''A Picture of A Picture''
The first thing I wanted to do when I got into university was visit the gigantic selection of art books I knew they would have in the library. Until then I was stuck with the very small selection of usual suspects at my local library; Warhol, Dali, Picasso and Van Gogh etc.
When I finally got into the building one of the first books I stumbled across was an intriguing black book that seemed to have no words or titles on it. But when I ran my hand over the cover I found that it had been embossed with the words .''Dennis Hopper Out Of The 60's''. It was a book of photographs by the actor Dennis Hopper.
The first surprise was that Dennis Hopper was a photographer, I had always known him as an actor and director. Then upon opening the book I was struck again by an unusual photograph just inside the cover. It was a picture of a black and white television screen with the Kennedy funeral being played on it. I wasn't alarmed by the nature of the picture, I was alarmed that here I was in the art section of the library looking at a photograph of a television program. In a sense I was looking at 'a picture of a picture’.
How is this art? I wondered.
Can you take a photograph of an image on television?
Can you take a photograph of a television set?
I started to wonder if this is something I could use in my own work with oil paint.
I had always been a fan of Andy Warhol and understood that he used images from advertising and popular culture in his art. I thought it was an astounding breakthrough in terms of subject matter that he had decided to simply paint an everyday can of Soup.
It turns out Dennis Hopper felt exactly the same way and had bought one of the very first Soup Cans from Warhol for only $12 before he was famous!
This television idea opened up a world of possibility for me and I would start playing with the idea of a picture within a picture. A frame within a frame. I could use an image from the page as well, for example a vintage car magazine sitting on a coffee table. I could paint the whole scene as it is. I could zoom in on the magazine and leave out the table, or I could just single out the image on the cover and only paint that. The possibilities seemed endless.
Steve Rosendale 2023
Erika Sequence One Oil on Canvas 122cm x 122cm SOLD
The Electric Horseman II Oil on Linen 76cm x 122cm SOLD
Redford (Cowboy) Oil on Canvas 51cm x 51cm SOLD
