Saturday, January 23, 2016
A Carcass
I found this illustration artist Abi Heyneke made to accompany "A Carcass" and thought it accurately captured Baudelaire's message. In his poem, Baudelaire is trying to express to the reader that beauty "blossoms" out of something dead and decaying. (Ha, also literal art (this picture) was created out of death...get it?) We see that Heyneke chose to go with the theory that the carcass is not an animal's but a woman's (something I initially thought myself). To me, the flowers look not only like actual flowers but also like flesh that has been cooked by the sun. Off to the side are the bugs and other natural creatures that feed from the body. It is easy to see in this image that life and death are working together.
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3 comments:
I really like this illustration and I think it's interesting to see someone else's perspective of the same poem in a visual way like that. However, to me, It seems like Beaudelaire is trying to show how the ugly disgusting and grotesque can be beautiful if you look at it as he does. This image shows only the beautiful. Beaudelaire's skill in transforming the eye of beauty is very intriguing and I don't think that is captured in this work even though it is a very interesting illustration
I initially thought the carcass was a woman too, and because of that, Beaudelaire definitely got my attention. I think he accomplished what he set out to do because I believed that the carcass was an actual woman. Some of the effect was taken away when we discussed the fact that it could be an animal carcass because obviously the thought of a dead animal is a lot less shocking than a dead human. I like to think that he really wanted to leave it up to our imagination to determine whether or not the carcass is an animal or a human. Although I'd rather not believe it was a human because that's actually terrifying, I can't help but think that Beaudelaire predicted that we may think this way.
Perhaps this artist's interpretation of Baudelaire's poem focuses on the beauty of the carcass. Though the body is portrayed as a decaying flower, it is still a flower which represents beauty. In "A Carcass," Baudelaire focuses on the balance of life within death. He discusses the presence of maggots in the carcass, a symbol for life and rebirth. The idea of life has always been associated with beauty. The artist behind this painting does a great job representing the beauty/life in the carcass.
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