Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm...the destruction of icons... Puritan distrust of opulence, decoration, imagery. The love of the plain and siple...ornament is crime. The Iconic status of Film Stars...Warhol presented Marilyn as an icon...a madonna. Evard Munch presented us with a screaming madonna...In the 'Vim' Ad. the 1950's housewife is the screaming madonna of the kitchen sink. Here we have a bonfire of the madonnas...how has the artist arived here? Way back in the 1980's I was producing limited edition screen prints for a living ...see 'Take Five' and had two in the Francis Kyle Gallery on Maddox St. in London. They consisted of a Photo of the famous 'Seven Year Itch' shoot where Marilyn's skirt flys up. The photo was printed in 'halftone' in black or green on acetate..under which two other prints of exactly the same image were laid....better to look at the images...anyway they sold well and francis asked me to submit something for possible inclusion in his upcoming exhibition 'Women Washing'. Why did I not realise that he was looking for ideas along the lines of Bonnard and degas.../ Anyway I came up with 'The Scream'...A woman washing the dishes...! it's the one with the flat colour background... Ok so it was not selected for exhibition... I had originally intended the background to be the 'still' from Psycho of Janet Leigh dead on the shower floor... But...I had applied the yellow 'hair' colour over the blue instead of under it...and it looked crappy! Time passed and one afternoon I took out the 17 or so Leigh prints and worked them over with paint stripper and white spirit and ink and boot polish! see Iconoclasm 2...and the cut flaps into them...see Iconoclasm 3. Psyco Four is a selection of four of them... 'Blue Note' is new work with the Leigh image which is in dialogue directly with Warhol's Marilynn multiples...watch this gallery for more developments... Oh yeah...I have made several movies for youtube viewing of this stuff... http://www.youtube.com/user/peterthepainter#p/u/8/qx1RiiqGLIk http://www.youtube.com/user/peterthepainter#p/u/29/zHic2LgFago http://www.youtube.com/user/peterthepainter#p/u/28/lw4nOFofuGk