Brunel Monster
Quote from CohentheWriter on 20. October 2022, 22:59Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5&token=22772&page=5
Source Link: https://rarible.com/token/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5:22772?tab=overview
Date Minted: September 22, 2020
Artist Description: This image depicts the monster Jean Luc Brunel when he trafficked 3 French girls who were 12 years old to Epstein. This image is 4400 × 2926. Painted using Gimp and collage elements added.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
TW: sexual assault, sex trafficking
Stellabelle is a brutal artist. Brutal in every way. She does not hold back in her pieces. When she takes aim —at industrialists, at capitalists, at heathens and fiends— she does so with abject fire and with a take-no-prisoners attitude. We can see it time after time in her series “CryptoStellas,” where, when she’s not deifying in clever ways the crypto art world’s longest-tenured and most venerated minds, she is attacking and deconstructing those who would come into the space (like Guy Oseary or Elon Musk) and exploit it for personal gain. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to Stellabelle rant in Twitter Spaces about the evils she sees taking over the crypto, NFT, and crypto art worlds, and she is just as unapologetic in tact and verbiage as she is in artistry.
Brunel Monster takes aim at a totally different, and much more serious, kind of evil. Jean-Luc Brunel has faced allegations of sexual assault throughout three separate decades, a man accused of using his position as a model scout to exploit, assault, and ultimately traffic underage girls to the devil incarnate himself, Jeffrey Epstein. Both fiendish characters are expressly codified here, with Stellabelle giving absolutely no fucks about painting them out to be the cretins they are. Brunel Monster is a deeply upsetting and startling piece. The artistry is exquisite, but it’s almost besides the point when we are asked to confront the actions and victims of the two men mentioned. This is bold and powerful protest art of a kind, and is an incredible distillation of Stellabelle’s values, her style, and her spirit. It’s also a tough piece to look at, if we’re being honest, especially so if we’re aware of the grand breadth of these men’s crimes. Nevertheless, we’re here to confront the art. And that means confronting truly black souls. It is Stellabelle’s well-insinuated goal that we should not shy away from the truth. This is the world as Stellabelle sees it, but she communicates it with aplomb, with courage, and with all her rage on display.
There are two devils in Brunel Monster, both of different styles. The first to catch my eye is Jean-Luc Brunel himself, drawn in the style of a Judeo-Christian devil, all goat fur and cloven hooves and possessed of two huge red horns. And then his face: Dark, suggestive, lecherous, downright repulsive. He straddles a long red-white-and-blue phallic shape that extends out from the right side of the screen, the colors implicating the French flag. The other devil is more abstract, a snake made of liquid sludge that emerges from a ceiling grate (a Jewish star surrounds the grate, a detail I find unnecessary and somewhat strange to include, if we’re being honest. What does Epstein’s Judaism have to do with anything? Nevertheless…) twisting and coiling through the air until it manifests in a hand-drawn facsimile of Jeffrey Epstein’s smiling face. He too is capped by giant devil’s horns. A gleaming dollar-sign floats in the air over his head (again, that combined with the Jewish star just seem suggstive of an Antisemitism I don’t think Stellabelle necessarily intended, but, well, it’d be negligent not to call it out). Behind Brunel are the victims of his trafficking, three young girls in identical outfits —blue, pink, and yellow; pastels are reminders of youth— who look forlornly downward as they are presumably handed from one devil to another. On their blouses are barcodes, transparent signifiers that to these pedophilic demons, they are nothing more than objects to buy and use and discard. Appropriately, the girls are devoid of all other identifying detail. They really are just objects. And all of them, girls and devils both, are trapped in a dark and grey room —an empty, enormous, and photorealistic nightmare parlor.
If we’re being honest, there’s not a ton more to say about Brunel Monster. Its aim is clear, its composition is electric, and its message could not possibly be lost. But what Brunel Monster does is further solidify Stellabelle’s unique sensibility, and her unique ability to channel the worst of world events into art pieces that express their foulest elements in their fullest forms. It’s the fine details here that accomplish this most powerfully. It’s the bar-code blouses and the varying forms of devilishness that Stellabelle uses. It’s the background: its lack of color, its haunting photorealism. This house of horrors is the entire frame; there is neither escape from it nor any hope of turning away. And in creating this artwork, Stellabelle challenges us to not look away. She takes a truly upsetting situation and says “HERE. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED. THESE ARE THE NAMES, AND THERE ARE THE VICTIMS.” Altogether, a brave choice in an artistic career defined by them. Stellabelle continues to be an artistic voice for the voiceless, and a challenge to any artist or collector who wants to live isolated in their own bubble. Here, penetrating into all our lives, is a marker of humanity’s worst impulses. We shouldn’t look away. We won’t. Thanks to Stellabelle, we can’t.
Source Link: https://rarible.com/token/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5:22772?tab=overview
Date Minted: September 22, 2020
Artist Description: This image depicts the monster Jean Luc Brunel when he trafficked 3 French girls who were 12 years old to Epstein. This image is 4400 × 2926. Painted using Gimp and collage elements added.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
TW: sexual assault, sex trafficking
Stellabelle is a brutal artist. Brutal in every way. She does not hold back in her pieces. When she takes aim —at industrialists, at capitalists, at heathens and fiends— she does so with abject fire and with a take-no-prisoners attitude. We can see it time after time in her series “CryptoStellas,” where, when she’s not deifying in clever ways the crypto art world’s longest-tenured and most venerated minds, she is attacking and deconstructing those who would come into the space (like Guy Oseary or Elon Musk) and exploit it for personal gain. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to Stellabelle rant in Twitter Spaces about the evils she sees taking over the crypto, NFT, and crypto art worlds, and she is just as unapologetic in tact and verbiage as she is in artistry.
Brunel Monster takes aim at a totally different, and much more serious, kind of evil. Jean-Luc Brunel has faced allegations of sexual assault throughout three separate decades, a man accused of using his position as a model scout to exploit, assault, and ultimately traffic underage girls to the devil incarnate himself, Jeffrey Epstein. Both fiendish characters are expressly codified here, with Stellabelle giving absolutely no fucks about painting them out to be the cretins they are. Brunel Monster is a deeply upsetting and startling piece. The artistry is exquisite, but it’s almost besides the point when we are asked to confront the actions and victims of the two men mentioned. This is bold and powerful protest art of a kind, and is an incredible distillation of Stellabelle’s values, her style, and her spirit. It’s also a tough piece to look at, if we’re being honest, especially so if we’re aware of the grand breadth of these men’s crimes. Nevertheless, we’re here to confront the art. And that means confronting truly black souls. It is Stellabelle’s well-insinuated goal that we should not shy away from the truth. This is the world as Stellabelle sees it, but she communicates it with aplomb, with courage, and with all her rage on display.
There are two devils in Brunel Monster, both of different styles. The first to catch my eye is Jean-Luc Brunel himself, drawn in the style of a Judeo-Christian devil, all goat fur and cloven hooves and possessed of two huge red horns. And then his face: Dark, suggestive, lecherous, downright repulsive. He straddles a long red-white-and-blue phallic shape that extends out from the right side of the screen, the colors implicating the French flag. The other devil is more abstract, a snake made of liquid sludge that emerges from a ceiling grate (a Jewish star surrounds the grate, a detail I find unnecessary and somewhat strange to include, if we’re being honest. What does Epstein’s Judaism have to do with anything? Nevertheless…) twisting and coiling through the air until it manifests in a hand-drawn facsimile of Jeffrey Epstein’s smiling face. He too is capped by giant devil’s horns. A gleaming dollar-sign floats in the air over his head (again, that combined with the Jewish star just seem suggstive of an Antisemitism I don’t think Stellabelle necessarily intended, but, well, it’d be negligent not to call it out). Behind Brunel are the victims of his trafficking, three young girls in identical outfits —blue, pink, and yellow; pastels are reminders of youth— who look forlornly downward as they are presumably handed from one devil to another. On their blouses are barcodes, transparent signifiers that to these pedophilic demons, they are nothing more than objects to buy and use and discard. Appropriately, the girls are devoid of all other identifying detail. They really are just objects. And all of them, girls and devils both, are trapped in a dark and grey room —an empty, enormous, and photorealistic nightmare parlor.
If we’re being honest, there’s not a ton more to say about Brunel Monster. Its aim is clear, its composition is electric, and its message could not possibly be lost. But what Brunel Monster does is further solidify Stellabelle’s unique sensibility, and her unique ability to channel the worst of world events into art pieces that express their foulest elements in their fullest forms. It’s the fine details here that accomplish this most powerfully. It’s the bar-code blouses and the varying forms of devilishness that Stellabelle uses. It’s the background: its lack of color, its haunting photorealism. This house of horrors is the entire frame; there is neither escape from it nor any hope of turning away. And in creating this artwork, Stellabelle challenges us to not look away. She takes a truly upsetting situation and says “HERE. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED. THESE ARE THE NAMES, AND THERE ARE THE VICTIMS.” Altogether, a brave choice in an artistic career defined by them. Stellabelle continues to be an artistic voice for the voiceless, and a challenge to any artist or collector who wants to live isolated in their own bubble. Here, penetrating into all our lives, is a marker of humanity’s worst impulses. We shouldn’t look away. We won’t. Thanks to Stellabelle, we can’t.