Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon is a multimedia artist who was born in Glasgow in 1966. His work has been featured in dozens of museums around the world, especially the Tate and Gagosian. His work is related to Relational Aesthetics because he is concerned with highlighting the spectator's subjectivity within the work, and exploring themes of collective identity. He does this by utilizing images in popular culture, like Hitchcock's Psycho, and distorting them to such a degree that the meaning they were originally imbued with is completely stripped away to reveal a different meaning.

One of his most famous works, 24 Hour Psycho, consists of the projection of Hitchcock's Psycho slowed down so that it takes a full 24 hours to get through the movie. This highlights the constructed nature of film, and the presence of the spectator.


Other dynamic examples of his video work include Play Dead; Real Time, Zidane; a 21st Century Portrait, and Phantom. He also does a series of photographs of iconic stars that he has altered in some way. The first round of photos is called Blind Stars, then Bond Girls, then Self Portrait of You + Me.


This is an example of one of the latter, called Self Portrait of You + Me (Jackie). He mounted a mirror behind her photo, allowing the spectator to participate in the self portrait/construction of her persona. 

Overall, his work encompasses a shocking amount of work and engages with a variety of engaging topics. Gordon is a fascinating artist, and I very much enjoyed researching him. 

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