ArtAndDesignWithMatthewButcher: Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis: Titian 2012:

This multi-arts project, part of the Cultural Olympiad's London 2012 Festival, draws on the powerful stories of change found in Titian’s masterpieces, revealing how these spectacular paintings continue to inspire living artists.
A multi-faceted experience celebrating British creativity across the arts, ‘Metamorphosis: Titian 2012’ brings together a group of specially commissioned works responding to three of Titian’s paintings – Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon and the recently acquired Diana and Callisto – which depict stories from Ovid’s epic poem ‘Metamorphoses’. The three paintings, displayed at the heart of the exhibition, are seen together for the first time since the 18th century.

Diana, Callisto and Philip II

Metamorphosis Titan 2012

Tiziano Vecelli, known as Titan in english was an Italian Renicance painter in the 1500's. He created a series of paintings based around the story of Diana and Actaeon. The tale is about a hunter who when lost in the woods stumbles upon the god Diana as she bathes, angered by this she turns Actaeon into a stag, resulting in him being killed by the hounds he raised.

In this project I had to create a piece of artwork in the theme of the tale or thee theme of Metamorphosis itself. I began with the idea of taxidermy as it was a practice that interested me.

I had the idea of three pieces of taxidermy that were placed on a pillar, like so...

(Excuse the use of microsoft paint, I dont have Photoshop) I began with a few mackets to show how my piece could be possibe.

I worked in a range of materials to begin with to see which one would work best, I eventually decided to work with paper mache as it made strong yet light casts that were still easy to manipulate.

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Whilst working on the stag head for my taxidermy style pieces I attatched the paper cast of the snout I made from clay to a cast of my face as I felt it would make the sculpting of it much easier, however, due to this it made the cast fit perfectly to my face with took me towards the idea of costume.

I decided to look at a variety of latex 3D animal masks to inspire my stag and hound masks.

I liked the idea of a realistic full face mask and wanted to re create this effect with my paper mache casts.

Once I had made the base of the face I began to texture it with mulch to create a matted fur effect I then began adding more shape to the nose and eyes of the hound

Unfourtunetly after a lot of thought I decided against this idea as costume was something completely unfamiliar to me and I was unsure on the best way to tackle it.

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After my brief experementation with costume I fell back to familiar teritories and worked with sculpture again. I began looking at the form of the stag in more detail as this was something I struggled with previously.

I decided to create a slotted fraim of a stag, I was inspired to work like this due to some work I did earlier this year on 2D to 3D sculpture and the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman, namingly their dinosaurs.

I began my piece by drawing out the outlines of each piece on grey board and then cutting it out and assembeling it. However, I was not completely happy with the blank greyboard and wanted to add a mor engaging design to it. I wanted to encorporate illustration to the piece as well and looked towards the style of one of my favourite illustrators Tom.J.Newell.

Yet again, after a large group decision I decided against this as it was drifting away from the theme of the project and I had to quickly jump to a new project that could hit the theme, take it down a new rout and incorporate my interest for illustration.

In the end I decided upon a physical way to tell the story, I wanted to make a cast of a torso and print tattoo flash that would tell the tale of Actaeon through visual imagery.

I began by looking at flash work before creating my own.