& the colorful parrots who inspire murderous jealousy in lower primates, especially ones shackled to stone obelisks with iron manacles. įirst published in TASCHEN’s limited collector’s edition - now available in this standard hardcover edition! Text in English, French, and German This large-format edition includes an in-depth exploration of Walton Ford’s oeuvre, a complete biography, and excerpts from his textual Vietnamese folktales and the letters of Benjamin Franklin, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and Audubon’s Ornithological Biography. The book’s title derives from The Pancha Tantra, an ancient Indian book of animal tales considered the precursor to Aesop’s Fables. The beasts and birds populating this contemporary artist’s life-size paintings are never mere objects, but dynamic actors in allegorical struggles : a wild turkey crushes a small parrot in its claw a troupe of monkeys wreak havoc on a formal dinner table, an American buffalo is surrounded by bloodied white wolves. But a closer look reveals a complex and disturbingly anthropomorphic universe, full of symbols, sly jokes, and allusions to the ’operatic’ nature of traditional natural history themes. Fantastic The sinister majesty of Walton Ford's wildlife At first glance, Walton Ford ’s large-scale, highly-detailed watercolors of animals may recall the prints of 19th century illustrators John James Audubon and Edward Lear, and others of the colonial era.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |