Painting and Mass Media

Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi 2  2011

Gaddafi 2 is one of three paintings by Sasnal based on images that emerged in the media following the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Here he homes in on a group of rebel fighters, apparently looking down onto the corpse, which cannot be seen due to the close cropping of the image. One of the figures appears to be filming the event. Due to the increased availability of mobile technology, significant moments in history are now routinely captured by bystanders and posted online. Sasnal further mediates such images by translating them into paintings.

Gallery label, February 2016

Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi 1  2011

Painter and film-maker Wilhelm Sasnal uses photographs as a starting point for his work. Whether finding them by chance or seeking them out on the internet, he selects images he sees as open to interpretation. His three paintings based on broadcast coverage of the killing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi – made the same year – demonstrate how painterly concerns such as scale, technique and composition transform our relation to the image. Here Sasnal depicts the body of the deposed leader as an abstract mass of thickly applied paint to imply a visceral and violent death.

Gallery label, February 2016

Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi 3  2011

The third and largest of Sasnal’s paintings relating to the death of Muammar Gaddafi shows both the Libyan dictator’s corpse and a group of onlookers. All but one of the figures have been rendered anonymous by the close cropping of the image so that only their bodies are visible. In this treatment of the subject, Sasnal seems to refer as much to art history as to history, evoking Andrea Mantegna’s fifteenth-century depiction of the dead Christ through the dramatic foreshortening of the corpse while also echoing the monumental scale of history painting.

Gallery label, February 2016

Charline von Heyl, Untitled  2011

Rita Donagh, Counterpane  1987–8

This painting is based on a newspaper photograph of a bandsman killed or wounded in the 1982 IRA Regent’s Park bomb. Donagh situates the newspaper image in a dream-like space, which dissolves in the upper right of the canvas into the picture plane. The figure is shrouded with the artist’s own patchwork quilt, providing her own literal and metaphorical ‘coverage’ of the victim.

Gallery label, September 2004

Francis Bacon, Figure in a Landscape  1945

This painting is thought to be based on a photograph of Bacon’s lover Eric Hall wearing a flannel suit dozing on a seat in Hyde Park. A substantial section of the body has been overpainted, suggesting a black void. An open mouth can be discerned speaking into microphone, a detail that may have derived from photographs of Nazi leaders giving speeches. The pastoral setting is therefore contrasted with the intimations of organised political violence, making this an early example of Bacon’s combination of aggression and everyday mundane reality.

Gallery label, July 2010