Frozen Blood Self-Portraits

Marc Quinn created his ‘Self’ series as a means of recording the changes of his face throughout the years, such as countenance and aging, and if you look closely at the four blood portraits he has made so far, you’ll notice his face has indeed matured over time. Of course, he could have used a more common material for his artworks, but the message wouldn’t have been as powerful as using his own blood. According to Scientific American magazine, ‘by crafting these heads out of his own blood, Quinn reconnects us to the the fact that in the fullness of time, no artist’s attempt at immortality through self-portraiture will prevail. And of course the series will presumably end in the course of the artist’s life, so the artwork’s time-dimension has a death of sorts as well.

VIA: –UNIQUE DAILY

Dismantling Stereotypes of Beauty and Femininity

The relationships of women to themselves and their environment fuel the narratives of Jennifer Nehrbass’ paintings and are formed from the binary oppositions between the images. By dismantling the roles and stereotypes of beauty and femininity Nehrbass examines the psychology that leads women to go to extremes to maintain beauty and style. –BEAUTIFUL DECAY

Nature People

Constance Mallinson‘s large-scale paintings merge the man-made world and nature literally by constructing figures from images of leaves, twigs, and decaying organic material. They are grotesque meditations on both the mortality of humans and the world in which they live.

 

VIA: –BEAUTIFUL DECAY

Beauty and Eros

Simon Wald Lasowski. For a special issue of Blend magazine, various photographers were asked to photograph the same model on the theme of “Beauty and Eros”. With slapstick elements of ugliness and inspiration from fairy tales (the attractive and repelling witch), I wanted to show that beauty can be in the imperfections. VIA: –UNSCATHED CORPSE