I
begin with a problem that promises vitality sufficient to probe through
multiple interwoven textual and pictorial levels, a fascinating turn of
theoretic investigation or a complex question in a historic, film, or
literary thread born of ideas leading into other ideas, with force.
Sometimes
it's simply a need to make ever-deepening thought into a visual tableau; this
happens in Transition: Big Fish from the film Big Fish showing a character partially made up as clown, divided. Shown, left, is 21st Birthday with more commentary on identities.
The Symphonic Instruments
series began from
anti-war posters made for the Zagreb Philharmonic illustrated by Boris
Bućan. Musicians fight against one another: probably our last thought
when
thinking of an orchestra's generally modulated lyric qualities. Each
autonomous instrument's use enters as a kind of goal, encouraging
further penetration into networks and complexes. This provokes questions
that will bear on any work, and stimulates
fascination-satisfaction-longevity for the viewer.
Another tool I use is "interrogation" to pluck at surfaces and reveal
the whys-and-wherefores of war or politics in my own work and that of
others--death as that in Rembrandt or interiors by Vermeer--and render
those by a mode-of-working; by expressive qualities; by conferring with
an era or
time or thematic necessity-development.
The New Alice
extends Lewis Carroll's archetypically untrammeled 7-year old uncontested in
her dream-world, her whimsy and subjectivity, in her insouciant intellect, and into her new realm, a
growth of connections
outside or beyond the querulous animal-poker-chess and nonsense-poetry
range, in the quaint promises of
linguistics, logic, mathematics. New Alice,
after she's had a 10 to 12 year hiatus, is the contemporary child-woman
re-presented, and as contemporary to our time, creating an odd lacunae.
The Cantos
series delves into darkened dichotomies
of political Turkey,
then the Middle East, Macedonia,
Burma, Indonesia. The viewer is enabled to move in closer, is made
amenable to difficult subjects that may or may not upset a legendary
myth (like our Alice). Interesting.
Some Grids
deal with the large shifts in thinking from one century or mode or style to another, from forensics to
fantasy to Nordic images, then to animal justice; here, judges are succinctly capable of incorporating minor
or Supreme Court judgments into their own vernacular.
Other episodes extend through 2012-2014; one is The Lorenzetti Project, with its own introduction, following. Latest is The Baltic Sea series. Click categories top of this page.
See www.issuu.com/cm_dupre by going to the Link to Issuu Web Site page.
If this rather mellow introduction leaves you with
questions, please get in touch.
"Powerful work"--Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
