In A State of Constant Flux

Flux...

Digital manipulation, 2014

In the West we have an unquenchable desire for new and exciting products to buy.  Creators of consumer goodies often look to other cultures for ideas that are new and exotic.  However, the problem with this is that the original cultural meaning is skewed and distorted in order to make it fit our market's needs. 

Retrieved from Pixabay

To its original creator the myth of Cupid and Psyche had important social and cultural meanings.  The idea of the classically beautiful star crossed lovers and their struggle to unite appeals greatly to us. 

For some reason the figure of Psyche has been dropped by consumer culture, despite our love of using the female body to market and sell a multitude of products.  The West has taken the figure of Cupid and turned him into a heavily stylised  cherub.

The Desolation of Cupid explores the journey of Cupid from his original purpose and form to what we now understand as being Cupid.

The artwork above is from Desolation of Cupid and attempts to describe the transformation process that occurs when Western consumer culture turns the meaningful into the consumable.  Cupid has become no more than a dumbed down icon that producers assign to products in order to entice us to buy.

Figure stock by Felix d'Eon

Texture by Arkano3

Any copyrighted material used on this blog remains the property of the original owner and is used under the Fir Dealing Australia Act for the purpose of critique and review.

Classical Beauty

Classically Cupid

 

Katelyn Parker, 2014.

The West has always been attracted to and borrowed heavily from classical societies.  The West owes much of its legal and justice systems, literature, drama and art to the early influences of the classical civilisations.

The body of work I am developing for my final year of my degree reflects on the beauty of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.  This first thread focuses on aspects of the original narrative that have fallen, discarded, along the way as Western civilisations have found new uses for Cupid within their own consumer cultures.  Even as far back as the Renaissance consumers in the West have found the figure of Cupid alluring and desirable.  Centuries after the Old Masters described the myth, with alterations, in their grand and epic oil paintings for wealthy patrons,  consumer culture still has a use for the central figure of the myth.  Psyche has largely fallen by the wayside, no longer really part of contemporary understanding of the myth.  

In the image above I am trying to reacquaint the viewer with the essence of the original narrative.  A big part of this is to re-establish Cupid as being an adolescent male rather than the sentimentally kitsch chubby cherub of the Renaissance period.

Figure stock fro the Public Domain retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Textures by NinjaRabbit-Stock

Eradicating Psyche

The Lost Psyche

 

Katelyn Parker, 2014

Part of my objective for this first thread of the body of work is to describe some of the interaction that takes place between the central characters of the myth.  This exploration of human weakness and faility is missing from our contemporary understandings of Cupid as consumer culture has sanitised and simplified the text.

In the image here I wanted to describe the intimate physical contact between Cupid and Psyche.  The physical touch between the two lovers that the viewer is able to interpret and relate to.  For the viewer I believe this puts the myth on a very human level.  This enable the viewer to connect more fully and emotionally to the loss of the meaning of the cultural text.  I have used images from the public domain as I believe they have an oldness that speaks to the age of the myth.

Bringing the old photographs into the contemporary while at the same time retaining the old quality that I was originally attracted to needed a very sensitive and subtle approach.  I thought about what has changed in the way that artists make art, since the Renaissance to now, and the answer lay in the greatest game changer of all time.  THE INTERNET and the online creative community.  As technology has become cheaper and the online Collective Intelligence grows and grows, artists are able to collaborate to create artworks that just ten years ago would have been impossible.  I have sourced textures created by artists who specialise in them to include in my final artworks.  By doing this the antiquity of the figure stock is retained but the final images are able to sit comfortably in a contemporary forum.

Figure stock is from the public domain retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Textures by  NinjaRabbit-Stock

Silenced

Katelyn Parker, 2014

Using images from the Public Domain is crucial to the success of this first thread for my final body of work.  By doing this I hope that I am drawing the viewer into the historical representation of Cupid.  In the image above I am attempting to connect to the historical but begin to connect the viewer into the contemporary part of my work.  The approaches I am employing at this stage rely on Grotesque principles, or applying a slight psychological shock to the work.  Cupid's mouth being covered with a bloodied bandage speaks to the silencing of the original meanings and purposes for the myth.  Once used to teach a civilisation moral and ethical lessons, the myth now is attached mindlessly and carelessly to commodities.

The ultimate aim of this thread is to position the myth historically and to begin to describe the erosion of meaning.  The theme of erosion is one that will carry through the body of work to the final thread, The desolation of Cupid.

Figure stock is from Wikimedia Commons, all other stock is my own.
Textures by NinjaRabbit-Stock

Portrait of Cupid

Katelyn Parker, 2014

Portrait of Cupid

For my final body of work for my degree I am putting together a series of artworks to describe how the original meanings of the myth of Cupid and Psyche have been eroded over the centuries.

The series begins by attempting to connect the viewer to the original content of the myth, but in a contemporary context.  

The original myth contains much that even now a contemporary audience can relate to through their own lived experience.  The myth follows the path of the relationship between Cupid and Psyche, beginning with the insane jealousy of Venus which brings the two protangonists together to begin with.  Jealous of Psyche's inhumanly impossible beauty Venus seeks to destroy her.  To little avail though as the weapon she sends to carry out the destruction ends up hopelessly attracted to her.  Psyche ends up being betrayed by her own father, keen to appease the Gods, and banished to live alone.  Cupid visits on the condition that she never attempt to learn his identity.  On learning of this her jealous sisters encourage her to expose his real identity.  

Exposed, Cupid flees and the long journey to being reunited and eventually marry as equals continues.  

The image above is from the first thread of the series and attempts to reconnect the viewer with the ancient and classical roots of Cupid and Psyche.

Figure stock is from the public domain and was retrieved from Wikimedia Commons
Textures by NinjaRabbit-Stock

The Consuming West

Katelyn Parker
Mixed media digital painting, 2014

As governments in the West begin to tighten purse strings and to stimulate growth in their economies times have become tight for all.  The consumer economy responds by increasing the pressure on individuals to continue to buy, buy, BUY.

Advertisers find even more devious methods of intensifying our desire for the latest products. The pressure to buy is intense, and constant.

Are consumers victims of consumer culture?

Or are we villains?

Although we know that an increasing amount of goods are made using slave/child labour, we seem to be able to navigate our way around the ethics and morality issues and continue to buy from companies that have been exposed as employing slavery to increase their profit margins.  Our complicity in the continuation of slave labour makes it difficult to position consumers as victims of consumer culture.  The real victims continue to be those that suffer working in unsafe and often brutal working conditions in order to satisfy the west's appetite for new things to buy.  This digital artwork came about after doing research into practices of slavery that exist today.  The stories and videos I have read and seen tell of kidnappings, routine brutal beatings, withholding of pay and identity documents and other abuses that largely go untouched by mainstream news outlets.  The artwork above was a response to the vulnerability of a group of individuals that have absolutely no power to change their position in life.  

At least consumers have choice, we do not have to buy.  This makes it difficult to position consumers as victims of consumer culture.  However I don't know that it makes us villains either.  

Unless otherwise stated all images have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons and have been assigned a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License or are from the Public Domain
All of my artworks unless otherwise stated are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (Version 4.0 (international licence)

The Cupid Shroud

Katelyn Parker
Cupid Decays
Mixed Media Digital Painting, 2014

APPROPRIATING CULTURAL TEXTS

When I began this project for my final year of Fine Arts study I struggled to find a way to get around the issue of offending another culture.  We all have symbols of our cultural and social beliefs, our flag and national anthem and even our football club's song all have special meanings about something that identifies a unique set of beliefs.
For the Ancient Greek society their mythical tales of Gods and Goddesses communicated their beliefs about themselves and their place in the world.   

In using, or appropriating, the image of Cupid I am attempting to describe the way that Western, initially the European Renaissance artists, societies have taken a cultural text with very specific cultural meanings and adapted the text to suit their own needs and purposes.
The Renaissance artists took Cupid and transformed him from an adolescent male into the sentimental infant of their paintings in order to appeal to fashion in art of their time.  In a way this was no more sensitive to the original owner than the way that our consumer culture has approached the appropriation of Cupid and the re-branding of the figure to suit its own needs.
In the two images here I am looking at and experimenting with the digital distortion of Cupid as I begin to work towards creating a final body of work for assessment.  I'm not sure at this stage whether the final work will be digital or traditional mediums, or even a mix of the two.

 Unless otherwise stated all images have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons and have been assigned a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License or are from the Public Domain

All of my artworks unless otherwise stated are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (Version 4.0 (international licence)