AS Media Blake Neubert Source Of Inspiration

Blake Neubert Source Of Inspiration

Brief

I aim to look into an artist called Blake Neubert as a source of inspiration to hopefully prompt some ideas of how to use gore and apply it to different horror sub genres, or if I'm lucky genres beside horror. This was inspired by the gore in 'zombie' horrors.

Research and Planning

Blake Neubert is a painter mainly known for his art labelled as 'scrape art'. This is where a base layer of a drawing is obscured with a thick layer of paint. This paint conceals what lies underneath from the audience. It is only until Neubert uses a razor to scrape off the supposedly normal subject we are subjected to a very gruesome underneath.

The videos of these pieces are promoted on Instagram and receive many mixed views, most voicing how disturbing and offensive the art is, while others praise the idea of 'disclosing the truth'.

Some of his work is influenced by unsolved murders or allegations. Famous examples include the following:

• "The Black Dahlia" - A publicized unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" is portrayed in the below art. This work involves the before and after of the attack, and uses the graphic picture of her mutilated body as a reference.

• Nicole Brown Simpson's murder - The murder of OJ Simpson's ex-wife is another unsolved murder involving the prime suspect of OJ Simpson. This well known case has led to documentaries, theories and TV shows. However, Neubert used the contrast between Nicole's dark end and celebrity Kim Kardashian's fame to 'reveal' the supposed truth Kim Kardashian's father and OJ Simpson's defence attorney covered.

Other pieces do not capture a horrific story, however, they are equally creepy. For instance, there is a series of paintings which made the carnage more blatant and instead erased the identity of the subject. Alternatively, a few among this series still incorporated a characteristic to identify the subject, like the popular superheroes of the 'comic' franchise below. Superheroes are supposed to be strong childhood heroes, however, 'skinning' like them any other of Neubert's subjects plays with this expectation.

Because of this, I am unsure which is more menacing: erasing most features we distinguish ourselves with and manipulating the remaining identity or almost 'rebranding' famous characters into horrific alternatives.

Genre

Obviously from the graphic content, this immediately made me connect the art to the genre of horror, as gore is a common convention used, especially in 'slashers'. I also chose this as inspiration as I thought it was fitting after previously analysing the 'zombie' horror "28 Weeks Later".

To connect these pieces to the task of producing a film opening or title sequence, I regarded the artist as the villain if we were to make a horror to help come up with the following ideas:

• The antagonist can have drawings of their victim's anatomy - If the villain has sketches of these distressing images it will show the villain is planning and has a motive. This represents the villain as besotted and complex, which is a convention of psychological horrors. This could just be recurring drawings of teeth or muscles/meat similar to Neubert's art below. I believe this would only make sense if used in the title sequence like a reference to the villain or if the opening introduces the villain.

• The razor could be featured as a weapon - In horrors the killer either murders carelessly (common in 'slashers') or kills with a signature weapon or a 'style' (common in psychological horrors). If we decide to create a horror, we could bear this in mind and conform to the appropriate convention.

• Gore will be heavily used - Make up and other effects would most likely be used to easily identify the genre of the video as a horror, for example in "28 Weeks Later" gore was used.

• There could be multiple or past victims - Like mentioned earlier, the villain could reference multiple victims through a collection of sickening pictures. If this was done this would further develop the complexity of the character. This can even link to the genre of crime, where perhaps there is a serial killer on the lose, hence there being multiple victims. Or the detectives could have a case file with before and after photos of victims (there usually is forensics taking photos of a body in most crimes). This is influenced by the before and after 'scrape art' clips.