nutshells

drawings and observations by Zosienka the London illustrator

Tuesday 14 July 2009

Saint Fabiola

At the National Portrait Gallery, the artist Francis Alÿs is displaying hundreds of portraits depicting Saint Fabiola. Each portrait is a copy of the nineteenth century painting by Jean-Jacques Henner, which ironically was lost in 1912. Now all that remains is this cloud of interpretations.
But it's an unusual sensation being surrounded by these heads and following her gaze from one Fabiola to the next. I felt very serene.
This makes sense. Once I had a concept for a record that one song be written; a simple song, a few chords, and lyrics that could come from the mouth of anyone. Then for the score to be distributed amongst musicians spanning every living genre, so the album would playback a collection of vastly different translations of the same melody. Say, a choral version followed by heavy drum and bass.
Has it been done?
In visual terms Francis Alÿs is somewhere close. It's always been of interest to me what people notice when looking at the same thing. When I had cosmetic surgery and came out looking more like the groke than ever before, I felt considerably transformed. A reasonable percentage of my visitors couldn't tell my features had changed, while the rest claimed they'd have walked right past me in the street. Curious no? So I realised that the inside can be more noticeable than the outside.




Gather your umbrella's and RUN to Fabiola

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