Ivan Albright, The picture of Dorian Gray

Ivan Albright 

An American Magic Realist Painter and Artist 

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/93798?search_no=1&index=2, viewed 08.01.2016, digital image 

This is a painted created by Ivan Albright, Albright's work often takes years to complete and are mainly of mysterious and quite dark subjects. He studied painting for a long time and devoted most of his life to creative paintings; because of the amount of effort that went into his work, he became possessive of them and charged a lot of money for each one he wanted to sell. 

In 1943 he was commissioned to create a painting for Albert Lewin's film, based on the original story by Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray. HIs experience in medical drawings probably played some part in the design for the films' painting, as he was sure to aggregate the lines of decay and corruption, while keeping parts realistic. Ivan made changes to the painting during the film, but the original is kept in the Art Institute of Chicago.  

What I admire about this painting of Dorian's soul is the amount of colour used, although the overall idea of the painting is a dark one, Ivan has used a mixture of colours concentrating on reds and blues. This colour use may have been to keep the idea of blood and veins, as veins appear to be blue and blood is red. In many other representations of the picture, dark colours are used and the overall message is a gloomy one, Ivan's painting still retains a gloomy message of old and decaying things, but he has managed to create a representation that is completely different from the rest with the amount of colour throughout. 

http://chubbychatterbox.com/blog/all_blog_posts/master_of_the_zombie_apocalypse.en, viewed 08.01.2016, digital image

In this close up of the painting created by Ivan, we can see the amount of detail put into the face and hair. The eyes seem to be staring out and the skin looks old, rough and wrinkled, the head retains the colour but the hair is waisting away; there are only very small strands of hair close to the hair line and on top of the head. There is a lot going on in this painting, and more was added to it during filming, although the film was shot in black and white, Albert wanted the painting to be in colour to emphasise the full transformation.