We were given the brief to use photoshop to recycle images into a new piece of art that reflects an aspect of humanity. For initial research, I looked at the work and Jake and Dinos Chapman, and was interested in their appropriation of work by Goya and amateur watercolours by Adolf Hitler. The work 'If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be', features Hitler's monotonous landscapes with rainbows and colourful sunbeams- everything he hated in art. By subverting the paintings, the Chapman brothers not only mock the artist but raise the question of what the world would have been like if Hitler had been a good person- would the world be more beautiful or is that just childish naivety?
The theme of my work was the coronavirus lockdown, and I decided to apply ideas similar to those of the Chapman brothers. I wondered what the world would be like if social isolation was permanent, and if we had all been cut off from each other forever. Would we all be at different points in our evolution? Would we have completely different cultures from house to house?
To create my final subverted image, I used the background from the Chapman brothers' work to represent the idyllic outside world, which would have been unspoilt by humans who are trapped inside. I decided to use a row of terraced houses to show the irony of how physically close some people were in lockdown, but they still couldn't visit each other. I cut out the windows and doors to give an insight into the houses, which reminded me of Romare Bearden's collages, especially 'The Block'.
I used images of different planets in the solar system for the inside of each house, to show how different everyone could be, despite being so close. I then added images of people from different cultures throughout history in the windows of each house, showing how everyone may have developed at different speeds. Overall, the image seems immature, like the work of the Chapman brothers, but raises the question of the importance of community and social interactions to humanity.
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