Fat Fetish in Fernando Botero’s Art

Fernando Botero is a Colombian painter, sculptor, and artist. I have always loved his art and how he uses volume to express sensuality and excess. He says it wasn’t about fat fetishism, but isn’t all art about desire?

In early psychoanalytic theory, Freud proposed that the life drive “Eros” was opposed by the forces of the ego (the organized, logic-driven part of a person's psyche that mediates desires). In other words, he believed that people’s desires are their Eros, the reason they live. So even though our logical psyche censors what we do and create, everything we think and do is driven by desire. Let that sink in…

Fernando Botero was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1932. He began to draw at a young age and was largely self-taught as an artist. In the early 1950s, he moved to Bogotá and began to develop the style for which he would become known. He developed his style in the 1950s and 1960s and came to be called "Boterismo." In 1955, he traveled to Europe and was greatly influenced by the works of the old masters and the contemporary art he saw in museums and galleries. Botero's paintings and sculptures are recognized by their rotund, plump figures and shapes. But he has stated that his work is not a commentary on obesity but rather a celebration of life. He said he paints and sculpts the way he does to express happiness, joy, and comfort.

The Botero Museum in Bogotá, Colombia

A "fat fetish" or "fat admiration" is a sexual attraction to individuals who are overweight or obese. This can include physical attraction to the weight itself and the person because of their weight. For example, people with a fat fetish may be sexually aroused by the sight of a large body or by touching and caressing a large body. This attraction can also be to the idea of being with a large person or the specific sensations of being physically close to a large body.

“I fatten my characters to give them sensuality. I’m not interested in fat people for the sake of fat people.”  Botero thinks fat adds sex appeal to a character.  He includes all the “imperfections” from cellulite to stretch marks when he paints fat people.  But the emphasis is always on the fat itself – the look– the softness, the curvature, and the warmth one associates with a fat body, not the “imperfections.” It's important to respect the difference between an artist's style and any individual's sexual preference. Fernando Botero's art style was not motivated by any fetish, and his artwork should be viewed and appreciated as an artistic expression, not through any sexualized lens.

Fernando Botero's work features rotund and large human and animal figures, but it is not considered a "fat fetish" but rather an artistic choice. Botero has stated that his use of large, exaggerated figures is not intended to make a commentary on obesity or to fetishize large bodies. Instead, he believed that these figures in his art bring a sense of humor and satire to work and are a way to express the abundance of life. Botero's figures are not meant to be realistic representations of people or animals but rather a stylized and exaggerated form that he uses to express his artistic vision.

He is also well known for his satirical works on politics and social issues, using the rotund figures to comment on the excesses and foibles of the powerful. For example, his portrait La Familia Presidencial (The Presidential Family) has all the trademarks of his work and serves as a critique of civil society and state authority.

Source: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80711

Of course, there’s no way to know if Fernando Botero had a fat fetish. A fetish is “a form of sexual desire in which gratification is strongly linked to a particular object or activity or a part of the body other than the sexual organs.” Everything in his art is plump, chubby, and big. But that all started with an accident. While working in a park on a canvas titled Still Life with Mandolin (the picture above), he accidentally placed a dot where the instrument’s sound hole should have been, causing it to appear bloated. An error—but one that seemed to hint at new horizons. He began experimenting with size, proportion, volume, and static-looking portraits in flat panels of color. Everything that would become his characteristic style. “It was like going through a door and entering another room,” he would later say.

Source: https://www.savacations.com/colombia-reveling-human-comedy-fernando-botero/

So, does the fact that he paints and sculpts fat horses, fruits, and politicians mean he didn’t have a fetish? That’s like asking if someone does NOT have a shoe fetish because they use shoes in a non-sexual setting. It’s unrelated. “I’m not interested in fat for fat’s sake,” he explains. “I make the characters fat to give them sensuality…For me, the pleasure in a painting comes from the exaltation of life, expressed in the sensuality of forms.”

The Botero Museum in Bogotá, Colombia

Sexuality and fetishes are never simple to understand. How fetishes and kinks get started, develop, and flourish depends on so many aspects of one’s life that it’s irresponsible to try and generalize one person’s kinky experience to another’s. Botero admits to using volume to create sensuality, which is characteristic of a fat fetish. Whether he did it for sexual pleasure or not, we’ll never know. But what is undeniable is that his paintings of pudgy, curvy women with fat butts and hairy vaginas are sensual and even erotic.