Gordon Bennett Essay

The following contemporary artists both(prenominal) represent their works in a post-modern frame. Post-modern roll in the hay include irony and paradox, appropriation and pastiche and intersexuality. Gordon Bennett and Fiona Hall run across into one of these categories. Bennetts pain toiletg Outsider, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 1988 is a violent painting using appropriation of Vincent cutting edge van Goghs artwork, and the treatment of aboriginals in todays society. Fiona Halls work of the Nelumbo nucisera, lotus, elum, thamarei, aluminium and steel, 1999 is made up of a sardine tin rolled d accept revealing a bare stomach, and plant leaves.Bennetts work can be seen as post-modern as Bennett takes Van Goghs famous images and recreates them in his own manner. Bennetts painting Outsider, is a violent painting using appropriation of Vincent Van Goghs artwork Vincents Bedroom in Arles, 1888 and Starry Night, 1889, and the treatment of aboriginals in todays society. He fits into the category of appropriation where he uses some others work in a new context, with the intention of mend its core. He seizes copies and replaces the original imagery of Gough, by interpreting it in his own way. He uses cultural aspects of aboriginal art and is in search for meaning and identity.Bennett identifies with the world through deal, events and issues involving the aboriginal people. His work is political about both Aboriginal and European-Australian history. It helps him and his people to redress the disparity between the two cultures. some(prenominal) of his views about Aboriginal culture have been understandably formulated from a European perspective. His shocking, violent and traumatic work was painted while Bennett was whitewash at art school. The painting raises many issues from Aboriginal deaths in clench to Bennetts feeling of isolation. Frustration is also evident with the send wordion that it can lead people to suicide or self-mutilation, as in the bailiwick of both Van Gogh and the catch in the picture.The Aboriginal figure complete with ceremonial paint is frustrated and confused, that his stage explodes, with blood whirl into Van Goghs turbulent sky. The classical heads with eyes closed, whitethorn relate to Europe, or the famous Greek marbled heads, blind to the consequences of its actions and reluctant to acknowledge the blood on its hands. They are humming or pipe dream to block out the exploding head. Bennett figuratively displays his own dilemma of violently contest genealogies. The hands on the figure reach towards or draw external from the closed eyed heads on the bed. The red hands on the ring represent the hands of the white people. It may suggest that the white people are caught red handed by the way they react to the damage figure.The red in the painting is strong and contrasting with the other innate(p) tones the same red is taken from the bed cover, and used in the handprints on the wall and the blood on the wri sts and neck of the figure. The window seems to be a window to the dark swirls of the night, which may represent death. The figures head is almost exploding into the dark metaphysical zone, here drawn from Starry Night. For Van Gogh the starry night was a forbidding of death and egress to an ultimate peace for which he longed. Bennet seems to deliberately take on this same theme. The dots, dashes and roundels in Bennetts starry night may suggest Western Desert Aboriginal paintings.