| This composition was created as an entry for the ‘Baudelaire´s Flowers Of Evil´s Contest’ held by ~Rowi-Stock and *lugubrum-stock on the ‘Deviant Art’ website. The theme for the contest is to produce a piece of artwork inspired by one of five poems pre-selected from the book ‘Flowers of Evil’ by the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). |
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| The poem used as inspiration for this contest is titled ‘Obsession’ |
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| ‘Obsessions’ |
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Great woods, you frighten me like cathedrals;
You roar like the organ; and in our cursed hearts,
Rooms of endless mourning where old death-rattles sound,
Respond the echoes of your De profundis.
I hate you, Ocean! your bounding and your tumult,
My mind finds them within itself; that bitter laugh
Of the vanquished man, full of sobs and insults,
I hear it in the immense laughter of the sea.
How I would like you, Night! without those stars
Whose light speaks a language I know!
For I seek emptiness, darkness, and nudity!
But the darkness is itself a canvas
Upon which live, springing from my eyes by thousands,
Beings with understanding looks, who have vanished.
………………………………………………………………. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). |
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This piece of artwork comprises of a montage of several images. It has been compiled using a combination of layer mask, adjustment layers and blend modes.
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In this image I have tried to capture the essence of the poem as a whole, rather than a true momentary visual interoperation.
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| I have interoperated the poem to be basically about drowning in ones own depths of despair, and sanctuary can only be found in the blackness of insignificance, whether this is through the obscurity of your own existence or through the non existence found only in death, who is to say. |
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| The basic underlying concepts of the composition |
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| This composition is simply about searching for sanctuary and fighting ones inner demons. |
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| There are several visual twists, hidden images or double meanings in this composition; these are more obvious in the larger version of the image. |
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| The covered eyes represent our blindness to our problems and their possible solutions (we sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees – the forest). |
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| The inclusion of the ‘Flowers of Evil’ is reprehensive to a state of mind, thus depicting the cause and effect for the content of the poem – ‘Obsession’. The flowers are white poppies, form which opium/heroin is derived; this gives the image a history, a background for the inner demons (Charles Baudelaire was known to smoke Opium – the syringes in the image are symbolic, in reference to drug use). |
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| I was originally going to produce the image in tones of almost grey, very de-saturated, to produce a more sombre feeling of despair, but I felt that the colour gave it another dimension. The colour content made it a less depressing image, in respect, that in despair there is always hope, but tread carefully where you look for sanctuary. |
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| Because the forest is the sanctuary: but this is where the demons live. |
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I would like to thank the creators of the Deviant Art stock images used to create this piece of artwork and for their kind permission for their use on this website. |
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