Art Analysis: Safely Contained

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Art Analysis: Safely Contained

Image: Scarface

Artist: Miles Donovan

This image is one of a series of four other paintings, all of iconic

people. The image I am analyzing is of Robert De Nero as Scarface, an

example of another of the images is Stevie Wonder. The image I am

studying of Scarface is a computer generated image which was produced

in Photoshop, the photo from a real shot in the film.

The theme that is carried through the images is that they are all

placed on a red background. I think this helps to make the images more

striking, which works extremely well. With most paintings, such a

heavy coloured background would make the foreground image appear o

recede; but the artist in this piece has reversed this, making the red

compliment the subject. We could maybe say this image is a stem of the

'pop art' movement; although it contains the blocked and flat colour

elements, it still remains to be painted in a lifelike colour and

composition, and so does not possess the vibrant colours usually

related with 'pop art.'

The size of the image is unknown but I should imagine it would be on a

fairly large scale for it to have an impact, I think at such a size,

the red background would be very imposing and would set forward,

Robert De Nero the subject of the image.

[IMAGE] The form of the image is very simple, subject and background,

both of which are easily distinguishable. The image of scarface has

been created upon an existing image of which contained a background,

this is not transferred to the artists' graphic interpretation. This

is done with all the images in the series, the background being

replaced with a shade of red. We see that the subject either appears

to be standing or sitting, resting both of his arms on something that

is not contained within the shot, it almost appears that he is leaning

on the frame. This cropping of the subject works very well to avoid as

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