What does Fernando Botero's Venus mean?

Answer 1

Botero had no doubt set out to convey a single, clear "meaning" that could be summarized in a line or two and readily transferred from student to student, without intervening thought, should an assignment demand it. He probably intended the painting to mean "seize the day" or "it's important to forgive people," but he seems accidentally to have made a picture of a tubby woman sitting on a bed admiring herself in a mirror. One can only imagine Botero's embarrassment. To have drawn a picture so reprehensibly devoid of meaning is a scandal and it's a shame that institutions of higher learning insist upon showing students pictures that can't possibly teach them anything concrete. One can look forward to a day-we're getting closer and closer to it-when painters will just say what they mean, without this obfuscation, these elaborate codes, so that we may end, for once and for all, this philistine practice of looking at pictures.