On Mood, Composition and a Modern Take on a Classic Motif
When I hear the name Ophelia, I think first of John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–52), now in the Tate collection. It is one of the best-known Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and it has also stayed with me.
For some time, I have been exploring a form of abstract surrealism. I have brought together some of that work in New Surrealism: Dreams in Ink. Millais’s painting offered a subject I wanted to approach in my own way.
My Take on a Pre-Raphaelite Motif
I do not mean that the Pre-Raphaelites were Surrealists. But I see qualities in some of their pictures that resonate with my interest in later Surrealism. In my own Ophelia, a viewer might find a question about environmental pollution, although that was not my starting point. I was thinking more about transience and change. Where is Ophelia? What has happened to the beautiful pond?
Writing in May 2022, I was also wondering how artificial intelligence might change painting and the stories we read. A fellow blogger, both a painter and an art critic, had recently written about the subject, which stayed on my mind.
If more of what we read is generated by computer programs, how might that change our relationship with literature? I worry, too, about the place of Shakespeare in a culture of short videos. Will Ophelia remain familiar, or will she survive mainly through simplified retellings, rather as Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice has through Disney?
I was not working from Millais’s picture while painting my version; I had not looked at it for many years. When I returned to it, I was surprised by the compositional resemblance between my painting and the upper part of his.
After the Article About Me in Guangming Daily
In May 2022, I received an email that made me very happy. My former fellow student, Little Yang, had read the Guangming Daily report about me and remembered our time in Beijing at the Foreign Language Institute in 1978–79. He sent an old photograph of us in our shared room—on my side of it—and said he would soon be coming to Vienna. We hoped to catch up on the old days. This is one of the remarkable sides of the internet.
At the time, I was lucky to be the only Western student there with a Chinese roommate. Little Yang was exceptionally bright and kind, and I do not remember any disagreements between us. He also sent a photograph of a painting I had given him as a small memento. He had clearly not thrown it away.
I also learned that he had gone on to a successful career in the United States. That did not surprise me.
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New Surrealism: Dreams in Ink · Études – Small Studies and Quiet Experiments · In Guangming Daily Again: Art and Cultural Exchange
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