Rose Wylie (1934 – )
Bagdad Cafe (Film Notes) 2015
Rose Wylie (1934 – )
Details
- Dimension
- 182 x 372 cm
- Media
- oil on canvas
- Accession number
- P8603
Summary
Rose Wylie (born Kent 1943) studied at Folkestone and Dover School of Art, and at the Royal College of Art. Her work is centred on painting and drawing and is inspired by wide-ranging sources from antiquity to celebrity gossip. Wylie paints bold and loosely-painted canvases, often working from memory and including text. Her compositions and repeated motifs recall collage and filmic framing devices. Bagdad Café is one of Wylie’s ongoing ‘Film Notes’ series, depicting and distilling remembered cinematic moments which have made a visual impression on her.
“Bagdad Café is one of my on-going film-series of paintings; it 'amalgams' the whole idea, rather than one particular visual shot. The preliminary drawings were done on old torn-out diary pages: they give a number-based metaphysical feel to the painting when included with the wild flowers on the left and right; while the 'disarming' girl in the middle is a 'merge' of the two main stars, Marianne Sagebrecht and CCH Pounder. The spoon, mouth and coffee suggest 'cafe'.
The film anyway, I see as an exploration of Shakespeare's Tempest, complete with 'shipwreck', and the conflict of intuition, music, and magic with knowledge; there is as well, a painting thrown in by Jack Palance… primitive, memorable, and strongly in the 'plot’.
The 'pleated white frock' is a swap for the good brown pleated suit 'Jasmin' wears in the film, and her iconic feather has morphed into the green leaf (of the very enlarged pink Convolvulous) on top of her head. This pink Convolvulous also suggests gramaphone/music and from the film, J S Bach…great, and unexpected.” Rose Wylie, in correspondence, 2016.
Glossary
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Collage
The two-dimensional form of assemblage made by affixing paper, card, photographs, fabric and other objects to a flat surface. It is often combined with painting and drawing techniques. This technique was first introduced by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1912 during their phase of synthetic cubism.
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Drawing
The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.
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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.