(PhD in Visual Culture and the Law, Currently 2nd Year Art History Degree with the Open University)
Jai Maa Kaali! Inquilaab Zindabaad! Inquilaab Sada Zindabaad!
(Hail the Dark Mother! Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!)
(All info gained and discussed here given in the hyperlink below)
Charles suggested the butterfly symbol as identification for the future.
– The butterfly stands for ‘metamorphosis’. When we are seeing the portrait of a King in the outdated, undemocratic monarchy and the reiteration of the same conservative politics, ethics and being. A first born in a patriarchal culture.
– The butterfly is supposed to be oneness with nature – ostensibly to support Charles’s nature work. Is it the red monarch butterfly? If so, the suggestion is that monarchy is natural and unquestionable. When it is a social construct and decidedly unnatural to have someone rule over you. The shared redness of the colours – the royal colour – suggests Charles’s oneness with royalty in nature.
– The butterfly’s transformation is perhaps also implicitly being linked to the transformation of society as we become one with nature. He is being idealised as a hero for the movement for environmentalism and sustainability – but do we have massive amounts of money like he has so that we can be heroes like him? No. It is a false celebration.
– The butterfly is ideology.
– And yet, the interview, Charles says the butterfly is how he will be identified by ‘children’ – the imagined viewer is the child that is gullible enough to swallow this ideology.
– The blackness in the butterfly – which stands out as a deliberate contrast to the overall scheme of red – is ironic given the accusations of racism made against the old guard in the royal family with the issue of Megan and Harry – as though he is being reconciled with blackness. Or it has chosen him and his shoulder for a perch to rest on. This seems like ideology again: a soothing fiction for the public.
– Red is warm. Suggestion that Charles is warm-hearted.
– Hands on the sword – suggestion of Charles as masculine strength and power – pretty ridiculous. Even the portrait artist has to hide it at the bottom of the portrait outside of the focus because it is preposterous to think of him like that. The sword image diminishes the touch of gentleness and warmth from the butterfly landing on his shoulder as though he is a Disney Princess at one with nature. It shows the reality of the ideology – that Charles represents the coercive force of Conservatism, Patriarchy and its rule of (unjust) ‘legitimate’ force in our society.
diary of a lone man 