Recycling of the Past

Jake and Dinos Chapman are brothers who have continued to collaborate with one another throughout their careers. Their most known work was from a series of Goya prints that they bought and altered over a series of time. Many believed their altering of these prints to be an abuse of Goya’s memory. These prints, Disasters of War chronicled Goya’s experience during the Napoleonic wars. Throughout his career, Goya depicted all aspects of the war. He did not just show one side in a harsh light. He was known for showing all angles of the war, never choosing sides. Jake and Dinos Chapman's version of Goya's prints they named The Rape of Creativity. For the Chapman brothers to choose Goya as their target for “harassment” (as some art lovers would call it) could mean that they are choosing to express his views with a more modern take (Jones). The brothers have taken his depictions of the evilness of the wars and placed clown heads and added color to the seemingly atrocious scenes of Goya’s memory and imagination. By adding the heads of clowns and puppies to repulsive scenes, the artists add a lighter air and the pieces thereby show the personality of the Chapman brothers fused with Goya’s artistry. Some critics even see this as collaboration between the artists and not as a destruction of the masterpieces (Jones). Because Goya never chose sides, choosing instead to play the role of a mass historian, he gave future generations an insight into the immorality that is in the world regardless of the situation. The way the brothers recycle Goya’s work can be viewed as a “revival of period styles and a rush to appropriate elements from the past” (McDaniel 135).

By reusing past elements, the postmodern artists can revisit ideas and give a fresh outlook on them. Much like how the Chapman brothers used Goya’s The Rape of Creativity, other artists have begun to rework older works and even older styles with a modern twist to give off a certain emphasis. Whether or not the artist or artists are trying to emphasize the problems of the evilness in the world, or just trying to discuss the progress of history, all relies on the artist. These artists believe that the present is a “reshuffling of mementos from the past” (McDaniel 135). They believe that the present time is based on the past, that it is without our past we would not have our present, or our future. So by an artist “quoting” an artwork, the artwork becomes an entirely new piece. This new piece has a new meaning for this artists and this new time period, but it still holds on to its historical context being that it is a pulls from an earlier work or from an earlier style. In a sense, the artists are continuing to play with a specific style and alter it as they wish, yet still hold the same contextual value that the original piece held.

Jones, Jonathon. "The Chapman brothers' 'rectified' Goya - the breaking of art's ultimate taboo Art and design The Guardian." Latest news, comment and reviews from the Guardian guardian.co.uk. The Guardian, 31 Mar. 2003. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/mar/31/artsfeatures.turnerprize2003.

McDaniel, Craig, and Jean Robertson. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 2010. Print.