Can recontextualised ideas be contemporary.

Modern culture is being increasingly influenced by historical and iconic pieces of art, through their context and composition and there can be an uncanny resemblance between two works although they were produced at such different times and by completely different people. It is also more apparent that this is also happening in things such as advertising and the media where artists and companies are taking old pieces of art and changing the subject to create something we instantly recognise but we may not know how, it can also create a completely new meaning to the original piece of work by just changing its composition.

For example here you can see clearly the extremely strong link between these two pieces. The first being L’Origine du Monde (the origins of the world) by Gustave Courbet painted in1866, the female form representing reproduction and the carrier of new life which links cleverly with The Origins of the World, however the second piece The Origins of War by Orlan which was taken in 1989 explores the controversial idea that man is the bringer and instigator of war or anger. I felt that using photography for this piece shows a more pornographic and much more shocking take on Courbet’s rather more soft and beautiful painting using oil. This idea of man linked with war has been around for hundreds of years, and has been used in thousands of paintings, normally christening the man a hero, paying homage to him. Yet I believe that Orlan has conveyed this in a negative and sexist way especially when the two paintings are compared as it is much more shocking and almost grotesque in its composition. The penis being the for front of the piece shows not only the sex but implies that war is being led by genitals and testosterone rather than their head.

These two pieces work are only a small representation of how two pieces that, at first glance, can be so similar yet with different context and manipulation of the title they can mean complete opposites, and this can be seen reoccurring everywhere in the media today showing that changes to a previous work can make it drastically contemporary not only because of the time it was made in but the way it has.

Notions of Origonality.

Nowadays originality can be a misinterpretation, many pieces of new art and media can be stemmed back to work made centuries ago. This shows how important research and key knowledge really is, as inspiration may be one thing compared to ‘copying’ a piece you had previously seen.

Here is Theodore Gericault and his painting The raft of Medusa painted in 1818, a very romantic painting. In comparison is Chinese artist Hu Jieming’s piece also named the raft of medusa made in 2002. Using heavy photo manipulation puts a new spin on Gericault’s 1818 piece, yet you can clearly see the large resemblance between the two.

Gericault’s work creates a heroic and romantic scene, however Jiemings photos are a opinion on Chinese culture and suppression of Chinese youth, combining black and white photos of traditional Mao uniforms in comparison to the vibrant photos of a modern generation. Although these two pieces are similar in their composition, their meaning, context and the mediums used to create them couldn’t be any less similar, and so creating two almost ‘original’ works of art because of their strong difference.