Birds hold up their own stuff against the decorative background of Claire Rosen’s photo – Huge
Our human impulse for classification and collection is the central theme of Claire Rosen’s powerful work. For more than a decade, Rosen has been searching for a trembling macaw, a tiny parrot with fluffy, blushed feathers and ornery owls, which she pairs with patterned paper and textiles.
An African penguin, for example, stares strangely at its pink and white striped surroundings, while Mrs. Amherst’s pheasant is on the gorgeous brocade. The resulting portrait is a meditation on the concept of beauty and the relationship between nature and culture, especially when we reproduce the image of the former throughout centuries of art and design.
Rosen complements this lasting tradition and shares it in a statement about the collection:
The walls of the villas in the ancient Roman Empire were decorated with murals, with rich details of flora and fauna. During the Renaissance, Raphael reshaped this ancient style through his weird and bizarre, portraying the lives of birds, fruits and plants. In 19th-century England, William Morris began making rich decorative wallpapers, made with wild birds and vegetation, reimagining the expression of the elaborate natural world of nature.
Choosing a background for a particular creature prompts a range of considerations, and Rosen attempts to “induced a fusion of beauty, illusion and vision, and (so) birds seem to belong to a very far from the natural environment.” The astonishing portraits reflect our ongoing obsession, fascinating us.
The Art of Seminar will publish Rosen’s portraits and essays in a book this fall. Find more from her website and series on Instagram.
