Just Another Vanitas

Just Another Vanitas is derived from Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors. The picture is in a tradition depicting books, wealth and instruments accompanied by a skull, known as a vanitas picture. 

Starting as a *3D scanned real skull, this artwork was carefully sculpted and transformed in 3D CAD software using the 2D Ambassadors skull as a reference. Applying a precise geometric transformation produced the 3D anamorphic skull.

You are confronted with a physical, distorted skull made from the virtual world. Having to adapt your position to ‘correct’ the skull when viewing the painting makes you aware of sensations in your body. In digital graphics, this adaptation is not strenuous and can show a multiplicity of viewpoints.

The sculpture allows you to ‘animate’ the distortion in three dimensions. This gives you a bodily awareness of the virtual world and perhaps provokes an emotional response about the meaning of mortality. Touch is made available as another sensory layer, and you may engage mindfully in proprioception: an innate awareness and sensation of parts of your body.

Paul Cezanne engaged in a similar process, which he called “petite sensation”. By shifting his body a little to the right, then to the left and paying attention to this movement he was able to give form to his sensations. This allowed his paintings to appear like solid objects, yet distorted and uncanny, and not from a single viewpoint.

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