Body Dysmorphia in Art

 @gagosian. We're all a bit insecure let's face it.  Some hate those extra few pounds they can now grab around their waist after gorging themselves on kebabs or necking copious amounts of Carling. Others are at war with their skin and some just hate everything about themselves. If you fall into the final category, it might be worth seeking some professional help.
Whatever it is, most of us are obsessed with the way we look. And we could be forgiven for being like this - just look at the airbrushed beauties that we are presented with, day after day, billboard after TV ad,
magazine after shop window.  Models, printed out to god-like proportions, silently screaming 'you want to look like me!', across our cities, through our TV sets and from the glossy sheets. So when we don't quite match up to these airbrushed gods we turn resentful  and play out an endless battle of self loathing and image fueled purchasing of new clothes and beauty products.  Dove's viral ad, 'Onslaught', a few years ago represented this idea beautifully.  And if you were deluding yourself that people actually look like 'that' in real life, the 'Evolution' ad demonstrates how, with a good camera set and Photoshop skills, you can turn plain-Jane into a stunner.

Let's get back to art.  Jenny Saville is fascinated by this idea of self-image and its physical representation. Producing works in the style of Bacon, Freud and Rubens she creates fleshly, larger than life, oil-painted visions of bodies and self-disgust.  Although her focus is the female form she often undermines the sex/gender boundaries in her pieces.  In the early 90's she spent hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York and admits "Bodies fascinate me. I find having the framework of a body essential. Having flesh as a central subject, I can channel a lot of ideas."  Her paintings, while they are grotesque in the bodily representation, superbly capture the grimy reality and extreme of body dysmorphia. The viewer is left repulsed in appreciation of these images that are in stark contrast to those on the advertising billboards around the corner - ironically hinting at exactly the same thing.

Latest Exhibition
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-04-15_jenny-saville/


Dove 'Onslaught'
Greenpeace 'Onslaught-er'
Dove 'Evolution'

On To The Next One

So what happened to all the women with barely any clothes on, prancing about, grinding against their singing 'pimps'?
Jay-Z has broken the mold on this one by bringing in Director Sam Brown.  He's directed a couple of Foo Fighters tracks (The Pretender, Wheels) as well as The Verve's Love is Noise.  This video for Jay-Z's single (Feat Swizz Beatz) 'On to the Next One' from the Blueprint III is a visual treat and surely one of his finest productions to date.  Black and white, sleek and edgy, grungey and gothic, stylized and clean, surreal and oppressive, this video is a piece of art that you'll watch over and over again. The Damien Hirst skulls dripping with paint, the fiery basketballs, the ink in water and visualised beats all hooked up to an awesome track have made this one of the finest and progressive videos I've seen for ages.

Watch:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1RChZk1EU
Sam Brown: http://www.flynnproductions.com/music/director/sam_brown/bio/

Phi and the Golden Ratio

φ

It sounds like it might be Roald Dahl's unreleased sequel to James and the Giant Peach, but it's not.
Is it the answer to our aesthetic dreams?  Well maybe, but whatever it is, this number has fascinated mathematicians, architects and artists for millenia now, so it must mean something right?
I don't really get maths but this has something to do with the proportions of two quantities:

"two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to (=) the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one"

Ok, so I don't get it but it's interesting because it's eveywhere.  Not only does it seem to be part of the design of nature, but it's consciously or unconsciously shaped many of the greatest pieces of art and architecture around us.  Some dimensions of the Acropolis, the Pantheon, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Great Mosque of Kairouan have it, Salvador Dali used it in his  'Sacrament of the Last Supper'.  Da Vinci's illustrations in De Divina Proportione and The Vitruvian man exhibit it, and it is expressed in the structure of branches, the stems of plants and even the veins in their leaves.

So I wonder, is it in the design of your iPod?

Remember it when you're designing your next building, painting your next painting or measuring your next garment...does it look better now?

φ = 1.6180339887...