The Cuban-American artist likes to paint pretty young white men \u2013 inspired by his fascination with Holden Caulfield. So why do his portraits have a sinister edge?<\/p>\n
Hernan Bas has been living in Venice this year, painting tourists. He\u2019s aware of the ironies. (He is the kind of tourist, he tells me, who started looking at Venetian property prices, oh, about a week into his stay.) The Cuban-American artist is from Miami, and he knows about mass tourism all too intimately: he lives in an neighbourhood that has now been so thoroughly colonised by Airbnbs that when he comes home from the airport, taxi drivers ask him where he\u2019s visiting from, and he has to explain that no, this is his own house.<\/p>\n
Here \u2013 his studio looking out over the lulling lap of the lagoon \u2013 he can be the tourist as innocent, as amnesiac, drinking in the beauties of the city and forgetting about the violence and catastrophe unfurling beyond. \u201cI can pretend nothing\u2019s happening in the world. And I\u2019ve done a very, very good job of that for the last seven weeks,\u201d he tells me when we meet in the spring. For a moment his mind drifts back despairingly to his home town and the fraught politics of his country. \u201cIt was so mind boggling how much the Latin community went for Trump, and now everyone is eating dirt because they\u2019re hiding from ICE,\u201d he says. \u201cThose same people who were gung ho for Trump are now getting deported.\u201d<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/c719076a12c18e1e1b3c53dc55b112b599a4f884\/190_300_2147_1718\/master\/2147.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=78d160f3d7bb493e51145c0e3fc8f8a3\" "\\"\u2018I")
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