Paula Rego has also produced a disturbing analyse of the implications of the Little Red Riding Hood tale, as has French Photographer Gérard Rancinan. With the haunting Daughter, Smith suggests that the wolf and the girl have come together and produced an offspring, uncannily embodying human and animal characteristics, while challenging conventional notions of good and evil. For many, the relationship between the girl and the wolf is considered as violent and sexual, but here, Smith rejects this idea and focuses on the similarities and connectiion shared by the pair. Smith’s interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood is centred around an interrogation of the character’s identities and relationship, hinting both at the original, gruesome plot, and its more recent explorations. In Swallows The Poison Apple, Snow White isn’t the young, fair and beautiful princess we are familiar with anymore, but instead a tortured young woman, desperately clutching her dress in a suggestive yet demeaning pose, thus hinting at the pain and violence of her demise. The complexity of the mother-daughter relationship is at play in Snow White and Her Stepmother, where Rego depicts the mortifying experience of the young woman’s purity being tested to consider her suitability to marry, underlining a disturbing picture of power games and humiliation. In her reinterpretation of Snow White, the fairy tale converges with horror, adding a twist of psychological violation and sexual intrigue. Rego has always been enthralled with the complexity of the tales and myths defining our modern culture, and has endeavoured to reinvent these stories with a darker stance, brimming with mystery and cruelty. Paula Rego is another accomplished storyteller, who has been drawing upon the fairy tales we know so well – combined with her own life story – to create often unsettling tableaux impregnated with a subtle yet striking ambiguity. Paula Rego, Snow White and her Stepmother, 1995. Hockney’s depiction of the tales is especially fascinating because of the sharp contrast between the traditional, adorned and excessive imagery commonly associated with fairy tales, and his unassuming graphic black and white portrayal of princesses, the use of negative space and starkly haunting architectural illustrations. These brilliant etchings for The Little Sea Hare, Fundevogel, Rapunzel, The Boy Who Left Home to Learn Fear, Old Rinkrank, and Rumpelstilzchen were originally published in Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm with Illustrations by David Hockney, by the British Royal Academy of Arts, in 1970. Plain and uncluttered at first glance, these prints validate Hockney’s technical mastery, revealing a seamless manipulation of lines and textures.Īfter reading the complete 220 stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, Hockney selected six tales which particularly challenged his imagination, giving each his unique visual interpretation and depicting their psychological themes and supernatural oddities in his own terms. Although Hockney undeniably is a master of vivid colours, his talents as storyteller can be grasped in his visual take on the Grimm tales, a series of 39 monochromatic etchings. Image via ChristiesĪs one of the most influential British artists of the 20 th century, David Hockney is best known for his contribution to the British Pop Art movement of the 1960s, his serial paintings of swimming pools, as well as his semi-abstract landscapes of California and Yorkshire, his twin habitation loves. Here, we take a look at a few contemporary artists who have been deconstructing, through their work, the imagery most commonly associated with fairy tales, thus investigating and reinventing their cryptic themes and sombre endings.ĭavid Hockney, The Tower Had One Window (Rapunzel), 1969-70. Accounts of torture, heartbreak, cannibalism, rape and incest abound – the dark side of fairy tales are not easily forgotten, and certainly more powerful than the bland versions we collectively grew up with before bedtime.Įnchanted with the duality echoing at the core of these popular stories, many artists have explored the narrative framework of fairy tales, attempting to restore their complexity and inherent darkness. For those who aren’t fooled by light-hearted Disney escapades, often diminishing the power of its heroines, the grim undertones of fairy tales are often fascinating, the unvarnished originals often chilling in their stark depiction of human moral frailty. But the deceptively naïve tales we are familiar with today are often remarkably complex underneath, they are the sugar-coated versions of exceptionally gruesome and disturbing legends. When we think about fairy tales, our minds often wander towards princes and princesses, castles, a soupçon of magic and most of all, a happy ending.
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