Djelloul Marbrook

It’s tempting, and a bit facile, to think Fernando Botero, the Colombian painter, was prescient, foreseeing our transfat world of obesity in his blown-up human figures. My take is that Botero understands the nature of psychic blimps, people who take up more space than they’re entitled to.

You know the type. We elect them, marry them, flee them, cringe against the wall in their presence, make way for them on streets and in hallways. They’re the blimp gods who crowd us out and make us feel we weren’t allotted any space of our own. When they dance we fear for the building. When they picnic we fear for the earth. When they speak we fear for our pockets and our future. They may not be fat at all. They may be anorexic fashion models or overpaid athletes or gaunt preachers. But whoever they are, their ego-bloat takes up too much room.

I’ve always been blinded, in exactly the way that Botero (inset) is not, by the gorgeous self-absorption of the blimp gods. Their exhibitionism terrifies me, as if they were coiled rattlesnakes, but it amuses Botero. That’s why I always find him reassuring. When I encounter his work in museums I relax and smile, luxuries with which I find it hard to indulge myself. I feel as if Botero is my friend, counseling me that I don’t always have to paste myself to the wall in the presence of the blimp gods.

Botero understands that we’re buffeted and importuned by inflatable people. And if you give him the attention he deserves he’ll invite you to ask yourselves why you give these psychic hogs so much wallowing room. For some of us, it’s because we were raised by them. For some of us, it’s because we feed on them. But incontestably they feed on us.

Too bright, too big, too loud, too close, they represent our psychotic break in the midst of a plenty we don’t enjoy.