Shida's art and the analysis of cultural histories.

Interpret artwork through the analysis of cultural histories.

The image I will be comparing art works with through the anals of history, is a piece of street-art by Shida. Within this image I see things like roadkill, the chesire cat, rainbow serpent, skeleton in a shallow grave, distorted figure in a coffin, preserved animal, dragon, muppets, beasts and so on.

Post Modernism (present - 1975)

In popular culture today, we find dragons in movies cartoons and video games:

These cute little muppet critters are from the 1986 movie Labyrinth...

The creature "Flammie" is from the game "Secret of Mana"...

I also see the chesire cat from Alice in Wonderland...

And cats like to stretch, the resemblance is uncanny...

Shida's painting also conjurs creatures preserved in jars... 

Which reminds me of Damien Hirst's post modern piece "The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living"...

Modernism (1975 - 1875)

In Max Ernst's surreal piece, "Ocell de foc", one can see a distorted creature, similar to that in Shida's street art.

During the late 1800's in Mexico, Jose Guadalupe Posada created bold satirical pieces of some of the most horrible people from his time. He was also scaring the shit out of kids with images such as this one titled Calavera Huerista, which is based on the terror General Huerta.

Modern era (1875 - 1500)

Utagawa Kuniyoshi was printing images of the dreaded Tengu, a supernatural winged creature which tranaslates to "Heavenly dogs". In this ukiyo-e style woodblock print from the mid 19th century, we see the samurai Oki no Jiro Hiroari killing one of the monstrous dogs ...

Ernst Heackel a prominent biologist and artist from Germany was creating wonderful scientific drawings of all types of creatures. Though more well known for his documentation of the species radiolaria, he also documented other insects and small animals...

Medieval Era (1500 - 500)

During the medieval era, there were all kinds of stories about dragons and the knights that fought with them.  Here is the Lindorm Dragon, from the alchemical scrolls of Sir George Ripley.  

Ancient History (500 - 3350 BC) 

Ancient Egyptians believed in some strange creatures and gods like Anubis. Anubis often appeared as a sitting jackal and at other times he was portrayed as a man with the head of a jackal. Was Anubis an alien or animorphic creatures made by aliens, or just made up by the Egyptians for the heck of it? I guess we'll never really know. Wow, images, carvings and fetish's of Anubis date back to the 1st Dynasty,  3100-2890 BC.

Pre history (3350BC and beyond)

We return to Australia, where Shida's art hangs on the walls of industrial buildings. Here we find the ancient Aboriginees painted Rainbow Serpents on the walls of caves. Can you believe they were painting critters like this fromt between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago.