Exploring
the nature of birth, death, and the fragility of human life, in project 3 I examine
the temporality of health and the manifestation of the individual. I referenced
Auguste Rodin’s, The Three Shades, a
bronze sculpture from the 1800’s that demonstrates a three part representation
of a bowed single person in three different stages of suffering, death and sin.
Originally, this 19.7×13.1×3.3 foot statue was
commissioned to be a mount on top of the Gates
of Hell, a door Rodin created depicting Dante Alighieri's Divine
Comedy, specifically the scene of The
Inferno; since then, there have been many plaster casts and molds of the
sculpture held in various museums, some specifically being the Musée
Rodin in Paris and Kunsthaus Zürich in Switzerland. Created in a similar
context, I used the similar notion of a single person in different stages of
suffering within my own self-portrait, creating an unknown plane of existence
where the viewer questions both what is real and the state of the figures
themselves.
Auguste Rodin: Three Shades
Gates of Hell
Smile of the Three Graces- 2nd Cent. Roman copy of Greek Sculpture
Antonio Canova: Three Graces (Three Fates)
Garden of Love II- Wassily Kandinsky
I also pulled
reference from the Robert Longo’s Men in
the Cities series. Photographing his peers in assorted movements in modern
workday clothes, Longo in turn created large scale charcoal drawings based off
these photographs; Longo constructs a narrative within the portraits of
isolation parallel to urban alienation. These expressive movements loaded with
shady meaning in relation to my own painting construct a similar dialogue of
isolation even when surrounded by two other figures. I choose to illustrate sweatshirts as opposed to
work clothes to connect more on an everyday level to the audience. Although any
person might not understand on a personal level, the notion of being trapped
within your own body, health reasons or otherwise; struggling to take off/zip
your sweatshirt is an ironic reality every person withstands at least once in
their life eluding to the juxtaposition of fate. Similarly presented to the
three fates, of whom measured the
thread of mortality in Greek and Roman mythology, this similar notion of life
is put into question through the chaotic form of the figures.
Robert Longo: Men in the Cities
I used cool
grey cel-vinyl for the under painting and soft sweatshirts, and finished by
layering different degrees of potency of lamb black oil paint for detail of the
forms. By using these two colors, I was able to create a very smooth and
seamless illustration of my body and hair in contrast to stark white within the
sweatshirt and flat dove grey of the background. The relationship of covered to
uncovered demands the attention of the struggle
between the unrecognized mental and physical states of an individual.
Vija Celmins:
Fernando Vicente:
I read Fragments for a History of the
Human Body Part 2, by Michel
Feher, a French philosopher and cultural interpretist who unravels the relation
of the body to the divine and at one point examines the Platonism idea that a soul
of celestial origin is imprisoned or even entombed in the body.
Moreover that concept that a soul dominates the body that it moves was the
conceptual thinking and more aesthetic base on sublime for inspiration rather
than the Narcissism of illustrating self-portraits.
My Photos:
