GERALD LAING

Repetition

Catalogue raisonné no. 678

Artist's CR 617

2005

Kinkell

Oil on canvas

36 x 32 inches / 0 cm

Exhibitions:
• Gerald Laing: From 1963 to the Present, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, 2004
  chevron_right
• Gerald Laing: Iraq War Paintings, Kings College, Cambridge, 2005
  chevron_right
• Gerald Laing: Iraq War Paintings, Spike Gallery, New York, 2005
  chevron_right

Literature:
• Gerald Laing, 'Artist’s Notes on War Paintings', unpublished manuscript, 2004
  chevron_right

Selected Citations and Comments

In the pre-industrial period two identical items were an expensive luxury. After mass-production was established, the converse was the case.
The PR machine for Bush’s re-election campaign made the mistake of grouping identical twins and triplets in The Service as a backdrop to a photo-op: the media erroneously assumed that the image had been doctored. Naturally, the Bush administration was merely trying to appeal to a pre-industrial electorate… Repeating images of soldiers in order to give the impression that there are more of them results, rather worryingly, in actual humans becoming a virtual army. It is also a lie.

Gerald Laing, 'Artist's Notes on War Paintings', unpublished manuscript, 2004