1900 Paris 2015 by Gerhard (2016)

I've had really great feedback on this one. Oscar Wilde was a victim in the ideological war against homosexuality in late 1800s England, where he was imprisoned and served two years of hard labor. He was released from prison, moved to Paris under a pseudonym, and lived out his last few years at a hotel residence with a Ram’s head over the entrance. He died, in Paris, in 1900. About 3 Km away from the hotel where Wilde died is the Carillon Hotel and its café, where many patrons died in 2015 as victims in a bombing associated with another kind of ideological war. In bringing these stories together, we have a contemporary couple holding hands, a symbol of 2015 and some progress made in Wilde’s war, which has not been won, everywhere, and particularly in places where certain ideologies are still strongly held beliefs. Our couple notes the memory (a virtual existence) of Wilde at the café. Wilde is in the vibrant colors of the living couple as his ideology is alive. But we also note our many friends at the café who died an equal opportunity death for transgressions against God and Nature, in 2015, that made about as much sense as Wilde’s did in 1900. Thanks in great part to the ever-astounding Gerhard, who took the sketch of the idea and turned it into a masterpiece.