PORTRAITURE & THE FIGURE JULIAN OPIE PORTRAITURE & THE FIGURE

Julian Opie Julian Opie was born in London in 1958 and was raised in Oxford. He graduated from Goldsmiths School of Art in London in 1982 and has worked with a variety of new materials and techniques predominantly based around the portrait and the human figure. Opie is a contemporary artist who moves with the times. He is always pushing the boundaries of new technology in his art and likes to attempt similar themes across different areas of art.

EARLY WORK Opie’s work can be seen as having its roots in Minimalism and Pop Art with its bold flat colour and simplification of line. Although he is most famous for his computer portraits and figures Opie started his art career producing a series of painted metal sculptures which could be mistaken for functioning air conditioning unit or heating vent.

INFLUENCES Opie’s work is instantly recognisable and more often than not his canvas is the computer screen. Although his latter work has become more complex his distinctive style are his black outlines and simplification of image which still holds the essence of the subject matter. He was taught at Goldsmiths by Michael Craig Martin and if you look at some of his work you will see how it has influenced his own.

PORTRAITURE Opie is most recognised for his simplified portraiture and it was whilst creating the artwork for the band Blur’s ‘best of’ album in 2000 that brought him to the attention of the masses. If you look at the work below you will notice that the style is minimalist with circles for eyes and very little facial detail. The likeness is often captured in the hairstyles and any facial decoration (e.g. Glasses) that make the visual link to the sitter. Colours are flat with the only hint of shading in the highlights seen in the hair. With just a few lines he is able to characterise what makes us unique and recognisable.

Family portrait

Development of his ideas More recently Opie has tried to combine his more complex graphical portraits with sculpture in order to create busts. The subjects’ heads were scanned three dimensionally and then the image was simplified, formed and dipped in resin. Opie then hand painted each one to startling effect.

Moving with the times As computer technology has advanced and Opie has modified his style to suit the times, these computer portraits have become more complex involving a much more detailed approach involving blocks of tones to represent the shadows on the face.

Combining the centuries In a continuous quest to take the old and mix it with the new Opie has also been seen to use traditional mosaic tiling techniques to create contemporary versions of his computer portrait work like the example featured below.

The figure As well as his detailed and varied work into the portrait, Opie is also very famous for his figure drawings and figure sculptures using a variety of materials and techniques. He has developed this further by producing animated versions of these ideas which have been displayed in public areas on large scales as well as more intimate versions in galleries throughout the world.

Multiple figures

Hobbies as starting points

Work is produced on large scales

Figure sculpture

Portrait and figurative style combined

“opied” Japanese woodblock prints

Ipad landscape drawings-minimalist

Multimedia designs

Minimalist Animated landscapes

Animated portraiture & figure