in many realms of Baroque society in his native Flanders as well as in Italy, England, France and Spain. Botero is similarly peripatetic and likewise gifted in his comprehension of the wide variety of human values and emotions. He is, in both his personality and his art, as comfortable with bullfighters as with presidents, with nuns as with socialites. His images of this range of types presents his audiences with a panoramic view of the noble and the ignoble of modern society on both sides of the Atlantic, above as well as below the Equator. The term "Botero" has become something of a generic word. In the popular conception, a "Botero" is a man or a woman - or any other animate or inanimate thing - possessed of large, rounded proportions. There are "Botero forks" and "Botero cats" just as there are "Botero women" or "Botero children". For many, the concept of "Botero" represents a celebration of sensuality or a reveling in voluptuousness. However, through international exhibitions along some of the most famous streets of the world's largest cities, his paintings, drawings and monumental sculptures have become so well known that their often complex meanings, in many cases l have become all but obscured.While Botero's art is tangibly present as an indispensable part of popular visual culture in the Western imagination, its deeper references and the processes of its creation have become camouflaged by both its highly visible public profile and its commercial appropriation.The art of Botero must be read on a variety of planes. The levels of meaning unfold when scrutinized under the lens of both his historical development and the intentions of the messages that his paintings, drawings and sculptures convey Botero's career developed out of a virtual void of art historical tradition. The semi- isolated cities and towns of central Colombia had little contact with the larger world of ''culture'' in its conventional contexts when the artist was d...
