Abstract
The recent success of the Spider-Verse franchise has brought attention to a unique artistic approach known as a mashup, a term popularized in the early 2000s with the rise of digital technology and remixing in musical culture, most notably In Danger Mouse’s Grey Album (2004) which layered The Beatles White Album over Jay-Z’s Black Album, making an exciting new sound. In this paper, the definition of mashup extends past music and refers to the stylistic layering, blending and juxtaposition of aesthetics within artworks or images when it plays a central role in the narrative or concept. While the Spider-Verse is the result of collaboration among a team of artists and draws inspiration from a rich history of comics, its ultimate result will be discussed as a kind of mashup. This paper presents an art historical trajectory that explores how not only the Spider-verse, but many other artists, animators, and illustrators across different media and genres, instead of striving for consistency, focus on diversity by combining two or more aesthetic languages within a single image or artwork, sometimes making it their signature to mix and match styles. The objective of this paper is to broaden the conversation around visual mash-ups and to position the works of comics artists like Bill Sienkiecz, David Mazzuchelli, Sonny Liew, Dave Sim and Gerhard alongside Fine artists such as Kathe Kallowicz, Kiki Smith, George Segal, Gerhard Demetz, in order to create a lineage of artists working this way across the artistic spectrum.
Presenters
Jesse ThompsonAssistant Professor, Foundations/Drawing/Artistic Electives, Nanyang Technological University, South West, Singapore
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Images Do Not Represent Us, They Create Us: The Image and its Transforming Power
KEYWORDS
Illustraion, Fine Arts, Visual Literacy, Aesthetics, Art Practice
