Quality Assured

Quality Assured

This is a comment on the nature of ‘quality’ in the age of mass-production. It’s a little convoluted when I start ranting about it, so if you want to just enjoy it as a funny image, then please enjoy it for whatever it says to you.

However, if you want to hear the reasoning straight from the Horse’s mouth, then strap yourself in; here goes…

The image of the Allosaurus and Styracosaurus is a famous still from ‘The Valley of Gwangi’ – one of my favourite movies for many reasons (a brief look around my portfolio is evidence enough that I have a bit of a dinosaur fetish). These larger animals became totem beasts of the 20th century, and more specifically of Holywood (a couple of scenes of ‘Gwangi’ were lifted by Spielberg for use in ‘Jurrassic Park’). They are representatives of old 20th century values of ‘bigger, stronger, louder’. The colourscheme is reminiscent of the old crappy plastic dinosaurs I used to play with as a kid. They were all, without exemption, anatomically incorrect, poorly crafted and came in garish colours.
This is where the issue of material quality comes in – I wanted to take an anatomically quite accurate image and render it in a cheap, garish colourscheme. These animals are basically giant toys.

The knight some may recognise as St George, as depicted by Paolo Uccello in the 15th century. This is my one all-time favourite painting, but I chose to transpose him here for other reasons. The Styracosaurus takes the place of the dragon in the original painting, as the large reptile skewered on the end of his lance. St George is rendered as Uccello intended him – he opitomises ‘high art’, and good quality.

But Who’s quality? Quality as defined by the cultural elite – a small group of representatives, all sharing similar views along the line that old things are necessarily better than new things, that painting is ‘better’ than pixels and vectors, that marble is ‘nobler’ than plastic.

The fact that st George is skewering the animal that is already dead (i.e. the Wrong one) is not incidental. The representative of the old establishment and received wisdom is, ever so slightly, missing the mark.

Quality Assured belongs to the following groups:

Graphic Arts and United Kingdom