Blind James (White) 2002. Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper mounted board.
Douglas Gordon is a Scottish artist who I had previously looked at in my first year at uni. He is mostly known for his work with video and photograph, the piece I had seen before was 24 Hour Psycho where he slowed down Hitchcock’s thriller to make it last 24 hours. I like his work as it’s source material has its roots in celebrity and the popular.
Blind Janet (White) 2002. Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper mounted board.
In his series 100 Blind Stars 2002, Gordon is looking at the ‘cult of celebrity’. The series is of 100 publicity photographs of 1950s and 60s Hollywood icons of the golden age of cinema.
The eyes are cut out and either replaced with mirror or black or white paper. By removing the eyes the image that is left is uncomfortable viewing. It steals the identity of the subject of the original photo and takes away their individuality. By removing the eyes the artist leaves the faces as nothing but masks, empty people with nothing behind the eyes.
Self Portrait of You + Me (Simone Signoret) 2008, Smoke and Mirror.
In Self Potrait of You + Me Series, Douglas Gordon again uses iconic imagery of film stars, even having a specific series dedicated to Bond Girls. He attaches the images to mirrored surfaces or black or white surfaces but instead of just removing the eyes, this time he mutilates the picture by burning it. This allows a conflict of the adoration of the images used and the mutilation. The photographs change from the familiar, recognisable icons of the silver screen, to quite scary, distorted images that have a totally difficult effect on the viewer.
Self Portrait of You + Me (James Cagney) 2006, Smoke and Mirror.
I hadn’t seen these images when I started creating my own work, they were suggested to me and I immediately fell in love with them. There is a blatant familiarity between these and my own work and I feel as though the thoughts and ideals of the artist are in line with my own.
Gordon is quoted as saying-
“I try to take something familiar and look it again and again, and again, reexamine go it and representing it…….looking at something familiar can act as a metaphor for all sorts of other things in your life. One way to look at something over and over again is to take it apart…in an analytical, structural, quite academic fashion, or we can simply put one thing beside itself and see how it compares.”
