Morbid excess : a study of symmetry, anatomy and the decorative motif.

• Main Author: Lim, May Fen Yu.
• Other Authors: Martin Constable
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/44733
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This project aims to re-represent the Memento Mori tradition in a new way through the use of symmetry, visual excess, and the anatomy as a decorative motif. Inspired by principles and theories of the grotesque that play with opposing elements of attraction and repulsion, this project seeks to utilize the decorative motif and its lasting visual appeal as a possible strategy to address the subject of death. Societal attitudes towards death have seen evident changes since the earliest traditions of death remembrance, and these hint at how the human nature has come to deal with the concept of non-existence. This project seeks to provoke death remembrance through the representation of the fragmented body and the use of symmetry as both a visual metaphor. By focusing on depictions of the human anatomy, this project examines the relationship between our repulsion to death and decay, and our attraction to beauty and how these may overlap in a single representation. By bringing together discourses relating to surrealism, horror and beauty, the work also aims to blur the boundaries of accepted definitions of aesthetic value. The intentional use of ornament as a tool in this project addresses the prevalence and pervasiveness of its visual impact in culture despite the taboo still placed on it today. This project, in celebrating of the place of ornament in the visual arts, takes an alternative approach to conventional ornamentation by representing the human anatomy as a form of ornament and elaboration. Keywords: memento mori, anatomy, ornamentation