Video extract: Tom explains his working process
Top: Tom Hunter, 'Murder: Two Men Wanted', 2003.
Courtesy the artist and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London.
Bottom: Piero di Cosimo, 'A Satyr mourning over a Nymph', about 1495.
Photo © The National Gallery, London.
The title of this work is taken from a headline. These four brusque words were printed above a story that reported the murder of a young woman in a public park.
Hunter's inspiration for his photograph was Piero di Cosimo's 'A Satyr mourning over a Nymph'.
The painting depicts the body of a woman, her throat bleeding from a gash that has caused her death. A satyr (a mythological creature with the head and body of a man and the legs of a goat) has just discovered her and tenderly places his hand upon her shoulder. A similarly sad-looking dog sits nearby.
Though the precise meaning of the painting is unclear, its mood is plain. The picture is poignant, tender, and above all, tragic.
The photograph, like the painting it is based upon, has a classic sense of tragedy to it. The young man's bewildered expression sums up the universal lack of understanding felt when yet another innocent victim comes to a premature end.
Hunter's response to the painting gives a vicious contemporary event a tragically timeless quality.
