Homage to Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall's photography makes deliberate references to past images in particuarly from the Canon of Western history painting. The canon of western history paintings are considered, along side with music, to have the largest influence on western culture and have shaped it. Wall does not simply try and copy or recreate these paintings but pulls the core and context from within the painting. The image "The Destroyed Room" 1978 is inspired by the painting "The Death of Sardanapalus" by Delacroix which features a king with a mental illness who intends to out live his possessions. The painting features horses, possessions and his wives bing destroyed. The feelings and emotions are expressed through the use of violent reds and the painting appears to be collapsing from the top downwards.

Wall creates a parallel context but with a contemporary style trying to re-create the rage fore told in the painting making it look like the scene of a burglary or crime. He uses the same red and similar objects such as a bed and common possessions. The work is very traditional yet contempory creating a vision of how the painting may have been expressed in the future. The work was created as an installation inside a studio which can be seen in the work, which is deliberately left visible by Wall to show he has setup, the scene intentionally to look exactly how it is.

 As homage to Jeff Wall's work I am going to focus on a space that suggests a person has no possessions and almost the opposite to the painting by Delacroix. I have discovered a location that was or possibly still is the sleeping place of a homeless person who has very little possessions. He is not filled with rage but, instead little hope. The location has been boarded up similar to the windows and doors in Walls work. Instead of bright red colours darker greys are used to represent a different sense of emotions.