SAM TAYLOR-WOOD (English, born 1967) Soliloquy I, 1998 Color photographs, diptych, 83 x 101 1/16" (overall), edition 6/6 Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund, 1999.

Dubbed by one critic the “princess charming of the English art scene,” this young London-based artist was born in 1967 and studied at Goldsmiths College in London. She was one of a group of young British artists who made a dramatic entrance on the international art scene in the late 1990s. Using photography and the narrative strategies of film and video, Taylor-Wood’s art evokes the complexity of human emotions in everyday life.

This large work is part of her Soliloquy series. In this series the artist used a standard format: an oversized photograph inspired by a famous painting on top of a panel of smaller images, in this case a 360-degree panoramic frieze of people in an opulent interior. Here, the large image on top recreates the British Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis’ (1830-1916) Death of Chatterton from 1854. It is one of the most famous of all Victorian paintings in the Tate Gallery, London. The theme of Wallis’ painting is suicide and blighted artistic aspiration. In Sam Taylor-Wood’s reinterpretation, the narrative suggested is one of angst, emotion, and high drama. The diorama below provides a subtext and parallel exploration for the psychological state of the single figure above. Overall, the images that she creates suggest the neurosis and psychosis of contemporary life and relationships.

- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects