Our human impulse to categorize and collect is a central theme of a robust body of work by Claire Rosen. For more than a decade, Rosen has sought out chattering macaws, cockatoos with fluffy, blush-colored plumage, and ornery owls, which she pairs with patterned papers and textiles.
An African penguin, for example, stares curiously at its pink-and-white striped surroundings, while a Lady Amherst’s pheasant trots across ornate brocade. The resulting portraits are meditations on notions of beauty and the relationship between nature and culture, particularly as we’ve reproduced imagery of the former throughout centuries of art and design.
Rosen is attuned with this enduring tradition, sharing in a statement about the collection:
The walls of the imperial villas of Ancient Rome were adorned with frescoes detailing rich flora and fauna. During the Renaissance, Rafael reinvented this ancient style through his grotesques, which depict birds, fruits, and plant life. Carefully crafted representations of the natural world were re- imagined yet again in 19th-century Britain when William Morris began producing richly ornamented wallpaper featuring wild birds and vegetation.
Selecting a backdrop for a particular creature prompts a range of considerations, and Rosen tries to “induce beauty, optical illusion and visual blending, (so) the birds appear to belong when in reality it is a far cry from their natural environment.” The striking portraits reflect our ongoing fascination with possessing what captivates us.
Workshop Arts will publish a collection of Rosen’s portraits and essays, in addition to texts by scholars, in a book this fall. Find more from the series on her website and Instagram.
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