Art and the body- John Coplans

John Coplans

Body Parts

2003

John Coplans is an English artist living in the US who has at various stages of his career has been a painter, magazine editor, museum director and most recently a photographer. In his pictures his body is divided into sections which appear against a white background, usually with two of these images juxtaposed against each other. The arrangement of limbs in unusual positions causes the viewer to have to readjust their perspective on the body shown. Usually when the full figures shown it isn't necessary to look closely because your minds assumptions can fill in missing details, here the fragmented body parts look like unusual objects with different tones, textures, crevices and details so it's possible to view these body parts with a new perspective and see aspects of then that may have been overlooked otherwise. Coplans work is described as 'grotesque' which is true however the photographs don't have the confrontational and aggressive element featured in most of contemporary art regarding the body. His work has a gentle quality because of the black and white colour, relaxed poses and though flawed in many ways his skin seems beautiful in the way an elephants skin is, wrinkely but lived in.

This 'Body Parts' series was a reaction to the disaster of the World Traid Centre Towers. He lived in New york at the time and amid all the chaos this is what emerged from his photography. He says:" without consciously connecting the disaster to what I was photographing, I had started making images of my arms and legs and then collaging a pair of them together to make one image. After I had made four such images, I realised the connection when it was announced in the news that workmen were digging up debris andconstantly finding human body parts." This reminds me of what Michael said about the 'Raw and Cooked' project where your ideas come from somewhere even if you can't recognise where that is straight away.