Classical Heads., 1985

Derek Carruthers  

Late 20th century gouache and watercolour on paper by British artist Derek Carruthers. The painting is signed to the bottom right and signed and dated 1985 to the reverse.

An imposing and colourful painting of a colossal classical heroic Graeco-Roman head with an arching array of busts overhead and three statues to the base.

This painting is powerful and heroic in its representation of the colossal head and the rainbow of past heroic figures. And yet the statues are broken and the figures' heads liberated from their bodies. Everything, including glory fades with time. The statue is perhaps dreaming of glory days but those days are just dreams.

Carruthers likes to challenge our human perspective of what is normal. Using his constructivist approach to interlink art and architecture he takes images out of context or changes their relationship to each other either by manipulating size,  juxtaposing images from different periods of time or by contrasting a beautiful background with its political or social meaning.