the thing is the king charles portrait is genuinely incredible and exactly how I would execute a portrait of a member of the british royal family but also I literally cannot fathom why the british royal family would have it made
like yeah if I were going to make a portrait of king charles I would absolutely have just his smugly smirking face leering out of a mass of red that could only be read as blood and gore, and have his military uniform fading ambiguously into the same background to lay bare the brutality of imperialism concealed by the pomp and ceremony of the british state, and make the entire thing sort of look like it was decaying to indicate the rot of the empire. like I really struggle to imagine a better visual metaphor for the nightmarish history of a dying empire than the king's spiffy military uniform and saber and sash and rows of epaulets being literally made out of a rotting field of blood and gore. but like why did he have it commissioned... why did he have it MADE and then say Looks great I'm putting it on the wall... HE EVEN LOOKS LIKE HE'S IN HELL