Some thoughts on the Silhouette

Exerpts from  The Silhouette Thing, by Ray Hainer at Idiom Magazine"

“At some point, the silhouette thing is going to get really old,” a 28-year-old Walker told a newspaper reporter in 1997. “Right now, I think there are still places I can take it. But eventually I’ll have to move on to something else.”

"The silhouette has always been a crowd-pleaser."

"Years ago, an art historian in the process of assailing Walker for her “irresponsible” use of stereotypes observed that “the only good thing about her work is that it Xeroxes well.” She was right about the second part. Unlike paintings or installations, or even photography, Walker’s silhouettes can be reproduced in manifold sizes and settings without the telltale loss of fidelity that would call attention to their status as copies. When transferred to a banner or the pages of a newspaper, her monochrome figures’ crisp outlines and high contrast suppress the distance between artwork and ad, enabling the latter to live, and thrive, on its own terms. One could perhaps disagree about whether these are great artworks, but no one can deny their exceptional design or their quality as copy. In a flash the eye skips to and registers Walker’s images long before the critical faculties kick in, which may be one reason why considerable demand for her silhouettes persists among curators."

A very good article on silhouettes and Kara Walker. I love the days the internet is serendipitous like this. To once more shill for Bovey Lee's blog, if you take a look at her process shots, you can see there is a radical difference in the visual impacts of her pre-cut collages, and the final result. It's intense how different the two images are, given the similar composition.

There is something powerful and weighty about the act of making a papercut, which very much has to do with the starkness and the way that the ground behaves comparative to the figure. I'm very interested in these qualities. There is a heavy impact papercuts can have for me, I find that they end up restful to the eye, but still alluring in a way that allows me to return again and again to the same image. The lack of detail does certain very interesting things for my eye. I think if you look at screen or woodblock prints, they have some similar characteristics- they have a certain weight that has to do with the coloring and detail.  Paintings and drawings can have an impact, but they're subtler in a way that causes a different thing to happen in the brain when you look at them. The line and mark making take center stage, versus the image alone...the silhouette reads almost sculpturally for me.

Editor's note: Silhouette is a very hard word for me to spell.  

2 comments:

  1. What a timely... er... time for me to come across your blog! I have a pre-occupation with paper cuts and silhouettes and high contrast. Love Kara Walker's work. Let me know if I can bombard you with more such work that I love!

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  2. Please do! Thanks for checking me out!

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