L’homme endormi

A piece sparked by Carolus-Duran’s L’homme endormi. I didn’t want to “recreate” it. I wanted to sit with it, listen to it, and let it echo through a contemporary lens.
Appropriation in art isn’t theft; it’s dialogue. It’s a way of saying: I see you. I come from you. And now I’m going to speak back. Old master paintings aren’t dusty relics — they’re pressure points. They remind us that meaning isn’t born out of novelty alone, that art doesn’t float free from memory or inheritance.
We like to imagine we can outrun history, build culture from the “now,” skip the canon and still arrive at depth. But the older forces are still here, pulsing under everything — form and chaos, discipline and instinct, the Apollonian urge to shape and the wilder energies that want to dissolve the edges.
When I revisit a work like Carolus-Duran’s, I’m not borrowing; I’m entering a conversation that’s been going on for centuries. The past is not a weight but a scaffolding — something to stand on while looking for new color, new gesture, new breath.