Charlotte Caron Analysis

Caron is a young French artist born in Paris in 1988. She aspired to be an artist from a young age and since has been taking steps towards that goal. Caron now lives in Montreal, Canada as she says “there is so much to be inspired by; the vast outdoors, the diversity in culture, the open mindedness and thriving creative community.”¹ Whereas when in France she found it was hard to stand out as a young artist and also very expensive to live. Caron is inspired by art history; renaissance and Romanticism however, her art seems much more modern.

I am mainly looking at her paintings and more specifically her animal portraiture series. The painting to the right is from the series, its called ‘Renard’ which means Fox in French. Caron takes a photo of a person’s face and then paints an animal’s face on top in acrylic paint. The size of this piece is 90x90cm, as is all of the portraits that she does like this. Not only does she paint the animal’s face but she also smears the paint which makes the photo and the painting feel like they are merging, she also has created some drips with the paint which suggests the same thing.“The series of paintings/photographs are trying to respond to a form of duality… ultimately creating an osmosis of the two mediums.”.² The acrylic creates texture on the photo paper and gives the pieces a 3D quality. I am quite interested in experimenting with texture in different ways so this could be good start. Caron refers to duality being the mixing between acrylic paint and the photo, however, I see duality more as he bringing together of the human and animal world which she does by humanising the animal.

The titles of her portraits are always about the animal rather than the human in the piece. She focuses on the “Animalised body (where the man is inhabited by the animal and the animal becomes a man)”³ instead of looking at the animal being inhibited by man or the man becoming the animal. The focus in the portrait is also always the animal as the identity of the human is hidden, this is to show the personas which we live and hide behind every day. The photos are all taken against a white background and the clothes the person is wearing is often very plain. This also takes the focus away from the human and in contrast the animals are bright and colourful which suggests to me that humans are not superior to animals and that we are very similar to animals and shouldn’t take advantage of them. Looking at these portraits has inspired me to look into spirit animals and the history behind them. For example how spirit animals are obtained: by letting an animal choose you and become prominent in your life, through dreams etc. this could be a way to choose what animals go over people’s faces in my own work or a quicker and more simple way could be by making a questionnaire and seeing what animals people are most like.

The scale is kept the same for all of the pieces in the series which when looked at together there is not one that stands out over the rest. This works well as it is clear it is a series when exhibited. Caron loves to mix mediums to get her topics across so I could experiment with different medias and not just copy the mediums that she uses. Caron uses photos of her friends instead of models, this is also something I could do to link my paintings to me. “I re-interpret the image and the document with various technical means; transformation, mixing, deconstruction, reconstruction”³ In Caron’s pieces she doesn’t use the colour straight from the tube “mixing” which makes the pieces more personal; this is something that I could do myself in my own work. “Transformation” links to her transforming the photo of the people into acrylic paintings of animals. “deconstruction, reconstruction” could link to how she paints over her photos- destructing them and then reconstructing them by turning them into animals.

This piece is Red-Gorge which is Red Bird in French, I am looking at this piece also to show how her series of these paintings are all very similar. The piece is 90x90cm just like Renard. The background is white just like Renard to not take away focus from the portrait but unlike Renard, the clothes that the model is wearing are not white. She is instead wearing a brown fur coat. I think this works well as In Renard the white clothes work well with the white fur on the fox whereas the brown coat works well with the red feathers of the bird. It also aids the suggestion that the people in the photos are transforming into the animals as they are wearing clothes of similar colours to the animals. In Red-Gorge the model is at an angle instead of straight on like in Renard, I think this works well with the bird as it gives a 3D aspect to it however the fox being straight on works well with the fox as it looks as though the fox is staring at you and captures the cunning personality of a fox better. 

Caron has dripped paint which takes away from the realism of the painting but also gives the feeling of transformation and surrealism.

References:

1-      http://knockmag.com/portfolio/charlotte-caron/

2-      http://trendland.com/charlotte-carons-painted-portraits/

3-      https://issuu.com/bryansteven79/docs/monographie-13-01-15/3

4-      http://charlottecaron.fr/