Maleonn and his staged universes

(from the series Nostalgia)

(from the series Nostalgia)

(from the series Book of Taboo)

(from the series Book of Taboo)

(from the series Little Flagman)

(from the series Postman)

(from the series My Circus)

source: http://www.maleonn.com

In the weeping brook

Sur l'onde calme et noire où dorment les étoiles

La blanche Ophélia flotte comme un grand lys,

Flotte très lentement, couchée en ses longs voiles...

-- On entend dans les bois lointains des hallalis.

(Arthur Rimbaud: "Ophélie" [a fragment])

In his The Philosophy of Composition, Edgar Allan Poe asserts that "the death ... of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world", and, indeed, the compelling, lush, and grisly melancholy of the death of a beautiful woman has attracted tremendous attention in a number of artistic fields. 

While one of the tragic heroines most popular with artists appears to be Shakespeare's Ophelia, undoubtedly the most famous representation of her was produced by John Everett Millais (1852). The painting has proved extremely influential (on the subsequent representations and interpretations of Ophelia, for instance), and not only the drowning scene in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948) reminds us of it, but also, for instance, one scene in Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) is clearly reminiscent of it.

(John Everett Millais) 

(Jean Simmons in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet)

(Kirsten Dunst in Lars von Trier's Melancholia)

A number of other Pre-Raphaelite artists, such as John William Waterhouse, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur Hughes, and Joseph Noel Paton, were also captivated by the subject.

"These Pre-Raphaelite images were part of a new and intricate traffic between images of woman and madness in the late nineteenth-century literature, psychiatry, drama, and art. First of all, superintendents of Victorian lunatic asylums were also enthusiasts of Shakespeare, who turned to his dramas for models of mental aberration that could be applied to their clinical practice." (Elaine Showalter, "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism". In Susanne L. Wofford (ed.), Hamlet, Bedford Books, 1994)

(John William Waterhouse)

However, there were many other artists who in one way or another tackled the subject in the 19th and early 20th century. For instance, have a look at the works of Richard Redgrave, Alfonso Simonetti, Antoine-Auguste-Ernest Hebert, James Bertrand, Henrz Lejeune, Frank Willimas, Marcus Stone, Joseph Severn, George Frederick Watts, Artur Grottger, Joseph Kirkpatrick, Carl F. W. Trautschold, John William Godward, Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, Joseph Kronheim, James Parker, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Eugène Delacroix, Alexandre Cabanel, Gaston Bussiere, Henry Nelson O'Neil, Thomas Francis Dicksee, Dominico Tojetti, Madeleine Lemaire, W. G. Simmonds, etc. 

The subject not only has not suffered decline in popularity in the contemporary arts, but its interpretation has been broadened and a great number of contemporary artists have toyed within the Ophelian paradigm, often applying the bricolage technique. Check out, for instance, George Steeves, Desiree Doloron, Angelo Cricchi, Marlene Dumas, Victor Burgin, Elly Strik, Marilène Oliver, Steven Graber, Pipilotti Rist, Iris van Dongen, Tom Hunter, Erzsébet Baerveldt, Gregory Crewdson, Anne Wenzel, Anouk De Clercq, Krien Clevis, Delphine Courtillot, Amie Dicke, Jason Beam, Juul Kraijer, Erik Odijk, William B. Hand, Justine Kurland, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Elisabet Stienstra, etc.

(Angelo Cricchi)

(Victor Burgin)

(George Steeves)

Besides, there are undeniable Ophelian influences, for instance, on PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love (1995) album cover art, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Kylie Minogue's "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (1995) music video and single cover art.

Moreover, fashion photographers have recently taken to the subject as well.

(Vogue November 2011)

(Vogue Korea April 2007)

(Vogue Japan March 2009)

And, interestingly, the (death) scene has often been moved into the private space of a bathtub.

 (Eleanor Hardwick)

(Sophia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello)

(Ayten Alpun)

Furthermore, Izima Kaoru in his photographic series Landscapes with a Corpse abandons the motif of the death by drowning and collaborates with beautiful young women (actresses and models) to develop their fantasy of "a perfect death", including location, clothing, and the manner of their death. Izima then constructs the scenes, and shoots a series of images of each scene from the panoramic to the close-up perspective [1].

Finally, Erik Odijk removes the beautiful woman from the picture and confronts us with her absence as the Ophelia in his "portrait" of Ophelia's death is no longer in view, having been absorbed by  the surrounding nature.

(Eric Odijk)

Im Wunderland

"Not a little fit, not a little fit sun sat in shed more mentally. 
Let us why, let us why weight, let us why winter chess, let us why way.
Only a moon to soup her, only that in the sell never never be the cocups nice be, shatter it they lay."

"A lake a single lake which is a pond and a little water any water which is an ant and no burning, not any burning, all this is sudden."

"A sad size a size that is not sad is blue as every bit of blue is precocious. A kind of green a game in green and nothing flat nothing quite flat and more round, nothing a particular color strangely, nothing breaking the losing of no little piece."

Pictures: Michael Sowa

Text: Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons

Shichinohe Masaru (*1959)

.

For more pictures by Shichinohe, see: http://www004.upp.so-net.ne.jp/maboroshi-cafe/index.htm

Chilly Chinese Contemporary Paintings

Chinese contemporary art is said to be one of the most exciting and diverse art scenes in the world. It ingeniously fuses expressionistic and realistic imagery with the grotesque, as well as it amalgamates collective, political, and personal statements, creating thereby uniquely turbulent worlds of the painted narratives... Cold Sweat?

(Zhang Xiaogang)

(Fang Li Jun)

(Zhao Bo)

(Li Li)

(Yue Minjun)

(Wang Ke)

For more Chinese contemporary artists, see: 

http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/

http://www.artscenechina.com/

http://www.newchineseart.com/

Josef Bolf's Childhood World of Anxiety

Only recently have I discovered obscure paintings by a contemporary Czech painter, Josef Bolf. Most of his pictures from 2006 onwards have been made by means of using a childly "naive" technique of scraping off of a layer of black drawing ink dabbed on a pink wax-crayoned layer. This technique by itself introduces the theme of childhood which is developed throughout. There is the surreal merging with the real, half-human and half-animal, comics stylization verging into prodigious precision, the spell of the omnipresence of ambivalence and disunity hovering over the world of childhood. There is no idealization, no safety, no carelessness, no innocence; there is perennial sense of depression and vulnerability and an obsessive longing for self-destruction. The pictured world seems to be conquered by sadness, anxiety, uprootedness, death and pain.

(Josef Bolf)