Luc And Ludivine Get Married. (pair 15)
Signed Print

At first glance, these portraits are distinctly modern in their use of simplified and abstracted forms but Opie synthesises this with the composition and form inspired by 19th century silhouette portraiture. Throughout his artistic oeuvre Opie has taken inspiration from ancient Egyptian and Roman art, and Dutch and British painted portraits of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese prints, and the symbolic language of modern signage.

Opie shows the image of the male figure facing the viewer head on and the female figure facing away from the viewer, showing only the back of her head. Typical of many of Opie’s portraits, Luc And Ludivine Married (pair 15) is rendered with the absolute minimum by which a person can be represented. Reduced to black and white bold lines, the image of the male figure uses dots for eyes and simple lines for his mouth.