Flight of Fancy Dress

1972-2002

mixed technique 80x116x24 cm

Dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci

A grinning black skull in carnival costume presents a vanitas image, a reminder of our inability to surmount our physical limitations. We are no more able to fly unaided than we are to achieve immortality.

The skull is black representing an aeroplane’s ‘black box’ (which is actually orange!). All the workings of body and soul reside herein.

This piece is testament to the hubris that inspires humankind to continue to reach for the heavens. The wing we see on our right is modelled after that designed by Leonardo Da Vinci, who conceived of machines capable of flight centuries before the first aeroplanes were built. Despite the potential it offers, this wing appears skeletal: however far we make advances we are always returned to the fact of our base materiality, and yet, as art, the masquerade continues. A Flight of Fancy (Dress).