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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Eight: Using symbols and metaphors to express meaning > Mural, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2005
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18-JUN-2005

Mural, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2005

In Leiden, the town that gave us a Rembrandt, I noticed a large symbolic wall painting on the side of a building next to a construction site. Painted puppets joylessly glide across the huge wall -- a metaphor for thankless work. I see it as a group of indifferent people, dancing to the tune of their boss. They may raise their hands to their heads, but not in joy. Perhaps in confusion. The blue color symbolized the attitude they bring to their tasks. It is a somber dance, performed on an enormous scale. The fact that someone has painted it next to a construction site was not lost on me. It is a comment on work in the midst of a work place. That’s why I included the structures in my own image of it, and why I made sure those sticks of building materials are symbolically skewering the hearts of both the mural and my own photograph. I wanted my image to work as a metaphor for joyless work as well. Our time here is too precious to waste as a slave to mindless duty. The muralist seems to be asking us to reconsider how we spend our time and lives. I made my own dark-toned, semi-abstracted image to symbolically extend that message.

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Phil Douglis26-Nov-2006 19:47
I love your interpretation, Jen -- just as I cherished Likyin's. Art is a universal language. I am an American, making a picture of Dutch art in the Netherlands, while you and Likyin are both Chinese, and see both this work of art and my interpretation of it through your own cultural prisms. Such is the universal sweep of pbase itself! Yes, I see sadness here as well - the somber blue color and the expressions on the faces of these puppets speak volumes. Thanks for seeing the clouds as symbolizing bubbles about to break, vanishing along with their hopes and dreams. Thanks, too, for seeing the abstracted birds, who hint at freedom but are trapped in this frame along with the puppets. I saw the costruction site as a metaphor the construction of life itself. The sticks pierce the hearts of the puppets and the image itself, while at the same time, the dappled light on those buildings can indeed suggest the unattainable. In the end, this image juxtaposes symbol upon symbol, and each viewer will come to his or her own conclusions as to what they might mean. Such is the nature of photographic expression.
Jennifer Zhou26-Nov-2006 14:59
The blue color does make the mural look somber and sad, as well as the expression on the dancers faces. The bule circles at the background seem like clouds, but to me they look like bubbles that will soon break and turn to nothing, so do their dreams. The flying birds are the hint of their hopes for freedom, but they could never come out of the blue, the sadness. And the sunshine falling on the buildings on the foreground, almost unattainable for them. You really activate my imagination here, and you always do. Thanks Phil!
Phil Douglis17-Apr-2006 07:01
Thanks, Likyin, for coming to this image. It has waiting for a comment now for ten months. I am glad you see these figures rising, instead of being beaten down. A day dream, perhaps. You point up the beauty of art itself -- the artists who made this painting expressed themselves well. They triggered my imagination, and now yours. It was my task to extend that experience through my own interpretation of it. And now you have interpreted my expression quite lucidly. Thank you, as always.
Guest 02-Apr-2006 06:19
I like the superrealistic style of the painting as well as its combination with the buildings and sticks. The buildings in this perspective are not in human scale but at least 20 times smaller, which enhanced the superrealism. Although seemingly joyless, the dancers and the constructions both tend to float, to above. I can feel that they are rising and getting deconstructed, tile by tile, eye by eye ... It is the sticks that indecated the hidden power of movements. It is rather a daydreaming image than a joyless one, Phil.
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