The One

Acrylic on Canvas

40 x 30 inches​

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The One attracts strong attachment. Its beauty is immediate and decisive. Viewers tend to single it out, to name it as the painting they want most. When a work is perceived as especially beautiful, it stops circulating neutrally. It becomes contested. Desire gathers around it and turns into claims, arguments, and attempts at possession. Beauty concentrates value, and value produces conflict. This painting has been fought over. People have tried to take it. That struggle is not external to the work. It is a consequence of how beauty operates when it is legible and rare.