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Quote from CohentheWriter on 6. August 2022, 21:14Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0xfbeef911dc5821886e1dda71586d90ed28174b7d&token=432201&page=4
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/paul-24687
Date Minted: May 19, 2021
Artist Description: The David Lynch film of Dune was a family favourite since before I could walk. I read the book first when I was 13, and decided there and then that my goal in life was to illustrate it. 27-odd years later that dream was fulfilled when this piece of art was selected as the cover of a new Deluxe Edition of the book, for which I also provided interior illustrations. It's fair to say this image - originally a homage to a story I have always loved, and now part of its history - is my most important piece to date both professionally and personally. [3000x4385px]
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
“The David Lynch film of Dune was a family favourite since before I could walk. I read the book first when I was 13, and decided there and then that my goal in life was to illustrate it. 27-odd years later that dream was fulfilled when this piece of art was selected as the cover of a new Deluxe Edition of the book, for which I also provided interior illustrations. It's fair to say this image - originally a homage to a story I have always loved, and now part of its history - is my most important piece to date both professionally and personally.”
There’s no way to write this analysis without acknowledging the source material the piece comes from. If you haven’t read Frank Herbert’s Dune, speak now or forever hold your piece. But if you have read it…well…I mean…come on:
This piece is a triumph.
Griffcrypto knows it, and we know it: Paul is his most important work. With an image as seemingly simple as Paul, Griff imbues a beloved story with more life than two film adaptations by brilliant directors could, and that’s because where both David Lynch and Denis Villenueve opted for bombast and realism, Griff opts for minimalism, for subtlety, for inaccessibility. Both of those films had large-scale commercial interests as their propulsion systems, and so the resultant works needed to be accessible to many who had no experience with the text. Griff doesn’t care about that, and thus, the work itself —so looming and grand, capturing the full religious intensity of a character who explodes godlike off the page in a way no subsequent work has been able to capture— is so much the greater for it. Paul, named after Dune’s main character, Paul Atreides, is a masterwork not only of thematic resonance but of color and composition. It can be appreciated fully by both worshippers of the source text and those coming across it with no idea what it appears to depict. Griffcrypto is a wonderful artist, but this is unlike anything else he’s done. And I want to just gawk at it some more.
Let us start with the eyes, their glistening green color that reflects the enormous spherical planet behind him. These eyes are of enormous thematic importance in Dune itself, signifying one’s esoteric inclusion into the society that makes its home on the alien desert world of Arrakis where the bulk of the story takes place. Paul’s acquiring of these eyes becomes one of his most defining features, and in a piece where the character himself is reduced mostly to feature-less silhouette, the eyes nevertheless shine bright —illuminating the stillsuit tubes in his nose. I encourage you to zoom in as close as you can on the picture; don’t worry, the pixels will adjust, and and let yourself become overwhelmed by the multitude of detail. The vague outline of Paul’s lips. His pupil-less eyes. But more than that, one notices the washed-out graininess of the composition, as if it has been composed of infinite tiny particles. On a planet covered in desert, where sand is the single unifying characteristic, does that not make sense? And yet, it’s a detail hidden for those in love with the work enough to explore it fully using the technological tools at their disposal (ditto Dune, the novel, itself) The looming planet behind Paul is, I assume, Caladon, the Atreides family’s home world, notable for all of its water, in contrast to the scarcity of liquid on Arrakis. Caladon’s beautiful seafoam color contrasts mightily with the overwhelming majority of the piece, all burnt browns and cindered reds and even black, the colors thrown around as if blown by a strong wind, obscuring the ground that Paul steps on, the planet behind him, and himself to some degree. One gets the sense that the entire piece is in danger of being blown away, or caught in some cosmic haboob, but otherwise falling away from our grasp.
Deification is a main theme in the book: the rise of a man to the level of God. In Paul, Griff depicts his subject as containing a similar essence to that of the planet behind him, equating the character itself with the cosmic scale of a planetary body. It comes through in his eyes as if he’s channeling it. And the rest of him is, as mentioned, mostly clouded by shadow. Paul remains, as most Gods do, unknowable beyond his outline. A question I keep having is whether he’s coming towards us or moving away from us? Is he being revealed by a lull in a sandstorm, or is he being further clouded by it, falling back into the hiding embrace of the planet itself? Everything about this piece is cloaked in secrecy, in shadow, in uncertainty. And perhaps that’s why we —certainly I— keep coming back to Paul’s eyes, shining like beacons, providing clarity in an artwork which otherwise lacks it. And yet, if eyes are windows to the soul, what do we see within? Eyes without pupils, eyes too glaringly bright to gain any further insight into. And here is just another of the ways Griffcrypto was able to imbue deep themes of the source material into his artwork. So much in the eyes. So so much in just the eyes alone. Mr. Herbert would be proud.
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/paul-24687
Date Minted: May 19, 2021
Artist Description: The David Lynch film of Dune was a family favourite since before I could walk. I read the book first when I was 13, and decided there and then that my goal in life was to illustrate it. 27-odd years later that dream was fulfilled when this piece of art was selected as the cover of a new Deluxe Edition of the book, for which I also provided interior illustrations. It's fair to say this image - originally a homage to a story I have always loved, and now part of its history - is my most important piece to date both professionally and personally. [3000x4385px]
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
“The David Lynch film of Dune was a family favourite since before I could walk. I read the book first when I was 13, and decided there and then that my goal in life was to illustrate it. 27-odd years later that dream was fulfilled when this piece of art was selected as the cover of a new Deluxe Edition of the book, for which I also provided interior illustrations. It's fair to say this image - originally a homage to a story I have always loved, and now part of its history - is my most important piece to date both professionally and personally.”
There’s no way to write this analysis without acknowledging the source material the piece comes from. If you haven’t read Frank Herbert’s Dune, speak now or forever hold your piece. But if you have read it…well…I mean…come on:
This piece is a triumph.
Griffcrypto knows it, and we know it: Paul is his most important work. With an image as seemingly simple as Paul, Griff imbues a beloved story with more life than two film adaptations by brilliant directors could, and that’s because where both David Lynch and Denis Villenueve opted for bombast and realism, Griff opts for minimalism, for subtlety, for inaccessibility. Both of those films had large-scale commercial interests as their propulsion systems, and so the resultant works needed to be accessible to many who had no experience with the text. Griff doesn’t care about that, and thus, the work itself —so looming and grand, capturing the full religious intensity of a character who explodes godlike off the page in a way no subsequent work has been able to capture— is so much the greater for it. Paul, named after Dune’s main character, Paul Atreides, is a masterwork not only of thematic resonance but of color and composition. It can be appreciated fully by both worshippers of the source text and those coming across it with no idea what it appears to depict. Griffcrypto is a wonderful artist, but this is unlike anything else he’s done. And I want to just gawk at it some more.
Let us start with the eyes, their glistening green color that reflects the enormous spherical planet behind him. These eyes are of enormous thematic importance in Dune itself, signifying one’s esoteric inclusion into the society that makes its home on the alien desert world of Arrakis where the bulk of the story takes place. Paul’s acquiring of these eyes becomes one of his most defining features, and in a piece where the character himself is reduced mostly to feature-less silhouette, the eyes nevertheless shine bright —illuminating the stillsuit tubes in his nose. I encourage you to zoom in as close as you can on the picture; don’t worry, the pixels will adjust, and and let yourself become overwhelmed by the multitude of detail. The vague outline of Paul’s lips. His pupil-less eyes. But more than that, one notices the washed-out graininess of the composition, as if it has been composed of infinite tiny particles. On a planet covered in desert, where sand is the single unifying characteristic, does that not make sense? And yet, it’s a detail hidden for those in love with the work enough to explore it fully using the technological tools at their disposal (ditto Dune, the novel, itself) The looming planet behind Paul is, I assume, Caladon, the Atreides family’s home world, notable for all of its water, in contrast to the scarcity of liquid on Arrakis. Caladon’s beautiful seafoam color contrasts mightily with the overwhelming majority of the piece, all burnt browns and cindered reds and even black, the colors thrown around as if blown by a strong wind, obscuring the ground that Paul steps on, the planet behind him, and himself to some degree. One gets the sense that the entire piece is in danger of being blown away, or caught in some cosmic haboob, but otherwise falling away from our grasp.
Deification is a main theme in the book: the rise of a man to the level of God. In Paul, Griff depicts his subject as containing a similar essence to that of the planet behind him, equating the character itself with the cosmic scale of a planetary body. It comes through in his eyes as if he’s channeling it. And the rest of him is, as mentioned, mostly clouded by shadow. Paul remains, as most Gods do, unknowable beyond his outline. A question I keep having is whether he’s coming towards us or moving away from us? Is he being revealed by a lull in a sandstorm, or is he being further clouded by it, falling back into the hiding embrace of the planet itself? Everything about this piece is cloaked in secrecy, in shadow, in uncertainty. And perhaps that’s why we —certainly I— keep coming back to Paul’s eyes, shining like beacons, providing clarity in an artwork which otherwise lacks it. And yet, if eyes are windows to the soul, what do we see within? Eyes without pupils, eyes too glaringly bright to gain any further insight into. And here is just another of the ways Griffcrypto was able to imbue deep themes of the source material into his artwork. So much in the eyes. So so much in just the eyes alone. Mr. Herbert would be proud.