One of the greatest pleasures I have watching wrestling are the entrances.  In Wrestlemania, the entrances are bigger, grander, full of pyrotechnics and costumes that are beyond the scope of every day episodes of RAW or Smackdown.  In New Japan Pro Wrestling, the G1 Climax or Wrestlekingdom are the great events which inspire the best, most gorgeous outfits and regal entrances.  As for Lucha Underground, it seems as if every day is a day for pagentry, as the lucha style of wrestling is full of color and high drama.  And all of it is delicious.  

Below is a brief collection of my favorite wrestlers and their gorgeous pageantry.  There are many more I could have added, such as Sasha Banks, Bailey, The New Day, Shinsuke Nakamura, Bobby Roode, and Becky Lynch.  The list does go on and on.  These few are the ones I especially love.

I mention Balor first not because of his 0% body fat physique, but because of the body paint.  I've worked with body paint in theater productions, and it is extremely time consuming and always on the verge of being rubbed or sweated off.  What Balor and his artist achieve is continually stunning.  Yes, most of the paint gets rubbed off on wrestlers, but it works with the character.  Balor enters as the demon, a force that he taps into like a superpower.  At the end of the match, the demon has been exorcised, almost washed clean away, and once again he's Finn Balor.

Benjamin Lacombe deals mostly in fairy tales: Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Madame Butterfly, the Tales of Edgar Allen Poe, Medusa, Ondine, even Marie Antoinette. I classify all these as fairy tales because he has no interest in history, reality, or even, at times, accurate anatomy.

but then there are those pieces which don't find easy classification. Oh, I'm sure with the internet it's possible to figure out in a couple minutes the source of every piece. But I approach these pieces like a scavenger. Things found by chance. For I actually did find them by chance in the glorious landfill that is Pinterest.

I approach the the pieces as if I have nothing except my contemporary understanding of culture, history and literature. These days we are more apt to encounter art this way, out of the superimposed context of a museum.

And there is is a valid and important argument in favor of rejecting titles, authors names, in fact all context so that we may approach a piece of work freshly and freely. It makes the piece more ours because our interpretation personal and unmolested.

Approaching Lacombe's works relatively unfettered has been a horrifying journey into my childhood and has caused me to reevaluate melancholy and my relationships with animals. It has not been pleasant.

The figures uncomfortably fit within their scenes.  The animation is obvious: the heads are larger than normal, the eyes extraordinarily large and round: the bodies have the dimensions of what would be defined as "cute".  The colors are vibrant, there are adorable cats, the women are dressed lavishly and enviously, and the figures may or may not be dead.

These pieces are quite horrifying, but lack the traditional dread which would accompany it.  Rather, the characters in these works have resigned themselves to their story.  They have complete hopelessness.  They look at us with the last expression a suicide would have.

I've said too much.  So much for my quest to create a fresh, free art experience.  Enjoy.  Or, as at least, try to.