Cosmopolitan | shawnshawnartist

What do you like about her style?

She uses multiple layers of vintage posters to create collage imagery. In my work, I have used 1-2 layers of paper collage as well using modern logos. In both our work, we overlay paint into the images to create multiple levels and dimensions.

I’m CEO… bitch! (1 of 6 panels)

Why are her images so popular?

The beauty of the feminine figure is a constant in our modern Cosmopolitan lifestyle dating back to the early days of fashion ads in the early 1800s. At this point, women became glamorized sex objects to be pressured to try items to fit into society’s mold for them and enjoy the lifestyle they wanted to achieve. Additionally, it coincided with the birth of cheap mass-produced clothing, which allowed the average Joe or Jane to have more than 1-2 pieces of clothing like in the Middle Ages. Here we see the popular model behind selling Coca-cola to women in the early 1900s fashion magazines.

How have you used Coca-cola advertising in your work?

Yes, I did a painting on the cocaine drug trade and the largest supplier of cocaine in the 1980s — Pablo Escobar. By blending the multiple images of popular culture of “Scarface” movie and actual events, you get another image of Coca-cola. As you may know Coca-cola used cocaine in the original recipe (so the “Classic Coke” really isn’t classic). What you may not know is that Coca-cola still uses coca leaves in its soft drinks, but takes out the addictive ingredient in coca leaves. Unfortunately, this leads to growing massive coca fields to supply Coca-cola to the public. Of course, some of those fields are being continually used in the cocaine industry.

Coke. It’s the Real Thing.

What era are the images of Jane painting?

Mostly she is using images from the early 60s into the 70s of this century. At this point in time, women generally were close to the shape of actual models. Additionally, we see models coming out of the world war savior look to seductress imagery of this century. Previous to this century women were not openly glamorized.

Why do women get glamorized in the West, but covered in the Middle East, the most extreme in Saudi Arabia?

Partially, it has to do with the weather ie. sand storms. If you are in a dessert like the Arabian peninsula, the best protection from sand pelting your skin raw is flowing robes like worn by modern day Saudi women and even men. Of course, the men get to wear white.

Another factor is that it is listed in the Koran and religious beliefs are held up by religious police. This is true in Saudi Arabia as in Iran. The difference is in Iran the fashions of the covering is moderating a bit.

Was there a time when the Middle East was more moderate?

Of course. In the 600s at the time of the dark ages in Europe, the libraries of Alexandria held the forgotten greek classics by Plato and Socrates. Additionally at this same time there was extreme religious intolerance in medieval Europe with the rise of the Inquisition in the 1300s to 1800s.

In the Islamic world the 3 religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam lived peacefully together in Islamic empires. At that time we see western women wearing similar conservative clothes like modern day Saudi Arabia.