Michel Foucault Series

It is Michel Foucault (1926-1984) who made us aware of the processes in which humans, their behavior and expectations are all subject to normalization. To use a more coarse word: repression may be detected everywhere.  He is also called Saint Michel Foucault, but let me doubt that. I like to think he was utterly human.

There may not always be a way to avoid normalization or repression, yet there is the possibility to address it. I did so in this series, created 2011-2013, featuring the portrait of Michel Foucault as an act of gratitude to him. His oeuvre will not end, but it will be a fertilizer for ideas as well as works that will grow on his legacy. 

This is a sequel to the blog of August 10, 2011

Go. Don’t stop. Go!	Life implies differentiation
Fate happens, you act	Ending oppression is not yet liberation

4 Works on A4-paper, acrylic paint and spray-paint / stencil, Indian ink, pencil.The stencil is abstracted from the famous photograph made in Berlin in the late 1970s.

sjabloon en spuitbus / stencil and spray-paint

Het gebruik van sjabloon en spuitbus is populair onder grafitty-kunstenaars. Het is een snelle werkwijze die vanwege het zwart-wit contrast doorgaans krachtige beleden oplevert. In Groot-Brittannië is de straatkunstenaar Banksy actief (zijn paspoortnaam is niet bekend). Op zijn website vind je afbeeldingen van zijn werk met milde en humoristische commentaren op de omgeving. In Nederland maakt Hugo Kaagman decoratieve, relativerende muurschilderingen die op een website te zien zijn. In België is onlangs werk opgedoken van Walter Swennen, die ook wel sjablonen gebruikt als beeldende techniek. Dat was enkele tientallen jaren niet te zien geweest. Ga daarvoor naar het SMAK in Gent.

Ikzelf gebruik sjablonen en spuitbus als een low-tech grafische techniek, waardoor gemakkelijk multipels en variaties op een thema zijn te maken.
Meer in het volgende blog.

Anonymus, Berlin 2011

Anonymus, Venice, 2009

Banksy, reproduced on a flyer

 (Illlustraties: in hun natuurlijke milieu gevonden / found in their natural environment)

Among graffiti artists, the use of stencil and spray-paint is popular. It is a quick procedure that, because of the black-white contrast usually generates powerful images.  The street artist Banksy is active In Great Britain (we do not know the name in his passport). His website presents reproductions of his work that deliver mild and witty comments on the environment they are put in.

In the Netherlands, Hugo Kaagman produces decorative, not too serious murals, also presened at a website.  Recently work of Walter Swennen resurfaced, after being stowed away for several dozens of years. Now it is in SMAK, Ghent.

I myself put spray-paint and stencil to use as a low-tech technique, that enables me to make multiples and variations on a theme easily. 

More in the next blog.

Mimicry II

Evolution,  for those who can see II, spraypaint and watercolour, 2013 (ca. A4)   

The stencil presented in the previous blog entry was printed with sprauypaint.  The images of “peppered moths” were hightlighted with  watercolour.

Die Schablone, welche im vorigen Blog-Bericht präsentiert würde, ist in Sprüfarbe ausgeführt worden. Die Bilder der  “Birkenspanner“ sind mit Wasserfarbe markiert worden. 

Mimicry

Ernst Haeckel, portraint, Stencil design , 2012  (A4)

EN

This is a recent black-and-white design for a stencil of the portrait of Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919), zoologist from Jena University.  He nurtured an ardent advocacy for reform in many fields of life because of the Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Simultaneoulsy, the image demonstrates the phenomenon of mimicry.

DE

Dieses ist ein rezenter  schwarz-weiss Entwurf einer Schablone des Portraits von Ernst Haeckel (1834 -1919), Zoologe der Jenaer Universität. Wegen Darwins Evolutionstheorie möchte er sich leidenschaftlich befürworten für Reform auf vielen Lebensgebieten.

Dieses Bild zeoght gleizeitig das Phänomen der Mimicry.

NL
Voor u allen een gelukkig en gezond 2013 gewenst

Polyclonia frondosa

Polyclonia frondosa   (B 237),  2012. Wash of  Indian Ink
(38 x 27 cm)

De winterdag met weinig helder licht is geschikt voor grafisch werk. 

Hierbij  een studie in gewassen Oost-Indische inkt.

Winter, when bright light is scarce, is the time to take up graphical work.

Herewith a study in a wash of Indian Ink

Bell Jar - Glazen Stolp

The glass models were to be used as museum exhibits. In order to emphasize this  circumnstance, I did this illustration in  pen and wash of Indian ink.  It depicts a female individual of the jellyfish species Carmarina hastata (B 139) under a bell jar.

Bell jar with glass model of Carmanina hastata  [female] (B 139) , 2012. Pen and wash of Indian ink (29x17 cm)

De glasmodellen zijn bedoeld als museale objecten. Om deze hoedanigheid te benadrukken, maakte ik deze illustratie in een tekening van gewassen Oost Indische inkt.  Het stelt een vrouwelijk individu van de kwal Carmarina hastata (B 139) onder een glazen stolp voor.

Evolution is looking at you

Evolution was at work when eyespots eventually appeared on the wings of butterflies and moths. This trick was so successful, that it was repeated over and over again. Eyespots are a form of mimicry in which a spot on an animal body resembles an eye of a different animal, helping to deceive potential predators. This is evolution following evolution: eyespots developed only when the evolution of eyes themselves was well underway. Depicted is a selection of eye-spotted Lepidoptera. They sit on an ancient oak tree that, as a symbol of the evolutionary tree, was borrowed from Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s ardent German propagandist.

Evolution is looking at you
   2012, watercolour (39 x 27 cm)

 Images of butterflies and moths are based on:
1 (Upper) Common Buckeye / Junonia coenia 
2 (Centre, left) Io moth / Automeris io 
3 (Centre, right) ( A Saturnid)  / Automeris egeus
4 (Bottom, left) Owl butterfly / Caligo teucer
5 (Bottom, right) Polyphemus Moth / Antheraea polyphemus