Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi 3 2011. Tate. © Wilhelm Sasnal, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ.
12 rooms in Media Networks
Witness contemporary painters who use images from the mass media as a source of inspiration
The invention of photography prompted speculation about the future of painting and whether this ancient medium remained relevant. But nearly two hundred years later artists continue to explore the possibilities of making images with paint. For many the flood of images from film, television, newspapers, social media and the internet has proved rich material for exploring the nature of representation.
In transforming mass-media images artists may use the physical qualities of paint to affect our response. Many have also been influenced by techniques from film and photography, zooming in or cropping to edit out unwanted information and bring new meaning to their subject.
Rendering similar subjects in contrasting ways, with different scales, techniques and compositions draws our attention to the process of painting and the impact of the choices that an artist makes. At the same time, these works might also prompt us to reflect on our ordinary habits of looking at everyday photographic images, and at the world.
Francis Bacon, Figure in a Landscape 1945
This painting is thought to be based on a photograph of Bacon’s lover Eric Hall wearing a flannel suit dozing on a seat in Hyde Park. A substantial section of the body has been overpainted, suggesting a black void. An open mouth can be discerned speaking into microphone, a detail that may have derived from photographs of Nazi leaders giving speeches. The pastoral setting is therefore contrasted with the intimations of organised political violence, making this an early example of Bacon’s combination of aggression and everyday mundane reality.
Gallery label, July 2010
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artworks in Painting and Mass Media
Rita Donagh, Counterpane 1987–8
This painting is based on a newspaper photograph of a bandsman killed or wounded in the 1982 IRA Regent’s Park bomb. Donagh situates the newspaper image in a dream-like space, which dissolves in the upper right of the canvas into the picture plane. The figure is shrouded with the artist’s own patchwork quilt, providing her own literal and metaphorical ‘coverage’ of the victim.
Gallery label, September 2004
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artworks in Painting and Mass Media
Charline von Heyl, Untitled 2011
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artworks in Painting and Mass Media
Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi 2 2011
Gaddafi 2 is one of three paintings by Sasnal based on images that emerged in the media following the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Here he homes in on a group of rebel fighters, apparently looking down onto the corpse, which cannot be seen due to the close cropping of the image. One of the figures appears to be filming the event. Due to the increased availability of mobile technology, significant moments in history are now routinely captured by bystanders and posted online. Sasnal further mediates such images by translating them into paintings.
Gallery label, February 2016
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artworks in Painting and Mass Media
Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi 1 2011
Painter and film-maker Wilhelm Sasnal uses photographs as a starting point for his work. Whether finding them by chance or seeking them out on the internet, he selects images he sees as open to interpretation. His three paintings based on broadcast coverage of the killing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi – made the same year – demonstrate how painterly concerns such as scale, technique and composition transform our relation to the image. Here Sasnal depicts the body of the deposed leader as an abstract mass of thickly applied paint to imply a visceral and violent death.
Gallery label, February 2016
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artworks in Painting and Mass Media
Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi 3 2011
The third and largest of Sasnal’s paintings relating to the death of Muammar Gaddafi shows both the Libyan dictator’s corpse and a group of onlookers. All but one of the figures have been rendered anonymous by the close cropping of the image so that only their bodies are visible. In this treatment of the subject, Sasnal seems to refer as much to art history as to history, evoking Andrea Mantegna’s fifteenth-century depiction of the dead Christ through the dramatic foreshortening of the corpse while also echoing the monumental scale of history painting.
Gallery label, February 2016
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artworks in Painting and Mass Media
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