June 16, 2007

The Victorian Surrealism of Jeffrey Michael Harp. [Via.]
posted by homunculus 17 years ago
  • Very nice. Lots more good stuff to look at from the links page, too.
  • Strange. Very Strange. Monty Python meets E.A. Poe?
  • These are awesome! They sort of remind me of the stuff that Mark Mothersbaugh was doing with old Victorian photos a couple of years ago.
  • Reminiscent of René Magritte.
  • Strange, and rather creepy, but seems very derivative of a few artists I like better. =/ (Mark Ryden, Ray Caesar, aside from the aforementioned Magritte. Maybe one or another of them - potentially Caesar - is actually derivative of Harp.) This is one of those things that I would pass on to a friend who I thought would like it. I like Harp's handling of text and symbolism, but otherwise these images kind of give me a bad feeling. (Which is not really unusual for surrealist art. Ernst creeps me out, too.)
  • I was fortunate enough to be able to view these on the new 112 X 12 inch monitor. Also, I think I saw some of those images on the deleted scenes from The Ring.
  • Is victoriana scary to us to begin with because of the repression that's so evident in most of the pictures? The lack of motion and emotion? The seeming hidden layer that you know must be there?
  • Lara - that's an interesting observation, and I think you might have something there. To me, some Victorian things are also creepy for one of two reasons. One is that, although you describe a "lack of motion and emotion" that is certainly evident in some of the photography, they were culturally quite sentimental, much more so about death than we probably are now. That is, we don't do mourning portraits (of the "restful dead"), we don't do hair jewelry, etc. There is definitely still cornpone emotional kitsch in the US, but it tends to be of the angels-and-kittens variety, rather than the romantic, sumptuous, almost overheated Victorian stuff. I think what you're talking about in photos has partly to do with the fact that early photos had long exposures, and people had to hold rigidly still to avoid registering as blurs on the film. In some portrait studios, you'd put the back of your head into a brace just to make sure you wouldn't move during the portrait. The other reason, for me, is that light eyes tend to look all spooky in period pictures... something about the photographic processes used at the time. The earlier the photo, the less I want to look at it if the subject had blue or grey eyes. Daguerrotypes are the worst in this respect, but relatively early callotypes aren't much better.
  • It's true about them being more emotional, I think. If you look at hand-drawn cards and pictures from the same period, they're often romantic and flowery. (Romantic in the emotional sense, not the love-and-kisses sense.)
  • I was hoping it would be weird art produced by Victorians in the Victorian era--but this is still cool.
  • The artist Tim Burton wishes he could be.
  • ..the artist formerly known as Tim Burton.
  • The original link is borken, here's the new one: Jeffrey Harp