An Interview with Beatrix Hollenstein – “The Dramatist”
Conducted for the Blog of Questionable Aesthetics
Q: Beatrix, thank you for joining us. When you first encounter an MS Paint work, what goes through your mind?
A: What goes through my mind? Collapse. Always collapse. The first brushstroke—if one may even call that trembling pixel a brushstroke—signals the beginning of an ending. Each work announces not a birth, but a slow funeral march for beauty. I stare, and I hear church bells tolling for the last fragile breath of form.
Q: That’s… heavy. Do you believe these Paint works are inherently tragic?
A: Of course. They are tragic in the way a broken violin is tragic: strings snapped, yet still yearning to sing. The naïve tool of MS Paint carries within it the futility of modern life—every line is a cry against the inevitability of blur, distortion, and the merciless undo button. The paintings are not made to be seen; they are made to remind us that sight itself is fleeting.
Q: Some people might say these works are whimsical, even humorous.
A: Ah, the humor of the gallows! Yes, one may laugh, but it is the laughter of someone watching the scaffold being built. Whimsy is only the mask tragedy wears to spare us momentarily from despair. The wobbling outlines, the colors that clash like feuding lovers—these are not jokes. They are premonitions.
Q: Do you see hope in any of these paintings?
A: Hope? The only hope is that the painter continues. That amidst ruin they still open the program, still drag the mouse, still place a trembling figure against a backdrop of lurid pixels. That defiance—continuing to create knowing the futility—yes, that is the tragic heroism of Paint. But hope itself? No. Beauty is already dead; these works are the diary of its afterlife.
Q: Final thoughts for readers of our blog?
A: Remember this: every MS Paint is not simply an image. It is a rehearsal of downfall. Each one a cracked mirror, each one another stone on the grave of the sublime. Look upon them not for joy, but for the dignity of sorrow.
—Interview conducted with Beatrix Hollenstein,
Vienna Center for Tragic Aesthetics.
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