GIRL BEFORE THE MIRROR 2022 aka "ALL BY MY SELFIE"

“The girl B4 the mirror”
Artwork & poetry by Curtis Dickman MD
U can never B ENUF…..
Rich enuf;
Thin enuf;
Beautiful enuf;
Clever enuf;
Smart enuf;
Meaningful enuf;
or just ENUF!!!!!!!!
Just B ENOUGH in R culture !!!!!
It’s ironic!
I’m just being sarcastic; or am I? Really?
I said ENOUGH!!!!!! And I really mean it?
Deception in action? WTF!?
Bware of the Twitter bird!
Bware of TicTok!!!
U never know who is listening!!!!!!
Is this just a paranoid delusion or reality?
Or is this just bad grammar and punctuation!?
Tick Tock! TicTok! Tick Tock!
Is this relevant?????
or R U F$@#ing stupid?
WTF!?
Is social media our friend?
Or R U just my Facebook friend?
Yeah! R U Kidding?
There’s no such thing as a META FRIEND!
Don’t U GET IT!??????
Is this relevant?
Or R U just not paying attention to what is really happening in OUR world ????
Perhaps you get your news solely from social media?
BTW, please stay informed….LOL
If you don’t understand what I’m talking about,
just watch the movie named “Leave the World Behind”
Ditch all social media if you know what is good 4 U!!!!
BIG brother is really a threat to us.
B -LEAVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s REEL!!!!!!!
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Commentary:

If you have not seen the movie “Leave the World Behind”, please do so. It will help you understand the relevance of my poem and painting “Girl B4 the Mirror”. This frightening movie depicts the cataclysmic destruction of American Democracy by anonymous nefarious forces using satellite and internet technologies. A similar potential threat posed by China’s oversight of TicTok is currently being addressed by the United States Congress.

I originally created this acrylic on canvas painting “Girl B4 the Mirror” in 2022 as a modern-day tribute to Pablo Picasso’s famous oil on canvas painting “Girl before a Mirror” which he created in 1932. Picasso’s painting is a portrait of his mistress and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, who is depicted standing in front of a mirror looking at her reflection.

Picasso is one of my favorite artists, employing techniques of both cubism and surrealism in many of his paintings. Circa 2016, I created a unique opticokinetic artwork entitled “Pablo estuvo aqui. Picasso was here” https://youtu.be/jeE9b30IaVc. The artwork employs two sets of images which transform with changes in the viewers perspective. One of the images is an embellished photograph of Picasso. The second image is my interpretive acrylic painting, a neon-colored version of Picasso’s “Girl before a Mirror”. I was fascinated by Picasso’s depiction of distorted reality between his muse and her image in the mirror. It was a brilliant visual metaphor of the difference in the way we see ourselves versus the way we really appear. It was symbolic of the distortion of subjective perception within the human brain, compared to objective reality.

When I painted my 2022 version of “Girl B4 the Mirror” I originally intended it as a tongue in cheek commentary on diet culture in America, as a twist on Picasso’s “Girl before a Mirror”, meaning that our distorted values about appearance are exaggerated by the broad influence of social media on the minds of individuals and on our collective consciousness.

Last week, my opinions shifted after seeing the movie “Leave the World Behind” produced by Barack and Michelle Obama and reading about the recent congressional hearings regarding TicTok. The hypothetical destruction of American Democracy which was depicted in the movie, has become a viable potential threat to America’s national security, economic and political stability.

The movie’s implications and the TicTok hearings inspired me to write this poem “Girl B4 the Mirror” and to reinterpret the context of my 2022 painting.

Curtis Dickman MD
Author, Artist & Neurosurgeon
March 15, 2024.