JULIAN OPIE, LUC AND LUDIVINE GET MARRIED (PAIR 07), LUC AND LUDIVINE GET MARRIED, SIGNED MIXED MEDIA PRINT, EDITION OF 10, 2007
Taken from Julian Opie’s Luc And Ludivine Get Married series from 2007, Luc And Ludivine Get Married (pair 07) is a work that shows two portraits presented in elliptical frames and blown domed glazing. The work shows portraits of a man and woman produced from cut black and white paper laminated together. The man on the left faces outwards to the viewer and the woman depicted in profile faces left.
Since the mid-1990s, Opie has explored the principles of modular variation across artistic media and art historical genres. The artist’s Luc And Ludivine Get Married series is indicative of this investigation, with prints consisting of similar titles, each with the same double portrait format, and the pose of the two figures interchanged in each print. Opie emphasises art as a commodity in his replication of post-industrial modes of production and exposes the dehumanising effects of computer technology.
Luc And Ludivine Get Married (pair 07) explicitly engages with the 19th century art historical tradition of silhouette portraiture, led by artist Auguste Edouart, whereby the new middle classes would commission family group or individual portraits to record a moment in time. Opie has a strong interest in noticing silhouettes everywhere and his The Gallery Staff series from 2010 also engages with this tradition.
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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.
