: VERISM. More broadly applied—when our friends and family have warts,
and we love them anyway. Can you fit verism into your week of beautiful
writings?
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