Aesthetics The Image Looks Backs
RMIT Gallery 2020
Aesthetics + Keeping Time + #doitfortheafterselfieAesthetics (In Front of the Mirror)
After Władysław Czachórsk
© Tyler Payne 2020
iPad, moving image and timber
23cm x 36cm
What are the moral consequences of women engaging in self-portraiture today?
Tyler PayneAesthetics (Woman in the Mirror)
After Paul Delvaux
© Tyler Payne 2020
iPad, moving image and timber
36cm x 23cm
Garden of KKW
© Tyler Payne 2020
Electro bri-collage animation
21 seconds (excerpt clip)
Aesthetics examines the quote by the late art critic John Berger, reflecting on the role of the male gaze in the history of constructions of aesthetic value in Western art:
You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity’, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.
Aesthetics engages with this deeply-rooted tradition in Western artmaking by appropriating diverse male artists’ contributions to the genre of the female nude. The outcome of this tradition has been to cement women’s role as the self-conscious sex, and to assert male artists’ dominance as controller of cultural representation’s of women’s bodies. Aesthetics engages this tradition in the contemporary moment. Is the new popularity of the selfie, and social media, indicative of an intensifying culture of vanity
Into the mirror of this tradition, Kim Kardashian gazes back. There is every reason to suspect she is the personification of the vice of ‘vanity’ in the contemporary moment. Kardashian has raised self-consciousness to the level of a life’s vocation.
What are the moral consequences of women engaging in self-portraiture today?Aesthetics (Rokeby Venus)
After Diego Velázquez
© Tyler Payne 2020
iPad, moving image and timber
36cm x 23cm
It took three days to download videos of Kim Kardashian to match with paintings by men depicting vanity (a woman and reflection). Aesthetics is made up of moving images, iPads and custom built antique frames.
Tyler Payne
Aesthetics (Venus at the Mirror)
After Peter Paul Rubens
© Tyler Payne 2020
iPad, moving image and timber
23cm x 36cmAesthetics (Woman at a Mirror)
After Theo van Rysellberghe
© Tyler Payne 2020
iPad, moving image and timber
36cm x 23cm
Aesthetics (Vanity)
After Gustave Léonnard de Jonghe
© Tyler Payne 2020
iPad, moving image and timber
23cm x 36cm
Aesthetics (Fortune Teller Svetlana)
After K.Brullov
© Tyler Payne 2020
iPad, moving image and timber
23cm x 36cm