Six Degrees (2001)

Oil on board, 28x21cm

Private collection

The painting Six Degrees makes appropriate use of trompe l'oeil representation in a rather arch manner, being a painting depicting a postcard actual size; the postcard is of a painting by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845), A Girl At A Window, in the National Gallery (catalogue no. 811888). Boilly's painting is itself essentially a trompe l'oeil piece, the picture being painted to look like a print (of a painting) in a mount. The title of my painting refers to the fact that there was an original at quite some remove: I have painted a postcard, which is a reproduction of a photograph of a painting, of a print, of a painting. The question remains as to whether, as far as Walter Benjamin is concerned, the end of this line, being a painting (an 'original' work of art), restores some of the aura to the artwork, or whether the cyclical reproducing is only reductive in this respect.

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©copyright 2005 Nicholas Middleton