Melihat Tüzün
260
Baykam has produced 4D works in honor of the Norwegian artist Edward Munch,
who is considered to be one of the pioneers of Expressionism along with Van Gogh and
Gauguin. The artist, who has been introducing the surface of his works with unusual depths
with the lens technique since 2007, takes his audience on a journey beyond time.
Figure 9. B. Baykam,
Orgasmic Death
Figure 10. G. Brown, Cactus Land
4.10 Glenn Brown (1966, England)
Brown is a British artist who uses the imitation technique. He takes the painting he would
copy and changes its color, position, height and width. Despite the changes that he makes, he
has been accused of plagiarism. He remakes the works of artists such as Diego Velasquez,
Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, Guido Reni,
Jean-Honore Fragonard, Eugene Delacroix, John
Martin, Gustave Courbet, Adolph Menze, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Chaim
Soutine and Salvador Dali and expresses them with his own style. He makes photoshops on
the paintings that he chose, administers the changes and alters the background. By
reproducing the works of canonical artists from the art history, he sees their works from a
multidimensional and schizophrenic view. By using very slim brush strokes he makes
intertwined sketches and paintings that include fluctuations. Titles of the works are usually
taken from science-fiction literature, films, and music albums or are references to significant
names. His works and their names are usually irrelevant. Most of the motifs he includes in his
works which he takes as a reference from the art history are dull with a horrific atmosphere.
Amorphous personalities in his portraits stand as if they do not have a shape of their own.
5. Conclusion
As a conclusion, an ideology that makes references to past and uses all available artistic
expressions including color and form is encountered, as well as seeing a return to the classical
figure image in painting in the postmodern era. Quotation is at its peak in this era and
becomes the center of the painting as a figure or a political image. Allegory, irony and
eclectic structure are of significance in paintings. New pursuits in art push the limits of space
and material and refer to the issue of narration, meaning and context. Boundaries between life
and art become invisible. Everyone can be an artist as long as they know what to do and what
to take from the right place.
261
Reflections of The Postmodern Era On Painting
6. References
Baykam, B. (2009). Retrieved from Bedri Baykam:
http://www.bedribaykam.com/bb/donemler.html
Brown, G. (2017). Retrieved from Glenn Brown: http://glenn-brown.co.uk/biography/
Fischl, E. (2016). Retrieved from Eric Fischl:
http://www.ericfischl.com/biography/%20(Williams,%202014)
Lawson, T. (2016). Thomas Lawson With Hunter Braithwaite. (H. Braithwaite, Interviewer):
http://miamirail.org/visual-arts/thomas-lawson-with-hunter-braithwaite/
Lawson, T. (2003). Retrieved from David Kordansky Gallery:
http://davidkordanskygallery.com/artist/thomas-lawson/
Ligare, D. (2017). Retrieved from Plus One Gallery:
http://www.plusonegallery.com/exhibitions/36/overview/
Ligare, D. (2015). Retrieved from David Ligare: http://www.davidligare.com/paintings.html
Ligare, D. (2011). Realism And The New Ideal. (R. Dickenson, Interviewer):
http://www.davidligare.com/pdf/Realism-and-the-New-Ideal.pdf
MacRitchie, L. (2009).
Art In America. Retrieved from Art In America Magazine:
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/interview-glenn-
brown/
Nava, J. (2017). Retrieved from Alchetron: http://alchetron.com/John-Nava-(painter)-282716-
W#-
Perreault, J. (2005, October 4).
Artopia. Retrieved from Artsjournal:
http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2005/10/mike_bidlo_the_end_of_art.html
Williams, A. R. (2014). New Realities: The Many Faces of James Valerio.
The Artist's
Magazine, 29-34.
Y lmaz, M. (2006).
Modernizmden Postmodernizme Sanat (s. 361-362). Ütopya.
Weirdness in The City & The City
Firat Yildiz
1.
Introduction
Weird fiction can be considered to range from the unsettling to the unknowable from the most
bizarre to the rationally unintelligible, from the disturbed to the destroyer of worlds. Weird is
a challenging antidote to everyday mundanities. Fiction asks “what if” and offers a number of
unanticipated possibilities. Weird challenges “what if” and purges out the inexplicable
phenomena as well as things larger, more bizarre as well as more occult than our eclipsed and
warped minds can anticipate. As the above premises suggest, weird fiction can be evaluated
as a subgenre of speculative fiction, which encompasses the fantasmagorically, plotted ghost
stories and tales of the macabre. One of the predecessors of weird fiction is H.P. Lovecraft,
the author responsible for works such as
The Cult of Cthulu,
Dreams in the Witch House and
Colour Out of Space. Lovecraft coined the phrase from Gothic horror author Sheridan La
Fanu, author of
Uncle Silas, while writing his article titled Supernatural Horror in Literature
where Lovecraft points out that ‘true’ weird fiction is:
...something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains
according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer,
unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a
seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception
of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat
of those fixed laws of
Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of
unplumbed space (Lovecraft, 1973, p.15).
Essentially, one of the most prominent particularities that defines weird fiction is the
inexplicable horror that threatens the protagonist and other characters in a novel or short story,
which goes unexplained and remains unknown throughout the course of the story (similar to
the French Fantastique). Unknown horror fuels the spiraling suspense and fear in stories such
as
Uncle Silas and
Colour Out of Space, because as humans nothing frightens us more than
the unknown and paranormal phenomena generating and looming large in the air.
While writing weird things within the context of weird fiction genre, various tools
of language can allow us to incorporate elements of different horror genres and subgenres, in
order to create certain uniqueness within the context of a profoundity enmeshed with
paranormalcy unaccountable of cause and effect relationship in the juxtaposition of incidents.
Just as Joshi and Lovecraft suggest, the horror in
Our Immaculate is never explained as
mentioned before, which intensifies the fear for both the reader and characters. There are few
hints to what is causing the horror – a boy described as having red feet, grotesque student-
creature hybrids and an insane principal just as was the case amplified manifestly in the
detective short stories of fantasmagoria and macabre by Edgar Allan Poe. There are also
references
to the occult in the novel, as well as human sacrifice and mutilation.
One of the most conspicuously manifested intentions from the beginning was to
modernize the weird genre by bringing in new ideas and themes which are relevant in today’s
world, some of which have existed in different genres (or sub genres) of literature for some