Appropriation of Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory
The first image I decided
to appropriate was Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence
of Memory. I’ve always been a huge fan of his works because of their
surreal and dreamy qualities. Dalí used real imagery and manipulated the shapes
of the objects to give them a surreal quality. The theme was time in his
painting so he used clocks and situated them in different “melting” poses in
the landscape. Even though his painting is surreal and uses odd bends and
shapes, he chose to situate his imagery in a realistic landscape background.
In my appropriation of
this piece, I chose to use my sister and her roommate as my subjects. I posed
them in similar positions like Dalí did with his clocks. The theme of my piece
is death. My subjects are lifeless and are draped in death throughout the
landscape. My focus is on the unknown around death and its affect on those left
behind. I wanted to use the realistic subjects in a surreal background like Dalí
did. I wanted it to be the view of someone looking at a scene of people close
to them and their disassociation with reality upon looking at the scene. The
background is a tree that symbolizes the many paths of like which contracts the
theme of death throughout the piece.
Appropriation of Rene Magritte's The Son of Man
The second image that I
decided to appropriate is René Magrittes’s The
Son of Man. The main theme of his painting focuses on what is seen and
unseen. Magritte said that people are always intent and curious about finding
what is beneath something or what is hidden. His painting is a self-portrait
and he is situated in the middle of the landscape.
In my appropriation of the piece I used a
female body because I am female and the piece is supposed to be a self-portrait
appropriation. Instead of the face and hand being human, I decided to utilize my
cat’s head and paw into the piece because I feel like my cat is an extension of
myself and wanted to give the piece a personal aspect. I also was really
intrigued on working with an anthropomorphic character. In Magritte’s painting
and apple obscures his face and in mine I decided to use a hibiscus flower. I
like that the flower hides the face but due to how our eyes and brains work we
still know that we are looking at a cat’s face. The original image had a stormy
kind of landscape for the background so I wanted to do the opposite and used a
beach scene but just changed it to a dreary color. The background and the
flower are also personal extensions of myself because that is my favorite place
and where I want to live one day and my favorite flower.
No comments:
Post a Comment