Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, this world of contemporary art has forgotten how to see beyond the obvious, how to understand the value of silent contemplation. Our galleries are flooded with works pretending to grandeur by their size or their scandal, but few manage to capture the poetry of a transitory moment like Hernan Bas does.
Originating from Miami, this land of surface and artifice, Bas has developed a sensitivity that transcends the immediate and the superficial. His canvases populated by androgynous young men confront us with an existential fragility, a liminal state that the artist himself has described as “fag limbo”. This deliberately raw expression conveys this feeling of being suspended between two worlds, two identities, two states of being. But do not be mistaken: behind this apparent thematic simplicity lies a staggering literary and philosophical richness.
The decadent literature of the 19th century infiltrates every layer of paint that Bas applies to his canvases. His constant reference to authors such as Joris-Karl Huysmans and Oscar Wilde is not an intellectual affectation, but rather an organic integration of shared sensibilities. Take “The Aesthete’s Toy” (2004), this work that reinterprets “A rebours” by Huysmans by transporting its protagonist, des Esseintes, into a contemporary context. Bas deeply understands the notion developed by Huysmans that “nature has had its day” [1]. He grasps this fascinating paradox where the artificial can surpass the natural in beauty and truth. In his paintings, the constructed world – whether it be Victorian architecture, Art Deco settings, or Memphis Design environments – becomes more authentic than nature itself.
Charles Baudelaire, that other pillar of literary decadence, also resonates in Bas’s work. The French poet wrote: “What is intoxicating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing” [2]. Bas embodies this aristocratic subversion. His characters exist in a state of perpetual disdainful contemplation, a conscious refusal to fully participate in the vulgar world that surrounds them. They prefer to inhabit spaces of reverie and introspection. Is this not precisely what Baudelaire celebrated in his poetry? This ability to transform the banal into the extraordinary through the mere force of imagination and altered perception?
During a recent exhibition at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London (18 November 2022 – 21 January 2023), Bas presented his series “The Conceptualists”, where his usual protagonists become fictional conceptual artists, each absorbed in an absurd creative quest. One paints exclusively with water from Niagara Falls, another attaches fireworks to his body to test if he will fly or fall. These paintings function as biting critiques of conceptual art while celebrating its fundamental freedom. As Wilde wrote: “A serious man can be ridiculous, a ridiculous man can never be serious” [3]. Bas’s characters delightfully oscillate between these two poles.
The influence of decadent literature is not merely aesthetic in Bas; it structures his worldview. Critic Jonathan Griffin aptly observed that “Bas’s paintings are like individual chapters of bildungsromans for homosexuals” [4]. This observation highlights his ability to create works that function as narrative fragments, moments of a larger story that the viewer is invited to complete. Just like Huysmans who, in “A rebours”, created literary tableaux where the main action was observation and sensation rather than movement, Bas paints moments of pure contemplation.
Existentialist philosophy also finds a deep resonance in Bas’s work, although this influence is rarely evoked by critics. His characters perfectly embody what Sartre described as existential “nausea” – that state of acute consciousness where the individual feels strangely detached from the world around them. In “Conceptual Artist #1” (2022), the protagonist who mixes his paint exclusively with water from Niagara Falls illustrates the absurdity of the rituals we create to give meaning to our existence. Is this not exactly what Camus explored in “The Myth of Sisyphus”? This desperate attempt to find meaning in a fundamentally indifferent universe?
Bas’s paintings can be interpreted as visual meditations on Heideggerian authenticity and inauthenticity. His characters seem perpetually conscious of their own performance, of their own artificiality. As Heidegger expresses: “The authentic being of Dasein is what it can be and the way in which it is its possible” [5]. Bas’s young men exist precisely in this space of possibility, neither fully defined nor completely indeterminate.
In “The Hallucinations of Poets” (2010), a series presented at the Victoria Miro gallery, Bas stages solitary figures grappling with fantastic visions. These works evoke Sartre’s description of consciousness as negation, as the ability to extract oneself from the immediate world to imagine what is not. Sartre wrote: “Consciousness is what it is not and is not what it is” [6]. This paradoxical formulation finds its visual expression in Bas’s characters, suspended between reality and hallucination, presence and absence.
Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that our perception of the world is always embodied, filtered through our corporeal experience. He stated: “The body is our general medium for having a world” [7]. The androgynous bodies that Bas paints – neither fully masculine nor fully feminine – embody this idea of ambiguous perception, an experience of the world that refuses binary categories. His characters inhabit their bodies in a way that seems both conscious and alienated, reflecting the phenomenological tension between being a body and having a body.
Bas’s strength lies in his ability to create works that function simultaneously as existential explorations and aesthetic pleasures. He offers us paintings that are, as Kierkegaard would say, “both serious and play” [8]. This duality is at the heart of his artistic practice, transforming his paintings into spaces of philosophical contemplation without ever sacrificing their visual beauty.
In his Miami studio, contrary to what one might imagine of a chaotic creative space, Bas maintains an almost clinically organized environment. He works alone, without assistants, a rarity for an artist of his caliber. “I have never had anyone who works on my paintings or touches anything I do”, he stated in an interview. “After a while, I realized that it would take me more time to explain how to do something than to do it myself” [9].
This solitary working method profoundly influences his creative process. He often begins with in-depth research, immersing himself in books and films before touching the canvas. Unlike many contemporary artists who cultivate an image of spontaneous inspiration, Bas fully embraces the intellectual and premeditated aspect of his practice. As he explains: “I do research, which involves reading and watching a lot of films, which leads me to become obsessively interested in all new stories or tales…” [10].
It is precisely this intersection between literature and philosophy that makes Bas such a singular artist in the contemporary landscape. He creates works that are intellectually stimulating without being pretentious, aesthetically seductive without being superficial. In a world dominated by the spectacular and the instantaneous, Bas defends the power of slowness, ambiguity, and introspection.
His recent series “The Conceptualists” perfectly illustrates this approach. By creating portraits of fictional conceptual artists, each absorbed in an absurd artistic quest, Bas questions not only the limits of conceptual art but also the very nature of artistic authenticity. As Linda Yablonsky observes, these paintings are not merely satirical; they “are imaginative, stretching out on each work” [11]. In inventing these characters and their artistic projects, Bas himself becomes a kind of conceptual artist, blurring the boundary between fiction and reality.
What differentiates Bas from many contemporary figurative painters is that he creates images that resist definitive interpretation. As he explains himself: “The best paintings I have made are overgrown, and you have to sort of cut through to get to what is happening” [12]. This enigmatic quality is not a flaw but a deliberate strategy, inviting the viewer to actively engage with the work rather than passively consume it.
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: “Existence precedes essence” [13], meaning that we exist first and define our essence through our choices and actions. Bas’s characters seem frozen precisely in this existential moment, where their essence is still in formation. This is perhaps why they appear so vulnerable and indeterminate – they exist in this liminal space where identity is fluid and becoming.
Similarly, the Camusian notion of the absurd finds its expression in the bizarre scenarios that Bas constructs. In “Conceptual Artist #10” (2022), an environmentalist sand sculptor exclusively sculpts scenes of massive beaching, knowing full well that his works will be erased by the sea. Is this not the perfect embodiment of what Camus described as the joyful acceptance of the absurdity of existence? As he wrote: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” [14].
Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas argued that the encounter with the face of the Other is the foundation of ethics. In Bas’s portraits, the faces of his subjects are often turned away or partially obscured, creating a tension between presence and absence, between recognition and alienation. This ambiguity reflects the Levinasian idea that the Other is both accessible and inaccessible, comprehensible and mysterious.
Martin Heidegger spoke of art as a “setting into work of truth” [15]. Bas’s paintings realize this function by revealing truths about our contemporary condition – our alienation, our quest for authenticity, our fascination with artifice – while maintaining a fundamental ambiguity that resists interpretive closure.
In a contemporary artistic landscape dominated by political urgency and message clarity, Bas courageously defends the importance of ambiguity and complexity. His paintings are invitations to contemplation rather than declarations, questions rather than answers. It is precisely this openness that makes his work so enduring and deeply satisfying.
In an interview, when asked what attracted him to the figure of the dandy, his response was revealing: “Lately, I have thought of dandies as creatures, to some extent, like exotic birds” [16]. This comparison illuminates his fascination with these marginal figures who transform their lives into works of art, who cultivate a personal aesthetic as a form of resistance to the banality of the world.
Baudelaire wrote that “the dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror” [17]. Bas’s characters embody this uninterrupted self-consciousness, this perpetual performance of a carefully constructed identity. But unlike historical dandies, they seem aware of the artificiality of their pose, introducing an ironic dimension that is fundamentally contemporary.
Bas’s works are visual poems that celebrate indeterminacy, spaces where identity is fluid and in constant negotiation. As he explains himself: “I like the idea of a character who would be doomed, for the rest of his life, to search for something that does not exist” [18]. This quest for an inaccessible object, this pursuit of a horizon that perpetually recedes, is it not the very essence of the human condition?
Bas’s true triumph is having created a immediately recognizable visual universe without ever repeating himself. His paintings are variations on a theme, endless explorations of that liminal space where adolescence meets adulthood, where reality flirts with fantasy, where identity is always in the process of becoming. In a world obsessed with definition and categorization, his refusal of narrative closure is not only refreshing but profoundly necessary.
So the next time you find yourself in front of one of his canvases in a crowded gallery, take a moment to truly enter his world. Look beyond the seductive surface to explore the philosophical and literary depths that animate his work. For Hernan Bas is not simply a painter of pretty pictures – he is a cartographer of the ambiguous territories of contemporary existence, an explorer of the blurred frontiers between being and becoming.
And if you still do not understand, well, perhaps you are simply not snobbish enough.
- Joris-Karl Huysmans, “A rebours”, 1884, Charpentier Editeur.
- Charles Baudelaire, “Mon coeur mis a nu”, in “Oeuvres completes”, 1869, Michel Levy freres.
- Oscar Wilde, “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”, 1894, The Chameleon.
- Jonathan Griffin, in “Hernan Bas”, 2014, Rizzoli.
- Martin Heidegger, “Being and Time”, 1927, translated into French by Emmanuel Martineau, Authentica, 1985.
- Jean-Paul Sartre, “Being and Nothingness”, 1943, Gallimard.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Phenomenology of Perception”, 1945, Gallimard.
- Soren Kierkegaard, “Either/Or”, 1843, translated into French by F. and O. Prior and M. H. Guignot, Gallimard, 1943.
- Hernan Bas, interview in Apollo Magazine, 8 November 2022.
- Hernan Bas, Flash Art. 14 November 2016.
- Linda Yablonsky, in the publication by Joe Lloyd for the exhibition “The Conceptualists”, Victoria Miro Gallery, 18 November 2022 – 21 January 2023.
- Hernan Bas, interview with Sarah Margolis-Pineo, Art21 Magazine, 27 December 2011.
- Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”, 1946, Nagel.
- Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”, 1942, Gallimard.
- Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art”, in “Paths that do not lead anywhere”, 1950, translated into French by Wolfgang Brokmeier, Gallimard, 1962.
- Hernan Bas, “The Story at the Intermission”, interview with Katya Tylevich, Elephant Magazine, Spring 2014.
- Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”, 1863, in “Oeuvres completes”, Michel Levy freres.
- Hernan Bas, “A Certain Southern Gothic”, interview with Evan Pricco, Juxtapoz Magazine, April 2020.
