Description
Check out the entire Jaws Collection!
Why is Jaws still one of the best horror films ever? Too many reasons to list, but to sum it up, Spielberg was already displaying a complete mastery of the art of filmmaking in only his third film, almost singlehandedly inventing the concept of the summer blockbuster; he brilliantly executed a film made mostly of low-key quiet but intense moments, and juxtaposed this against several terrifying scenes of graphic horror, which were intensified by purposely ensuring the shark was not on camera for the vast majority of the film. The acting performances - especially the three co-leads, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss - were stellar. The music, by the great John Williams, was absolute perfection and is still some of the most iconic music of all-time. When you add all of this together, it creates sheer movie magic ... but there's one more small but very important facet to this that I haven't yet mentioned, and that is the simple fact that sharks are very real and exist in this world. Unlike the potential silliness of vampires and werewolves, sharks are real-world monsters that are in fact perfectly-crafted eating machines. And that, my friends, is the final piece of the puzzle, the thing that brings it all home ... it's the realness of it all, the fact that this could actually happen to anyone. Jaws has kept millions of people from ever even dipping a toe into the ocean. And that tells you everything.
For this artwork I used a mosaic abstract/geometric style I first created for my Laurel & Hardy Collection, and have taken it to another level in my Jaws Collection, moving from solid silhouettes to add more detail with the two-tone stencil-style I often use, fused with a backdrop of multi-colored squares to make a cool effect of looking pixelated at first glance, but when you have a closer look, you realize all of the hand-drawn details are there. The original Jaws film poster is one of my favorites, so I wanted to pay homage to it; in fact, this is the first time I have ever created art based directly on someone else's work, but I think the differences in mine are stark and quite transformative. I should also note that the original painting by Roger Kastel was itself exactly derivitive of the original graphic art done by Paul Bacon for the first cover of Peter Benchley's book, which the film was based on. So even the poster we all know and love wasn't a completely original idea; recycling and homage are pretty common in the art world!
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