Framed Patrician
For the first six issues, since we debuted our journal in July 2016, The New Engagement has featured for its monthly online cover original photography and paintings provided by our talented and generous contributors. This month, the first of a new year, we are not just featuring our first illustration, but also one drawn by yours truly.
“Framed Patrician” is an illustration that speaks to not just the man who will become the 45th President of The United States this month but to the misguided psychology that created and enabled him. A social malady that is not new, a miasma that has plagued our species since time immemorial. Celebrity, wealth, and the allure of an aristocratic ancestry—whether real, imagined, or fabricated—have perverted what we value and know to be true, and cemented the distorted perception of nationalism, a zeal for specious upper class promise, and wanton bigotry. The patrician—actual or fantastical—succeeds in presentiment, in casting a stately and heroic patina, in glorious power, but fails in maintenance of a moral core, a righteous center, a fundamental decency. The rot is inevitable. The stink is unstoppable. The derangement is laid bare. ~ Brian Alessandro, Editor-in-Chief
“Framed Patrician”
Brian Alessandro
14 in x 18 in
Ink, colored pencil on paper
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