EVEN DWARVES 1987
Jock McFadyen (1950 – )
Details
- Dimension
- 198.2 X 134.6 CM
- Media
- OIL ON CANVAS
- Accession number
- P5563
Summary
This is one of a small group of paintings, which could be installed as a series, each depicting a scene near McFadyen’s home – a wall, an open space and a high-rise block of flats. In a letter dated October 1997 the artist wrote that the painting was ‘prompted by Herzog’s film Even Dwarves Started Small, in title as least… Briefly the dwarves are metaphors for the smallness of people whose relationship to their surroundings is that of a ‘victim’; the fact that this is permanent and insurmountable; the image of project housing as a zoo; the expressiveness of graffiti; (all of this) is consistent with themes in my painting (of the time). What (was) new, is the staging… of the ‘characters’ in the scene reminiscent of the graveyard sequence from Plague of the Zombies (1966).’
Cries & Whispers New Works for the British Council Collection , The British Council 1988
Glossary
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Film
A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.
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Painting
Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.