Detail of Suite of the Emerald Green Boudoir
circa 2012
(ink, enamel, paint, glass, rhinestones and gilding)
Perhaps a cross between an ostrich, a baby
vulture and a flamingo, this winged creature is certainly throwing a fit. Does
it have such a temper because of its imprisonment to the ground (surely it
cannot fly with such a thing attached to its ankle) or, in reverse, is it being
punished because of its rowdy character? Whatever the case, its captor has
chosen to make a bejewelled and almost humorous spectacle of their prisoner. Is
there a reason why?
Rather than cause it to suffer in a more conventional
or crude way the captor decides to humiliate the bird's detention by glorifying
the restraint of its only means of freedom: flight. Tethering it to something
as inanimate and unyielding as a cannonball mocks the fact that the bird is
taught its 'lesson' by a brainless object, while embellishing the cannonball's
surface with flashy stones accentuates both the uselessness of its decoration
and the power of attention that comes with that decoration: superficial, empty
but nevertheless 'exotic'. The bird's weakness is brought about by this one
ball. It causes it to screech and flap around like a mad, good-for-nothing animal
that, when stripped of the only ability representative of its kind's strength,
goes ballistic. Shaw does not show the bird as graceful or patient, but as
clumsy and animalistic - as something just as brainless and pretty on the
surface as the thing which holds it down. This illustration has quite a
satircal undertone, and it is brilliantly done.
