Hot Dog Party

(oil painting by Paul Jaisini)

Reviewed by Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb

In Hot Dog Party, an image of rapid apocalypse is represented by a bacchanalia, an ultimate celebration of body and soul, when its participants seem to think that they are going to die the day after tomorrow.

As we come to the close of this tumultuous century it is clearer than ever that the human kind is in peril. Our old values seem shaky and inadequate. We try to catch the last chance of a total and final festival, as there is going to be no tomorrow. So, today should be the fiesta. And every day is like the last day. May be that is why every third American is overweight?

Jaisini's portrayal of the last bacchanalia is glorious and monumental, as a praise to the human flesh that is so eager to satisfy itself, as long as it exists. The overtone of apocalypse is given by a presence of an idol and a devil, as the silent witnesses of all orgies at all times. And, no matter for how long the Darvian evolution will go on, the human body is all the same, with its insatiable hunger, its uncertainty in the future. Perhaps we need to seek the answers from those like Jaisini, who had retreated into a private recess of fantasy and imagination, to approach a more vivid reality.

A line connects all the picture's elements into a unity without central powers. All the images are autonomous and equal. The energy is everywhere, but there behind the canvas, exists the hidden central power of the artist, creator. The work illustrates our human attachment to bodily pleasures, and the fear of physical termination. The fiesta is a way to catch a peak of eternity. This phenomenon became an attitude of the everyday life, when each of us striving to stop the time and to gratify the body by any means, at any price.

The quest for eternal enjoyment in the outside, physical world brings the emptiness in the inside world, and therefore the man's quest is never completed. It is a closed circle.

The only reality is the individual existence of the self. Jaisini uses the motif of fiesta to portray the all human problem of temptations, pleasures and miseries of the sense world. meanwhile, the voice of inner soul, or God, is the artist's power that is unseen. The driving force of our existence is this warring of the high and law that invariably goes on inside us.

Each participant of the "Hot Dog Party" is absorbed in his own realm of pleasure. The orgy is at a stage of lost control. Even Beelzebub wants to drink more and his eye is popping out for more wine. The anticipation moistens his jaws. Down under him a man puts an earthworm in his mouth. A bare thigh of a woman in the black stockings is almost of the same color as the table cloth that covers the rest of her body. Three emptied bottles stay on the table's edge. A yellow back light creates a serene, separate segment of a still life. The two turndown bottles may symbolize "vanitas" as does an overturn cup in the Holland still-life. One of those bottles is pointed towards the inside of spread legs which belong to another young woman who lies on the table and bends sensually. Next, the figure is of a ballerina. She extends her leg all the way to the turndown bottles. Her underwear shows the red marks. A female figure at the left lower side is painted in an intense color of gold, yellow ochre. She widely spreads her legs and examines herself. Next is a strange flaming creature who lies on a burning charcoal being deadly drunk and unconscious. A couple of cowboys sing while eating and drinking, as in a moment of their personal glory. Above them there is a red fat body of a person whose sex is defined by a sausage on a plate, covered by his heavy stomach. He is ready to swallow a second sausage that he observes passionately. In turn he is watched by an old goddess. In this part of the painting the color contrast is rendered by an image of ghostly, pale man who looks avariciously at a young woman who sits on the table's edge and drinks wine directly from a bottle. Her body is in purple color with red reflects. The light on her face and the highlights on her hair waves are yellow, the shadow is deep.

"Hot Dog Party" is painted in a challenging color range. It demonstrates the artist's great mastery and command over color. The red dominates the painting. It is refined and elaborated with a variety of correlating colors. The color formula of the work is fabulously laconic, but rich. Some amount of yellow light is spread around. The white table cloth bears pinkish casts and hints of surrounding color. Just enough of some blue and green to ignite the painting with a gemlike color game.


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Review of oil painting "Hot Dog Party" by Jaisini

Text Copyright © New York, 1999 by Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb

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