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BX35 Sleeping Beauty, 2008
copyright Tom Kristensen

Tom Kristensen, born 1962, is a young artist from Australia who works in the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking. On this page, he writes about his latest print "BX35 Sleeping Beauty".

BX35 Sleeping Beauty

31 copies of this print were made for the 35th print exchange with members of the Baren Forum. The theme of the exchange was Fairy Tales.

In a nutshell: The kingdom waits long for the birth of a royal child. At her christening the beautiful girl is cursed to grow up and poison herself on the prick of a spinning wheel. After a life spent avoiding the wheel the beloved princess meets her fate and falls into a deep sleep. For a hundred years she lies comatose in a castle deep in the woods. The handsome prince parts the impenetrable forest and Sleeping Beauty is revived with a kiss.

Marilyn Monroe - The Immortal Celebrity

Children and fertility are at the heart of the tale. Death is overcome with a kiss. In the fairy tale, as in Hollywood, life is linked with youth and beauty and sex. Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 without children but in her fame she is an immortal celebrity of sexual desire. Her beauty lies sleeping within the spinning reels of celluloid. Marilyn died from an overdose of prescription medication. She pricked herself on the barb of barbiturates. As she slipped from consciousness perhaps Marilyn hoped that her President would come to revive her.

In 1954 when asked what she wore in bed Marilyn famously replied, "Two drops of Chanel No. 5." Coco Chanel is also famously quoted as saying, "A woman should wear perfume wherever she expects to be kissed." The No. 5 fragrance is famous for being the first perfume to rely on synthetic floral aldehydes, or plastic flowers. The endorsement of Marilyn for the No. 5 brand encouraged Andy Warhol to produce a set of silkscreen prints of the No. 5 perfume bottle.

Image by Andy Warhol

Warhol was one of Marilyn's many admirers and in 1964 he lovingly produced her famous image from a promo shot taken by in 1953 by Gene Korman for the film Niagara.

As Hollywood could transform the normal woman, Pop Art would elevate the commonplace product to iconic status. The Warhol treatment of Campbell's soup cans encouraged the cult of brand awareness. The McDonalds brand has achieved a dominant place through relentless repetition of a theme and the saturation of visual culture. McDonalds burgers are sold with a logo that suggests a cleavage that is as much about finding love and comfort as it is about hunger. And as always, sex sells.

Tom Kristensen
April 2008

More about Tom Kristensen

The artist was first discovered by Eric van den Ing, co-author of a classic ukiyo-e book "Beauty and Violence" and owner of Saru Gallery. After Eric van den Ing had placed Tom's woodblock prints on his online gallery, a few days later a collector had bought the whole set. Mr. van den Ing seems to have a "magic hand" for new artists. He was the first to introduce Paul Binnie in 2000 to a larger online community of friends of Japanese prints.

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