Jeff Wall--- the Dressing Poultry

        Over the last three decades Jeff Wall has redefined the photographic image in art. His stunning large-scale photographs exude the dramatic power of history painting with utterly contemporary subject matter (everyday scenes from modern life) and materials (colour transparencies in light boxes). Each of his photographic tableaux is meticulously constructed — in a process that the artist often compares to cinematography. The show at White Cube Mason's Yard consists of three large-scale colour transparencies mounted on aluminium light-boxes, and six black-and-white photographs. The most arresting light-box work is Dressing Poultry, in which three women process chicken carcasses in a cluttered barn on a small farm not far from Vancouver. It just looks like a snap from daily life of workers. The women laugh as they go about their gory business, loading headless chickens into a rickety plucking machine, before transferring their denuded corpses to a table. To the left, six hunks of pink and pimply flesh hang from a rope. This Brueghelesque scene with the caricatured ‘happily working class’ is about their everyday business.

       Wall is famous for grand tableaux— carefully staged, precisely lit and, since the late 1980s, digitally adjusted. He has been known to spend almost two years on a single picture. But in this case, he paid the farm-hands to let him document their work and refrained from digitally manipulating the image. 

Visual Analysis of Last Judgment by Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico: Last Judgment

      The Last Judgment done in 1435 by Fra Angelico depicts the scene that God is making the judgment on the souls. The scene on the panel takes place at the dawn, implicated by the varied sky color from the deep blue on the top, full of shinning stars, to the white color at the end of the road in the middle. The sky also cuts the painting into upper and lower level; while, a long road to the vanishing point divides the lower level into left and right two parts.

      All figures shown in the painting are simple and are in a natural sitting. Most of them face to the upper center, which calls our attention to the one with the golden emanative ray around him sitting in the center--- the Christ. He is looking down to the lower level in a gesture with his right palm up and left hand downward. There is a row of angles flying around him and in a relatively small size, compared with the Christ. Three angles right down to the Christ hold horns with them, and two of them bow their bodies to extend the horns to the lower level. Around the angels are 28 Saints in different colors of mantles sitting on both right and left sides to the Christ. Two among them sit closer to the Christ, showing their specialness from others, are the Virgin Mary in a pure white mantle on the left and the Baptists St. John on the right.

      Moving to the lower level, Heaven on the right and Hell on the left are separated from each other by a road with several black holes. The whole paradise is like a garden with flowers everywhere. People near the road are looking upwards to God and are praying in Zen gestures. Some people hugs with others and some are led into the garden. In the garden, people are dancing in a circle composition. Everything in Heaven shows the harmony. Far to the end of Heaven, two judged souls are flying into a door with the golden outward ray, which connects to the ray around God.

      By contrast, people in the other side stand back toward the road and are forced to Hell. By the gesture with the up body forwards to the front and the feet stick on the ground, the figures show their unwillingness to Hell. After getting in the door of the hell, the whole space is divided into 5 horizontal levels. Different from the big open space in Heaven, the figures are squeezed in a close space. The whole space is on fire and people in each level are in different punishments. Moreover, people in Hell, contrast to those in Heaven, are naked and some of them are even tied by ropes.  At the bottom of Hell, a big Damn is eating people. The blood leading from his mouth and the pain expressed on the faces of people in Damn’s hand engage viewers into the horrible scene. 

       Angelico uses several factors to connect the three parts in the painting. First, as discussed above, the shinning ray from the door at far right in Heaven is related to the ray around God. In addition, the horn extended to the lower level associates these two levels. One more thing is the white light shown at the end of the road. This is in relation to the white pigments under the Saints, which shows that canonized people bring the light to everyone and each should be under a judgment to their fates. The whole religious panel engages all the viewers to the sacred moment. By showing the realistic torments in hell, viewers are persuaded to behavior in a good manner to get into heaven.

Surrealism in Photography

Man Ray---Return to Reason 1923

Surrealism was a movement in the art and intellectual activities, which is emerged after World War I. Andre Breton was the founder of the surrealistic concepts. Surrealism in photography has really important impact on the development of photography. Differ from the conventional forms; surrealist arts don’t have a specific shape or idea. It can be the expression of basic human instinct and the unconscious mind. Man Ray and Lee Miller are the two successful surrealism photographer who have overcome the limitations of photography to create surrealistic images. Maurice Tabard is another famous one by applying his own technique for surrealistic imaging. Surrealist photographs are described as the images, which symbolically represent dreams, nightmares, sexual ecstasy and madness. Photography is really a difficult media for showing surrealism ideas. It records the reality, but the real images cannot be sufficient to illustrate such unconventional patterns. However, most famous surrealist photographers have fulfilled the task since they can use the photographic techniques effectively. The influences of Surrealism within photography have been far reaching. In later time, part of the photographers were interested in how the camera can simultaneously record everyday reality and probe beneath its surface to reveal new possibilities of meaning.