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Lot Essay
The Whimper is the beginning. The long-established practice of appropriation art has taken a step further thanks to Jake and Dinos Chapman. Yet again the brothers Chapman have created and will continue to create artworks to subvert, engage and shock the viewer and the art world alike.
Following on from their untitled and 'improved' version of Francisco Goya's Disasters of War series, a monumental work based on an original portfolio of the Spanish artist's grotesque and incredibly powerful images of war, the Chapman Brothers have now entered the realms of a more modern art history. The subsequent paintings, of which The Whimper is one of the first, will take even further steps along the road that has been well-travelled by many artists throughout the two hundred years that separates us from Goya. What distinguishes this new series of works from the prints is the element of subversive humour. Using the most obvious source material, which they have had in their studio for some time, Jake and Dinos take a great masterpiece by Munch and turn it into something kitsch and funny. The Scream is one of the most recognisable images of 20th Century art, so much so that when a version was recently stolen and returned the headlines reverberated around the world. Unlike Warhol, another of Munch's great admirers, who silk-screened the original image entirely and only altered the colours, the brothers have turned the tortured central figure into a floppy-eared puppy. Here is a monumental retaliation against today's society, a society that is bombarded by an almost infinite resource of images and knowledge, that this image, so recognisable to us all, will only be noticed by the viewer as being different on second glance.
Following on from their untitled and 'improved' version of Francisco Goya's Disasters of War series, a monumental work based on an original portfolio of the Spanish artist's grotesque and incredibly powerful images of war, the Chapman Brothers have now entered the realms of a more modern art history. The subsequent paintings, of which The Whimper is one of the first, will take even further steps along the road that has been well-travelled by many artists throughout the two hundred years that separates us from Goya. What distinguishes this new series of works from the prints is the element of subversive humour. Using the most obvious source material, which they have had in their studio for some time, Jake and Dinos take a great masterpiece by Munch and turn it into something kitsch and funny. The Scream is one of the most recognisable images of 20th Century art, so much so that when a version was recently stolen and returned the headlines reverberated around the world. Unlike Warhol, another of Munch's great admirers, who silk-screened the original image entirely and only altered the colours, the brothers have turned the tortured central figure into a floppy-eared puppy. Here is a monumental retaliation against today's society, a society that is bombarded by an almost infinite resource of images and knowledge, that this image, so recognisable to us all, will only be noticed by the viewer as being different on second glance.