Who Dissected Roger Rabbit (2007)
The function of art is to disturb. Science reassures.
--Georges Braque
Andrea Yates believed that cartoon characters told her she was a bad mother who fed her children too much candy...
--Court TV News
For some reason, disembowelment and bloodshed is a helluva lot funnier when it's animated. We have no idea why. It's just the way it is.
--Atom Films
This image has, well, guts.
There's been quite a bit of talk on this blog about breaking the traditional assumptions that fractal art is grounded in an aesthetics of beauty. Fractals are abstract. So how can they "mean" anything? And, if they are non-referential, does this imply they can only be wildly pleasing to the eye? Exhibit A: Another saturated spiral explodes from its slick paper as one turns over each new month in a Fractal Universe calendar.
Still, there has also been plenty of talk here lately about "ugly" fractals. Fractals "with dirty faces." Fractals that refuse to be eye candy. Fractals that assault rather than soothe the senses.
Is my image today in bad taste? Or merely a comment on the exaggerated violence found in many cartoons. After all, a far worse fate usually awaits Tom in every Tom and Jerry short. Lawnmowers shaving him from tail to skull. A falling iron transforming the top of his head into a landing strip.
Wile E. Coyote gets today's picture -- even if Itchy and Scratchy feel it doesn't go far enough.
One of Tex Avery's whistling wolves getting smashed with a frying pan that turns his face into a dinner plate is funny. Cartoon characters whispering to Andrea Yates and telling her to drown her kids in a bathtub is not funny.
And fractals, as art, can steer viewers either way.
So is my image today disturbing? Or as funny as being pulverized into an accordion shape by a falling anvil? Or is it just silly or pretentious or bland. Whatever. You -- the viewer -- get to decide.
But I'm betting it's not pretty.
Upper left corner detail of Who Dissected Roger Rabbit
~/~
Image made with Sterling-ware and post-processed until I chased it off a cliff, waved goodbye, and disappeared downward leaving only a small cloud of smoke behind.
Rooms with a View. Please note the new address. Here's why I was forced to move.
2 comments:
Mnemosyne Wreathed
Is she prepared
To bask and wallow, spin and soften?
Is she remembered
And by whom and why not more often?
Spry but not too nimble,
She quails at seeming troublesome,
No bigger than a thimble,
A snail under a bauble of gum.
How's she keep both thumbs up
With nothing to do and nowhere to go?
Oh, something always comes up,
Sand fills with sand, snow with more snow.
She queries what survives us
Should be more remarkable
Than echoing hubris
Off the cold, cold marble.
[Disposable Poem August 3, 2007]
Dr. Mike
PS
I LOVE the full image of "Who Dissected Roger Rabbit." It reminds me of Max Ernst.
See Max Ernst's "Europe After the Rain II" at http://www.abcgallery.com/E/ernst/ernst27.html
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