Is It Bad to Use Body Outlinez in Art
Chalk Body Outlines: Grisly, Yep, only Chic
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November 13, 1994
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WHEN Michael Carr felt compelled several years ago to produce art that would commemorate the escalating number of trigger-happy deaths in Washington, 1 image haunted him. And then he went into an alley well-nigh his home in Washington's Northwest quadrant and began painting outlines of bodies in the style he had seen used at the scenes of homicides depicted in movies and on boob tube.
By the finish of 1992 he had painted 452 body outlines in acrylic business firm paint on Naylor Courtroom, provoking the attending of newspaper and goggle box reporters and the chagrin of some neighbors. "It is a powerful subconscious epitome," Mr. Carr said.
So powerful that when Steve Lopez, a columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, was writing a novel, "Third and Indiana," in 1993 (it was recently published by Viking), he had a main character paint like images on a blocks-long stretch of Wide Street.
Final spring, students at the Academy of Washington in Seattle covered the campus sidewalks with body outlines to promote sensation of sexual violence.
Now, a Keith Haring-esque body outline dominates a xl-by-lx-foot imprint on the dome of the Liberty Scientific discipline Center in Bailiwick of jersey City, in full view of thousands of commuters using the Holland Tunnel. The banner is for an exhibition on forensic science, "Whodunit," which runs through Jan. eight.
And lately, the trunk outline has shown its marketing power, helping to sell locks in New York and $300,000 worth of T-shirts, caps, boxer shorts and beach towels for the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.
The body outline has been a fixture on tv offense shows and in movies for years, and its use continues. "Matlock" fans saw ane and then far this flavor, as did viewers of a reunion of the television detectives Cagney and Lacey. The body outline has been used for laughs in the "Naked Gun" movies and for tears in the new Richard Dreyfuss film "Silent Fall." David Letterman often used the image in "Late Night" jokes, though the body hasn't followed him to the new network.
Every now then an easily reproduced symbol makes its mark: the peace sign, for instance, or the ubiquitous nose and eyes of Kilroy during and after World War 2. Is the trunk outline condign a symbol for this decade, when fierce death is a commonplace of urban life? It is either poignant or cartoonish, depending on the context.
THE odd thing nearly the torso outline, though, is that it is used by artists and novelists, gag writers and organizers -- everybody but the police force.
Lieut. Donald Stephenson, commanding officeholder of the New York Police Department'due south crime scene unit, said he can't remember the terminal time a chalk outline was drawn at a homicide scene. The police abandoned its utilize, he said, subsequently many defense attorneys contended the chalk outline tainted evidence from a crime scene. Lieutenant Stephenson oft notices that civilians take appropriated the image. "It'due south graphic, and it has something that captures the imagination of the viewing public," he said. "It sticks in people's minds."
At John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Dr. Peter De Woods, professor of criminalistics and author of "Forensic Science: An Introduction to Criminalistics," has never taught the technique to his students. "Simply the media has kept the technique going," Dr. De Wood said. "It'due south a kind of cycle. In fact, one of my competitors' textbooks has that image on the cover."
That book, "Techniques of Law-breaking Scene Investigation," was written by Barry Fisher, director of the law-breaking lab at the Los Angeles County Sheriff'southward Department. "I wish I could have credit for the cover," Mr. Fisher said. "But information technology was some graphic artist's notion of what a criminal offence scene looks similar. It's a figment of the media's imagination, more a caricature than reality."
Simply the selling power of the body outline has made the Los Angeles coroner's office probably the but one in the country with a marketing coordinator. She is Marilyn Lewis, a former secretarial assistant who helped get-go a production line featuring body outlines in 1993.
"We take our little torso outline trademarked," Ms. Lewis said. "Nosotros started with half dozen items, and at present we're going on 23." They include a lookout, coffee mugs, beach towels, T-shirts and boxer shorts, and are sold through a catalogue and in a gift store at the coroner'south office. So far, the products have raised $300,000, she said, and all proceeds are used to run an education plan for showtime-time drunken drivers.
Ms. Lewis said she had received a few complaints about the taste of selling a gruesome image. Only she has as well had calls from coroners in Wisconsin and Arizona who were thinking of starting their ain product lines. "Simply this could only happen in L.A.," she said.
Not quite. At the Liberty Science Center, Elizabeth Graham, a spokeswoman, said that a line of black T-shirts for the "Whodunit" exhibition, featuring a white body outline, are difficult to proceed in stock.
And in western Virginia, when the Medeco Loftier Security Locks company was developing an ad campaign for its best market, New York Metropolis, the marketing director, Mark Kennedy, plant in his files an old drawing of a chalk trunk outline. That image, combined with the slogan "Some people wouldn't invest in a lock if their life depended on it," was given an breezy test with locksmiths in the urban center. "That's the advert the locksmiths chose," Mr. Kennedy said, and the ad ran in subways and on bus shelters this summertime and fall. "Our sales accept definitely blipped."
And and so, the chalk torso outline volition probably remain ubiquitous, even though its original utilize is obsolete.
"I've always been interested in archæology, and these images are like urban petroglyphs," Michael Carr, the artist, said.
While Mr. Carr uses the torso outline equally a serious symbol of urban violence, he is non averse to its humorous apply.
"My favorite is a Gary Larson drawing that shows the scene of the death of King Kong," he said -- on the sidewalk outside the Empire State Building is one huge chalk body outline and many smaller ones inside it. It has not become a T-shirt -- still.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/13/style/chalk-body-outlines-grisly-yes-but-chic.html
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