Image Essay #15

Artist Dinh Q Le, born in 1968 in Vietnam, immigrated to the United States when he was ten years old. Looking through art books in his junior high school library, Le began to gain interest in the art of the Western Culture, particularly Renaissance paintings, and spent a lot of time exploring the differences between the Western art he had newly encountered and the Eastern art he had been previously exposed to. Le studied photography in college, and began experimenting with works that combined photographs of himself along with images from both cultures. This was his way of finding his place in society and expressing his mixed background. Some of his artwork took on a mosaic-like style, and often times he used color as a dominant element in his pieces.

The piece shown above is one of Le’s most well-known works. The piece itself is untitled but comes from a series of similar works known as “Persistence of Memory” (this one is number 11). Color plays a large role in contributing to the mood and meaning of this particular piece. Here, Le has used an analogous color scheme (analogous colors refer to those that are next to each other on the color wheel). The colors used in this piece are considered warm colors (shades of red, yellow, and orange). While cool colors (blues, greens, and purples) generally instill a mood of tranquility or calmness, warm colors such as these usually convey more dynamic emotions such as anger, fear, excitement, or energy.