Decadence Now Paper

After visiting the Decadence Now exhibition, there were a number of interesting aspects that I found to be conveyed in the artists images. I thought the visit to the gallery was quite unique. The images presented at the gallery were a bit disturbing and not images you would normally see. The setting and the way the subjects were captured distinguish these images.

One of the artists that caught my attention from the museum was David LaChapelle’s art pieces “Amanda Lepore as Andy Warhol”. Being that I am a big fan of Andy Warhol’s art pieces, I liked the way David made a dramatic and unique approach to Warhol’s style of art. The lighting that was utilized in the images was both top lighting. The lighting seems to be artificial and that David possibly used hot lights. The lighting appears to be hard, contrast, and bold. The color of the light is hard to tell because of the bold colors in the background and the subject, but it appears to be coolish white. The subject of the image is positioned right in the center. Although the perspective of the subject was take straight on because it is a portrait. The subject who is suppose to be a mimic of Marilyn Monroe neck is leads you to her face in the image. It appears that David painted certain parts of the photo such as the shading and the make up around the subject’s ideas, which I find to be a clever strategy in his work. To mix painting and photography together I think is a great approach and I like the way it comes together in the image. Also the subject who is a similar to Marilyn Monroe lips and nostrils of her nose seem larger in proportion to the rest of the face. I think he was trying to convey a message from this.  The images seem to dramatize what we see as beautiful or attracted to in society. Also I think the image illustrates how some woman try to change their appearance to look like someone else with the use of plastic surgery. The picture is placed in the context of other pop culture pictures. I think that David’s images still connect to all the other images in the gallery because it has not the norm of appearances and is a bit chilling. Overall I like David LaChappelle’s images and the way he depicts pop culture.

Another art piece that stood out in the exhibition was “Elegance and Perversity” by Erwin Olaf. This image is supposed to be a picture of Princess Diana. I love the quality of detail in the image. The lighting is front lighting and looks like Erwin used artificial light. This is seen; if you look at the subject’s eyes you can see that there is hot lamps. The color of the light appears to be about 5,500 Kelvin, which is a cool white. The subject, Princess Diana is positioned in the middle of the picture. I think that Erwin did a nice job of using rule of thirds and leading lines in this picture because the subject’s arm is placed in the bottom right corner and leads the viewer to the subjects face. Also there is even distribution of the space around the subject. The part of the image that even jumped out at me was the Mercedes Benz emblem that punctured her arm. This was most likely done because the car she was driven in before she died was a Mercedes Benz. Also the blood in the image is placed in just few certain places and not shown all across her body. This is interesting because it is laid out evenly and looks like it was placed in certain areas while the rest of her body is untouched. I thought the meaning of the image was to show Princess Diana posing maybe after she died. But after looking on Erwin Olafs website, he mentions that this collection of photos was “…depicting the vengeful nature of members of the aristocracy who have suffered unsavory deaths.” (Biography, erwinolaf.com) This supports my assumptions as to the meaning of the image.

Overall I think these images two artists both captured two very famous people in different ways to convey different messages. I think that they both artist utilized some of the qualities we learn from class and did a nice job of presenting there image.