Better in Paint
A few months back I went to some kind of premiere for the new Turtles movie—maybe unofficial, maybe a press screening, I honestly don’t remember. Pizza and beer. Megan Fox was there, and at the time that seemed significant. I think she’s incredibly hot.
She stood on stage for two minutes, said something forgettable, and then she was gone. Stumbled off. Either drunk or bored or somewhere in between, the kind of checked-out you can see from across a room. It killed whatever I’d been feeling about the whole thing.
So I guess it makes sense that the painted version works for me. Bénédicte Lacroix, this French artist, reimagines celebrities as classical paintings on Tumblr. Megan Fox as the Girl with the Pearl Earring.
In paint, Megan Fox is still and present. Contemplative. There’s no performance, no checking out—just a face rendered with care, asked to mean something. She becomes someone I actually want to look at.
He’s done Emma Watson and Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, and they all gain something in the translation. They stop being the people you recognize from screens and become something quieter and stranger.
So yeah, the painting version works for me. Better than the real thing, which is a weird thing to discover about someone you find hot. But maybe that’s the point of the whole project—at least in paint, they get to just exist.