I'm Back! Jack & Dinos Chapman - Doll Obsession

Yes after my break I am back!  Technically I have been back a week however I have not yet had a moment to write this.  I discussed in my previous post-Jack and Dinos Chapman briefly so I wanted to go into more detail here - as my work is definitely going to be using the doll that I posted. 

Jack & Dinos Chapman by Rachel King (2018) Source: Blain Southern

Jack and Dinos Chapman use many dolls, dummies, models and mannequins in their work -these all create the disturbing nature of their work as these dolls all look so human yet are not human - why does a child love a doll because it is like a human companion it has eyes that look  back at you and although the flesh maybe plastic it represents us/you. This work below Forehead (1997)  is a disturbing idea of a woman with four heads and a play on the word 'forehead'  There is a humour to all of the Chapmans work. Kupper writes in his article on The Chapmans; 'The Chapman brothers create works that are artifacts of this existential catastrophe of our own making. But what people most misunderstand about the Chapman brothers is that their work is hilarious – a laugh riot, an obscene and brilliant joke. If you don’t laugh, you are missing the point all together.' (Kupper 2017)

Artist: Jake and Dinos Chapman (British) Title: Forehead , 1997 Medium: fibreglass, resin, pigment, wigs and training shoes

Looking at the work of The Chapmans is supposed to be challenging and what is clear that what they create is created out of our world which is chaotic, disturbing, and at times hateful, sickening and funny.  The Sum of All Evil encompasses all these ideas and by looking at this work there is a monumental quality to it and as I consider this in relation to my own work I do think my army of dolls now have more direction - there is much more I can achieve by using them - I like the repetition of them, their face over and over again in a landscape, maybe they can talk to God, or have a spiritual revelation or maybe it will be a digital breakdown - I can't wait to see how my army develops! Just as below the feet of God stand above the destruction and He is destroyed in this nightmare vision!

Holy war … detail from the Chapman brothers’ The Sum of All Evil – part of In The Realm of the Unmentionable at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings. Photograph: Felix Clay

References

Kupper, Oliver Maxwell (30th January 2017) Autre, Brothers Grim:An Interview of Dinos Chapman on the power of Humour and Violence [Online] Available from: https://autre.love/interviewsmain/2017/1/30/brothers-grim-an-interview-of-dinos-chapman (Accessed 04/0819)

Jones. J (24th October 2014) The Guardian,Jake and Dinos Chapman review – a hilarious, horrifying orgy of darkness [Online] Available From;  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/24/jake-dinos-chapman-review-hastings-jerwood-gallery-realm-unmentionable (Accessed 04/08/19)