This digital collage is based on Venus (Uma Thurmond) from the 1988 film, "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" directed by Terry Gilliam, production design by Dante Ferretti. I thought this movie was unwatchable. Terrible tchotchke-like design, silly story, hysterical acting. I couldn't care less about any of it, except Uma Thurmond's appearance as Venus in the pose of the Botticelli "Birth of Venus." In Gilliam's vision and Ferretti's execution, the giant clam shell Venus stands on in the Botticelli, becomes a super giant vulva shape surrounding 18 year old Uma Thurmond.
I ran it through my collage method and got something useful. These are the paintings I used:
Flora Yukhnovich (b.1990) "Glass and a Half" (2019)
Flora is recently out of London Art School and The Heatherley School of Fine Art who after a short residency in Venice has completed a series of abstract paintings referencing Rococo paintings, particularly those of Tiepolo and Fragonard. She said she was drawn to the Rococo because the way paint was used to suggest a fleshy physicality. She makes her abstract works by selecting one main source to make the basic space, then filling it with elements from other works.
She told Laura Franchetti in an interview published on The Courtauld" I am very interested in the way that I can use paint – the way that I apply it or the way that I handle it – to enhance the meaning of a work."
She finds that Rococo paintings are very much about the way they are painted, the use of paint seems very contemporary and exciting.
Adding, "The reason I was drawn to the Rococo was that it seemed to encapsulate this historical idea of femininity, which I found interesting when considering contemporary ideas of femininity, these notions of femininity, or from trying to explore the relationship between them."
I love the Rococo colors she uses and the way her paint strongly suggests figures without actually delivering any figurative definition. It hits the correct note for this collage.
Mardi Barrie (1931 - 2004) "Evening Hedgerow"
Also adding much appropriate color to the collage is this gouache painting. A Scottish painter and arts educator, primarily known for watercolor painting. Gouache is another water soluble paint used for it's opacity and remarkable here because the close-hued colors give the appearance of transparency. The patterns in the "hedgerow" seem architectural more than biological and the palette seems hallucinatory more than "evening." It’s a remarkable painting and I really dig that red!
Julie Mehretu (b. 1970) "Conjured Parts (Eye) Ferguson” (2016)
I love this painting. I've used it in several collages and written about it a few times. This time, I'll quote the LACAM writeup, "As its title suggests, Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson links disembodied anatomy with a site of violence and political strife. This painting began with a blurred photograph of an unarmed man with his hands up facing a group of police officers in riot gear, which was taken during the protests that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Mehretu layered color over a blurry, sanded black-and-grey background: fuchsia and peachy-pink areas rise from below, while toxic green tones float above, like distant skies drawing near. Outlines of eyes, buttocks, and other body parts appear within the graffiti-like marks and black blots that hover over smoky areas, suggesting human activity obscured."
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901) "At the Moulin Rouge" (1895)
Holding down the fort, keeping the cool, ethereal colors from floating away with collage, the earthy warm coloring from lil Henri, the giant of Montmartre, god of Post-Impressionism, keeps it real.
I’ll be using this collage as a reference for a painting I’ll complete live, February 20th, 12 - 4pm, at my solo show in Fresh Paint Gallery, La Jolla.