Bijou Gets Undressed 6 Julian Opie

JULIAN OPIE, BIJOU GETS UNDRESSED 6, BIJOU GETS UNDRESSED SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 30, 2004

Bijou Gets Undressed 6 is a print by Julian Opie from his 2004 Bijou Gets Undressed series that shows a woman taking off her jeans in a sequence of five poses. On her top half Bijou wears only a bra and removes her clothes in a highly sexualised set of poses and gestures. Like many of Opie’s images of women, this is a provocative composition that appeals to the erotic fantasies of the assumed male viewer.

Rendered in Opie’s characteristic simplified style, Bijou Gets Undressed 6 shows the figures in bold, black line against a white backdrop with blank circles floating above their body as a head and defined only by an outline of clothing. This is indicative of Opie’s desire to create a syntax of signs from the human form, retaining a basic form but including small details that reveal something unique about the model. Consequently, the figures in Bijou Gets Undressed 6 are ambiguous and alluring.

Opie’s use of simplified form combined with a highly realistic sense of movement derived from photographs, works to produce tension between abstraction and realism that makes his works so unique. Movement is extremely important in Opie’s oeuvre and is a feature that the artist uses to create a sense of individuality in his featureless figures. 

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ABOUT JULIAN OPIE

British artist Julian Opie challenges traditional approaches to portraiture through his digitally designed and seemingly contradictory, depersonalised works. Working also with landscapes and cityscapes, Opie’s highly stylised work involves the reduction of photographs or short films into figurative reproductions created using computer software. The hallmarks of his artistic style are portraits and animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing. Learn more about Julian Opie.