Funny Girl 1998

Gary Hume’s screenprint, "Funny Girl," presents us with a flattened, almost abstract face, rendered in a few simple shapes and colors. Hume emerged as part of a wave of British artists in the 1990s who challenged the dominance of traditional painting and sculpture. He often appropriates existing imagery, playing with our expectations of representation. The golden eyelids evoke glamour, while the pale pink mouth hints at femininity, but the overall effect is deliberately artificial. In the context of the contemporary art world, it is interesting to note how Hume is using the language of Pop art to engage with a celebrity image but also distance himself from the commercial aspects of that world. To fully appreciate the social history of an image like this, we would need to dig into the visual culture of the time, the cult of celebrity, and the institutions that promoted certain ideals of beauty. Art history, after all, is about understanding how images reflect and shape the world around us.