Best of Art
The diversity and beauty of Asian art is as wide as the oceans separating the East from the West. Here are some of the most intriguing art pieces our team has celebrated through the years
The diversity and beauty of Asian art is as wide as the oceans separating the East from the West. Here are some of the most intriguing art pieces our team has celebrated through the years
Revisited
No.65 Issue 4/2009
Title
Insights into the Human Soul
The morbid oeuvre from photographer and artist extraordinaire, Dominic Rouse, is not for the faint-hearted. It takes strength to confront the deepest abyss of man’s quintessence
Text
Lunita S V Mendoza
Photos
Brooks Jensen Brooks Jensen – exceptional artist, visual architect and aural instigator – comments that Dominic Rouse would be the first to admit that his use of the camera and the darkroom are unusual. “Rouse does not photograph the world,” Jensen muses. “He makes photographs of his mind.” In Rouse’s The Philosopher’s Tomb, profound issues and challenging questions abound. It is as complex as his passion, uniquely combining photography and fine art. Here, description fails and provocation begins. Perhaps the more recognised of Rouse’s complex compositions and an example of the refined mastery of his unique craft is Ecce Homo. This creation comes from, in Rouse’s own words, “the most chilling place I’ve ever been in”. Featuring a decaying figure, it is an image inspired in part by Rouse’s visits to Cambodia and the S-21 Museum in particular, the site of the Khmer Rouge’s principal interrogation facility in Phnom Penh. On the 15th of April this year, 30 years after the Khmer Rouge, a court in Cambodia tried the man, Pol Pot, who headed this facility for “crimes against humanity”, a phrase Rouse defines as something that is “loudly trumpeted whenever the Western Hypocrisies wish to visit their invidious sense of justice on others.” “It is not possible for an individual human being to commit crimes against humanity. For crimes against humanity to occur, whole societies must be converted to the criminal cause,” Rouse adds. His passion for truth trails the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by American and British soldiers, where evidence of gruesome tactics can be found by those prepared to look for them. “Nonetheless, we can be sure that no British or American soldier will be found guilty of any crime, not for a lack of guilt or the evidence of it but because justice on this planet is the perverse plaything of the victorious.” In the beginning, I asked Rouse what exactly he was trying to portray in Ecce Homo’s human putrefaction. “Do you still need to ask why Ecce Homo gives you a sense of decay?” the discoverer enquires. Obviously not anymore, I say to myself. ”It is,” Rouse starts again, “a portrait of humanity and our enduring lack of it.” Words to ponder over. As Phil Coulter belts out his evergreen tune of being just another writer, still trapped within his truth, Rouse’s own truth comes to mind. “Throughout human history, art has been associated with man’s search for truth and beauty,” says Rouse. “But I am more interested in exposing the fallacy that is truth and I strongly suspect that beauty can be measured in degrees of deceit; the greater the beauty, the greater the deceit. Perhaps my images could be described as having the potential for truth as they are inaccurate representations of reality.” But why so glum, chum? “Those who know me would tell you, I feel sure, that I do not suffer from unhappiness any more than the next man, though I do believe that the dedicated pursuit of happiness is in itself a form of sadness,” Rouse concludes.