JULIAN OPIE, WATCHING SUZANNE (FRONT) 9, WATCHING SUZANNE SERIES, SIGNED MIXED MEDIA, EDITION OF 25, 2006
Taken from Julian Opie’s Watching Suzanne series from 2006, Watching Suzanne (Front) 9 shows a tightly cropped image of a woman’s torso and thighs, wearing only her underwear. Opie creates a highly stylised image, depicting the woman’s body with thick, black lines against a white backdrop.
Indicated by the print’s title, Watching Suzanne (Front) 9 is an image that represents the act of looking itself and Opie emphasises this by the intense cropping of the frame. Captured mid-movement as the figure sways from side to side, Opie creates a sense of dynamism across the series as a whole whereby each print shows a different snapshot in time.
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.
Read more about Watching Suzanne by Julian Opie.
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.
