The artist I chose this week is Loretta Lux. Ever since we lightly perused her works in class, they have really stuck out in my mind as being almost scary, but also fascinating. They're portraits, but they're not average portraits. They employ you to look deeper.
The works of Loretta Lux are, like I said, a bit scary while also being fascinating. I don't just look at the children and think, "My goodness, theses are beautiful children." At least those aren't my first thoughts. Instead, I see very plain faces with little background. Nothing distracts my eye. They're simple. The children look like maybe they've suffered, yet survived, horrible events. It's as if everything has gone cold and all the happiness in the world has been sucked out. You don't want to look at it too long, and if you do (for me at least) I feel like they can see into my soul.
Perhaps this is why they evoke more than one emotion. They're children. Innocent and pure. Yet, you look at them and every question in the world comes to mind. I want to know who they are and who they belong to. Loretta Lux also puts an interesting feature on her subjects. Their bodies are not anatomically correct. Their heads seem twice as big as they should be. Also, the heads she uses don't always quite match the body on which it sits. Why is that? I'm not sure what sense that makes, but maybe that's the point. I'm not sure. Doing this definitely makes you look harder at the subjects and, for me, wonder what it is that they want. Their blankness consumes my every thought when I look at them. I never have an answer for them. Just questions.
Perceptive comments. You've done a good job pinpointing an important aspect: the discord in these images. On one hand we have these doll-like idealized statements of innocence and purity, yet something is horribly wrong! The dead-pan expressions, perhaps amplified by the enlarged eyes, seem emptied of soul or individuality. Creepy!
ReplyDelete