Saturday, July 18, 2009

A Light in the Attic

 

A Light in the Attic was created for Art on the Darkside"s Challenge this week.

The idea came from some colourized prints of the utterly classic horror film, The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari...a film rooted in Expressionism and heir to German Romanticism, but  influenced by the new darling of the era's recent artistic ferment, Cubism.

It is a film of weird angles, and haunting, off-kilter suggestive imagery shot with incredible lighting effects on a set inspired by dreams and nightmares.

Made in 1920...

As was the rest of Europe  Germany was  coming out of the horrors of WW I, and just going into the coming tragedy of trying to fufill the war debt obligations imposed on her by the rest of Europe and her winning Allies and at the same time primed to try new politics under a Democratic form of government ... as surely a Surreal landscape and time period to dwell in as any ever imagined by Bosch.


Title:        A Light in the Attic

The How:

PSE 2 / using a mix of 4 source photos to create an assembled and merged image of  9 layers 

Source Photos: 

The 2 bottom layers were Royalty-free stock images of rays and a whirlwind.

The image of a "woman in gray attic" -I gave her a distorted shadow- is from an Edward Weston photo of 1922 I found via Project Gutenberg.

The image on the left of the man, chair and open window is one from a publicity still for  the 1920 movie .

The above source I"ve linked to for the article on Caligari is on Wikepedia

Font:      WolfgangCaps


5 comments:

  1. Oh you are an angel. This is fab !!!!!!
    What a magnificent entry and so steeped in history and clever. I knew nothing of this and your piece and write up has perked my curiosity into this weird and wonderful idea.
    Hugs and thanks
    June xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. June said it all with magnificent! I like how you've got the light coming in at angles. But it also squares down. (I don't know the right artistic terms.) The skewed objects is very disconcerting. The silhouette people is a great effect too. You've captured in one picture the idea of the movie. (Which sounded very familiar, but I've only seen a few silent movies and this wasn't one of them.) As usual, your work is fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stunning creation, thanks for sharing how you put it together!

    ReplyDelete