The Human Condition

For this assignment, we had to pick a work of art from the 20th century and write a description of it without mentioning the artist or title. These descriptions were then distributed throughout the class without us knowing who got whose. Next, we had to interpret the description we received in 2 ways: one, by simply replicating the image from the description, and two, by creating the same image using only text.

In the paper I received, the work was described as a pencil drawing of a human eye, realistically rendered, with a faint image of a skull reflected in the pupil. It included details about the light source, the inclusion of areas around the eye, and other specifics.

This is my text piece. It is entirely made out of words and phrases, and they were applied using two methods: printing stamps carved out of erasers, and acetone transfers of typed words.

(click to enlarge)


For the other piece, I decided to depict the context of my artwork, rather than the artwork itself. I imagine that for a skull to be reflected in someone's pupil, they would have to be looking at a skull. Therefore, I did a charcoal drawing of a girl looking straight at the head of a skeleton:

I later found out that the piece that my description referred to was a mezzotint by M.C. Escher entitled Eye. Here an image of the work: