Watching Suzanne (front) 6
Watching Suzanne (front) 6
Signed Mixed Media
Julian Opie
Mixed Media, 2006
Signed Mixed Media Edition of 25
H 83cm x W 57cm
Critical Review
This mixed media print, Watching Suzanne (front) 6 is from Julian Opie’s Watching Suzanne series, featuring a black and white line drawing of a woman’s torso and thighs, with her arms lifted up. Wearing only her underwear, Opie creates a highly simplified composition through his use of bold line and smooth image surface.
Watching Suzanne (front) 6 captures a fleeting moment in time, as considered within the series as a whole, the figure seems to sway from side to side. This series is characteristic of Opie’s desire to capture movement as a way to differentiate between people and to strike a balance between stylisation and realism. For Opie, movement itself is a form of realism in relation to the human form.
As a computer-generated image, rendered in such a way that the figure appears more like a sign than an individual, Opie produces a depersonalised portrait of a stereotypically attractive woman. Showing only the model’s torso, thus leaving out her face and other details that may distinguish the figure, Opie anonymises the image and forces the viewer to consider why they find this image so alluring.
