Inner Beauty
is a collection of 22 Masochism X Book Vandalism artworks by Marius Black which he created from 2017 to 2022. In this Third art book collection of Book Vandalism X Masochism, Marius finds beauty in women surviving and enduring pain. He uses photos of models and actresses he finds in magazine pages and “skins” them by drawing their inner anatomy using red ballpoint pens, revealing their resilient true form.
Marius created book vandalism by drawing on book pages with the images of renaissance masters, adding art, or vandalizing them to vent out his frustrations about not being able to afford oil paints to create his desired artworks combining his Masochism art style of skinning the human figure to portray his subjects in pain and the drama of the human figures painted by the masters, the result is unbelievably full of life and unique.
Animus (Miss Masoch) 🔵🔴
Summer Mirage (Kate Moss) 🔵 PHP7,500
Silent Glance (Ellen Adarna) 🔵🔴
Pain of Beauty (Scarlett Johansson) 🔵 PHP5,700
Pain of Success (Scarlett Johansson) 🔵PHP4,700
Banshee (Anya Taylor-Joy) 🔵🔴
Lamentation of Sorrows (Anya Taylor-Joy) 🔵🔴
An Aura of Wild Cherries (Maui Taylor) 🔵🔴
Prom Queen (Elle Fanning) 🔵🔴
Inferno Void (Kim Domingo) 🔵 PHP15,400
Weirdo Wounds (Ellen Adarna) 🔵PHP7,500
Nude Agony (Marilyn Monroe) 🔵🔴
Fatal Undress (Pia Wurtzbach) 🔵🔴
Harpy (Sarah Gaugler) 🔵 PHP9,700
Unholy Burden (Model Unknown) 🔵 PHP6,500
Perfect Desire (Julia Barreto) 🔵 PHP7,600
Saint Sinner (Anne Hathaway) 🔵 PHP5,500
Elastic Angelic (Jane De Leon) 🔵 PHP6,000
Comfortable Innocence (Rhian Ramos) 🔵 PHP16,300
Zen Cruelty (Rhian Ramos 🔵 PHP22,500
Strawberry Milkshake Girlfriend (Model Unknown) 🔵🟣
Lovely Naivety (Audrey Hepburn) 🔵PHP18,700
Inner Beauty Two-man Show
at art+ collectibles
The majority of the works I have in this collection were part of a two-man show I did with my wife Guada. It’s called Inner Beauty, and she also made her version of artworks depicting inner beauty with the use of her signature art style, kids are depicted as marionettes and she tells their story of innocence and wonder, the purity of children.
It’s the complete opposite of the artwork I have here. The show was exhibited online and organized by Art Plus Magazine last January 21st, 2022. I also included the unpublished Q&A we did at the back of this book, though I omitted my wife’s answers here to keep the focus on my side of the art in this book/page.
What is the inspiration behind this collection?
Lack of art materials. When I was working at a dead-end job back a few years back, I wanted to paint but I didn’t have enough money to buy the art materials I needed and fund my painting career. One night, however, we didn’t have a single customer (as most nights in graveyard shift) and I felt like I was just wasting my time by doing nothing whereas if I had art materials right there and then, I could paint while I waited.
Luckily though, I always had an art book with me when I came to work, so out of desperation, I started drawing on it. It was a book about Michelangelo Buonarroti's paintings and sketches, and I just drew on them. I added my art on the actual book page and expressed myself and it felt good drawing on that book page finally able to finish an artwork.
Soon I was able to draw on more pages to pass the time, and before you know it, I was drawing on all my art books and looking for photos of artworks I can draw and add my personal “anatomy” style on. I called it, “Book Vandalism”.
After 11 years, I’m still doing it but I wanted to do something different in this collection. I was only drawing on book pages that had Renaissance paintings on them, but when I was looking for more discount books at BOOKSALE and saw several old issues of magazines with women models in them, I knew the next evolution of my Book Vandalism series would be drawing on photos of beautiful women.
I didn't start right away with the idea though, I just left the idea on the back burner, not knowing when to start it. Though as fate would have it, last year in August, I got tested positive for Covid and had to isolate myself in my room for two weeks.
As usual, I got bored, I felt my time was being wasted yet again, so instead of being sorry for myself being sick, I focused my energies instead on how to turn this downtime into a grand time where I can discover something completely new.
I decided I would paint and luckily I had all these magazines in my room; FHM, Sports Illustrated, UNO Magazine, Maxim Magazine, Preview, some bikini specials by famous sexy models, some even had pin-ups and posters in them, just to name a few, and yes, even SM Shopmag.
So I decided that now was the time to start this series, and I was able to finish at least 3 artworks during the duration of my isolation, even thinking that getting sick was meant to be, just for me to finally start this wonderful series.
Is there an artwork here that has an interesting back story? What makes it interesting?
To be honest, I find them all have interesting back stories. Apart from the two examples I gave earlier, I hunt and purchase all the magazines I have at different branches of BOOKSALE. You really can’t find a lot of printed magazines nowadays, especially the ones I need like FHM or Maxim Magazines at book stores or magazine stands.
The only place I know where to get back issues are online or at BOOKSALE, but even then, most of them have already sold off all their FHM and men’s magazine featuring sexy women. You can still get a few magazines with photos of women in most stores like these, but a lot of them I can’t use because the photos in them don't fit in well being skinned.
And so the interesting part of the story is being able to go on different branches of BOOKSALE to hunt down books and magazines and flipping each one of them to see if I can paint or draw on them. It’s like hunting for art materials in the wild, rare materials that is. And unlike the canvass, every day less and less printed media is produced, and the ones I would like to have or own to draw on (even in preloved stores) decrease every day because they are no longer in print.
But I kind of like having only a little or only a few options to draw or paint on, it makes the hunt a real rush when I find that one image I know I’d like to paint on. I even get surprised to find wonderful photos I had no idea before opening the magazine was hiding inside perfect to be skinned.
It even forces me to be more creative in my approach to the artwork and how more I can expand the art style. To think that a single book page from a cheaply sold and disregarded book or magazine found in a BOOKSALE branch can be elevated to a one-of-a-kind artwork. And that for me is really interesting.
Is there an artwork in this collection that you are most proud of?
I’m proud of all of them, as I let myself experiment with a different approach in each piece. But the one (or two) I’m proudest of is “Zen Cruelty” which was a poster of Rhian Ramos which was a freebie from UNO Magazine. I made two of them, the other is now the artwork “Comfortable Innocence” because I bought a number of these magazines seeing that they had a huge pile of them on sale, and I had the idea right there of doing at least two of the same image but a different artwork for each.
I’m proud of these pieces, not only because they’re bigger than anything I have vandalized, but because it has a lot of details and was complicated to paint, and is genuinely shocking and awe-inspiring to see, at least for me. And to think, I did two of them, the other exceeding the detail and intricacy of the first one.
How long did it take to finish the artworks/put all these together?
I would say, give or take a month (collectively) I was able to finish my set of 19 artworks. I have already started the two Rhian's before so I just had to continue to paint them. And the first three I finished back in August when I got Covid.
So it’s safe to say, more or less a month in total as I started painting the new artworks for the series when the year 2022 started, and I was able to finish at least one artwork in a day.
What is the message that you want to convey through this series?
I think I have a lot of things to say about this series, it varies per artwork. I’d like to say that I made it all women because I want to empower women, but I don’t believe in woman empowerment because I believe that women are already powerful as they are. They give birth to our children and take care of them as well as take care of us men. I grew up with one lola, four aunts, one mother, three sisters, two nieces in the vicinity of our home, and now I also see how capable and beautiful my wife is every day.
That being said, I think this series is more of adoring women, focusing on how they endure the pain, that there is pain in being beautiful and there is also beauty in pain. That pain they feel when people only want them because they’re sexy and pretty, but they don’t know who that person is deep inside, that they may very well be, a different person from what they show us.
That they could be feeling pain not being appreciated for who they really are but only seen as sex objects and trophy girlfriends because there’s no denying that they are indeed beautiful. Even the photographers who took their photos knew that and both the models and photographers did a wonderful job, and I only added my vision on top of what they had already given.
I started painting these skinned figures back when I was in college in 2005. I used to paint them using oil on canvas and these skinned figures were all representations of me feeling constant pain due to an unhealthy relationship with an abusive girlfriend at the time. So the skinned figure for me represents pain, and soon, I also could see other people’s pain as I continued to paint in this muscle/anatomy style I call Masochism.
I remember one time, I saw a jeepney driver, really working hard. I could see how he sweated profusely as he turned the steering wheel of his jeepney. I realized being a jeepney driver isn't an easy job and only a few of us know this and appreciate his sacrifice, and at that moment, I had a glimpse of him in skinless form. That’s when I realized, a lot of people feel some kind of pain in their daily lives, they just don’t express it or share it with other people, but you could certainly feel it with some.
Therefore in this series, I wanted to express and reveal the pain I see in most women, especially beautiful women today. The pain they feel of forcing a smile or having to be fantasized by millions of people, the pain and isolation they must feel even if they're quite famous, but no one knows them that intimately. The secret lives they live just to give a façade of being idolized, prioritizing their career rather than the sanctity of their own body.
I put halos on some of the women I painted not because I see them as saints or gods or goddesses, but instead, I gave them halos because to some degree, the pain they endure must merit some kind of sainthood in their minds. An aura that they emit when they are being true to themselves, even if it’s a lustful and sinful nature.
Most of these women pose in the nude and take off their clothes in front of the camera for the public to see, but what I want instead to see is, not their naked body alone, (yes, that is undoubtedly beautiful too) but I would also want to see who they are inside. I would want to see how they survive the pain of their beauty because I think, ascending from suffering makes them even more beautiful.
INNER BEAUTY by Black Enamel
The accompanying music in the timelapse videos were performed by Marius Black
via Virtual Piano and then played back in a faster speed and recorded.
Art Stream •
Making Masochisms 🩸
These are three art streams I did in 2022 creating art from posters and magazine pages in my infamous art series, Masochism in book vandalism. I hope you guys learn a lot from these videos! 😺
-Marius
With the use of AI song creation Suno. I was able to turn the poetry I wrote into songs about the artworks. Listen here as you see and hear the piece more in depth.