Burlesqued CMYK

'…the poet who surpasses the painter in praising onions, can add a zero to my nine.'

(Bronzino. La cipolla)

Developing my transformation of Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly & Time I researched the painter's other creative love – Burlesque poetry. Known for its obscurity – a highly coded lexicon and reference to cultural ideas and practices inaccessible to readers today – Burlesque poetry applied erotic significance to numbers due to the resemblence of their shapes. In the quote above, Bronzino is not suggesting that such poet is 10 times greater than said painter but utilising the roundness of the 0 and the phallic 9 to convey a much more controversial statement.

I applied this reference to my original CMYK translation with the intention of transforming more than just the aesthetics of the piece – it seemed ignorant to leave behind the complex undertones of the artwork.