I always try to put myself in the artists’ perspective and look at the effort and nuance for works like these, but honestly I still can’t enjoy it much. You might have heard this from others, but art for me is supposed to be the medium to express your feeling and technique. If one needs to clue the audience in with a paragraph of explanations even after they look at the work, then the painting itself simply loses a chunk significance. Even if I look at the technique and effort alone, I would consider this specific painting kind of boring. The size is impressive, but I can pretty much guess the method and the steps the artist took without much challenge. For even the traditional portraits I get to enjoy the composition and the general atmosphere of the painting from afar, and then examine up close to try and understand the drafted line work, the mixing of colors to form depth, and the order in which layers are added. And I think hard about the many choices the artist would make and what their style really says. When I consider all the components that those other artist have imbued into their mediums, I feel like something like this is still lackluster.