Introduction
Throughout the history of Western art, men and women have sought to immortalize themselves through portraits and grand history paintings. Kings and queens, the church, merchants and artists, too, all have so indulged themselves, frequently employing the symbols and stories of antiquity to enhance their stature. Not until the industrial revolution and the advent of the bourgeoisie would artists become Baudelaire’s painters of modern day life, depicting and elevating everyday people to the stature of a history painting.
In Canon, I call upon these traditions. Borrowing from the 19th century’s early avant-garde, I have chosen ordinary persons — housekeepers, doormen, fitness trainers and other conventional people. I have dressed them in the cloaks of Roman emperors and the finery of the European court. For each, I have chosen a painting from the canon of art to reflect the formal elements of the sitter’s face, posture or coloring. Using the techniques of the academics, I have given each sitter the licked finish of master portraits, occasionally mixing and morphing faces to achieve uncanny visual parallels. With no clue to distinguish them, portrayed against the canon of art, everyone is a giant. Canon thus celebrates the most far reaching conceptual development of our time — the democratization of the masses.
At the same time, Canon also rebels against the contemporary worship of the purely conceptual, for through these portraits, viewers transcend the art historical barriers of time. In depicting ordinary people as part of extraordinary paintings, we, the viewers, are carried into and out of master works of art. We imagine ourselves within a Velázquez, amidst the exoticism of Gauguin’s Tahiti, or as witness to David’s vision of antiquity.
By appropriating master paintings, Canon also blurs the line between photography and painting and challenges notions of the unique in art.