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봄여름가을겨울 (Still Life)

The Korean title is Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

4 rows of flowers. Gerbera daisies in 4 colors. 4 seasons of change. And now that the ice is thawing, the ground softening, the sun warming the air, and the petals of spring’s first flowers unfurling, 4 members are returning after 4 years of silence and seclusion to keep a heartfelt promise: that we would one day meet again when the flowers bloom.

They were only dormant, not dead. There’s still life in them… and in us, too.

The English title Still Life is possibly a callback to Still Alive, the first track on BIGBANG’s EP Alive (2012) and a triumphant anthem about the group overcoming their last brush with crushing, nearly career-ending controversy. But even if it is a nod to that, it’s probably also an homage to the members’ love of art. A still life is an age-old form of art depicting inanimate objects, usually commonplace items like food, furniture, utensils, household decor, etc. Flower pieces are a popular subject of still life paintings.

This is where I scratch my head. Maybe it’s just me, but the Korean and English titles seem to send mixed messages. The four seasons, collectively, are a well-known metaphor for change, especially a kind of constant, natural change that occurs in cycles (“the only constant in life is change”). But a “still life” is exactly what it sounds like, with a focus on that which is unchanging, motionless, inert. Maybe they’re saying that though they’ve changed in some ways, in others ways (in every way that matters) they’re still the same BIGBANG we know and love.

Or maybe they’re saying that the stillness of the last few years existed only on the surface. Looking back, this has been BIGBANG’s lengthiest hiatus to date – to us a period of stagnation and creative calm as the guys took the time we believed they needed to regroup and put down new roots. But still waters run deep, and far below, down in the dark where we couldn’t see, they were remaking themselves in secrecy. As observers, stuck on the outside looking in, the BIGBANG we saw was a still image – a still life. But while they were out of sight they underwent seasons of change. And now that that they’ve resurfaced, they’re going to show us what they became.

How many of you remember, in the days leading up to enlistment, the guys saying that they looked forward to showing us sides of themselves they’d never been able to show before?

Or maybe the “still life” title isn’t about the band at all. It could be about us, the fans. Maybe they’re saying that through the changing seasons of their lives VIPs have been a steady, reassuring presence.

The possibilities are endless, but I’ll stop there. We’ll find out what it is they want to say to us soon enough! (Feel free to reblog or comment with your own thoughts though!)

As for the teaser poster, the undeveloped Polaroid photo… turns out that is actually an existing work of art that as far as I can tell is titled Elaine Lustig Cohen - Ad Reinhardt, 1966. It’s more than just a Polaroid; it’s a painting by Ad Reinhardt positioned inside the frame of a Polaroid photo. Reinhardt is known for his solid-colored paintings that appear to form an image the longer the viewer looks at it. Out of the black, blues and browns seem to emerge. Interestingly, this is precisely what happened when BIGBANG released the teaser poster that was actually one of Reinhardt’s “black” paintings, though we didn’t know it at the time; VIPs began analyzing the image in search of shapes, seeking something recognizable. Many shared that they saw people embracing. Here are some examples from Twitter:

Whether there was any accuracy to the things people were seeing, I suppose only the artist would know. But now that the next teaser has been released, revealing flowers and no figures at all, there’s no reason to keep guessing! It was fun while it lasted (personally, I saw two people embracing, a man and a woman, but that’s no matter now.)

Reinhardt’s work was recently featured at the Pace Gallery in New York from February-March 2022 in an exhibition aptly named Color Out of Darkness. It’s possible the BIGBANG members were inspired by the exhibition (GD and TOP supposedly have some kind of connection to Pace Gallery) and so chose to incorporate Reinhardt’s work into their own? If so, I can’t think of a more fitting comeback concept for them than color out of darkness. Fields of flowers bursting with color, bright with pigment and promise, no longer shrouded in black. This spring BIGBANG will join VIPs on this flower road we’ve been faithfully walking… together at last.

봄여름가을겨울 (Still Life)

The Korean title is Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

4 rows of flowers. Gerbera daisies in 4 colors. 4 seasons of change. And now that the ice is thawing, the ground softening, the sun warming the air, and the petals of spring’s first flowers unfurling, 4 members are returning after 4 years of silence and seclusion to keep a heartfelt promise: that we would one day meet again when the flowers bloom.

They were only dormant, not dead. There’s still life in them… and in us, too.

The English title Still Life is possibly a callback to Still Alive, the first track on BIGBANG’s EP Alive (2012) and a triumphant anthem about the group overcoming their last brush with crushing, nearly career-ending controversy. But even if it is a nod to that, it’s probably also an homage to the members’ love of art. A still life is an age-old form of art depicting inanimate objects, usually commonplace items like food, furniture, utensils, household decor, etc. Flower pieces are a popular subject of still life paintings.

This is where I scratch my head. Maybe it’s just me, but the Korean and English titles seem to send mixed messages. The four seasons, collectively, are a well-known metaphor for change, especially a kind of constant, natural change that occurs in cycles (“the only constant in life is change”). But a “still life” is exactly what it sounds like, with a focus on that which is unchanging, motionless, inert. Maybe they’re saying that though they’ve changed in some ways, in others ways (in every way that matters) they’re still the same BIGBANG we know and love.

Or maybe they’re saying that the stillness of the last few years existed only on the surface. Looking back, this has been BIGBANG’s lengthiest hiatus to date – to us a period of stagnation and creative calm as the guys took the time we believed they needed to regroup and put down new roots. But still waters run deep, and far below, down in the dark where we couldn’t see, they were remaking themselves in secrecy. As observers, stuck on the outside looking in, the BIGBANG we saw was a still image – a still life. But while they were out of sight they underwent seasons of change. And now that that they’ve resurfaced, they’re going to show us what they became.

How many of you remember, in the days leading up to enlistment, the guys saying that they looked forward to showing us sides of themselves they’d never been able to show before?

Or maybe the “still life” title isn’t about the band at all. It could be about us, the fans. Maybe they’re saying that through the changing seasons of their lives VIPs have been a steady, reassuring presence.

The possibilities are endless, but I’ll stop there. We’ll find out what it is they want to say to us soon enough! (Feel free to reblog or comment with your own thoughts though!)

As for the teaser poster, the undeveloped Polaroid photo… turns out that is actually an existing work of art that as far as I can tell is titled Elaine Lustig Cohen - Ad Reinhardt, 1966. It’s more than just a Polaroid; it’s a painting by Ad Reinhardt positioned inside the frame of a Polaroid photo. Reinhardt is known for his solid-colored paintings that appear to form an image the longer the viewer looks at it. Out of the black, blues and browns seem to emerge. Interestingly, this is precisely what happened when BIGBANG released the teaser poster that was actually one of Reinhardt’s “black” paintings, though we didn’t know it at the time; VIPs began analyzing the image in search of shapes, seeking something recognizable. Many shared that they saw people embracing. Here are some examples from Twitter:

Whether there was any accuracy to the things people were seeing, I suppose only the artist would know. But now that the next teaser has been released, revealing flowers and no figures at all, there’s no reason to keep guessing! It was fun while it lasted (personally, I saw two people embracing, a man and a woman, but that’s no matter now.)

Reinhardt’s work was recently featured at the Pace Gallery in New York from February-March 2022 in an exhibition aptly named Color Out of Darkness. It’s possible the BIGBANG members were inspired by the exhibition (GD and TOP supposedly have some kind of connection to Pace Gallery) and so chose to incorporate Reinhardt’s work into their own? If so, I can’t think of a more fitting comeback concept for them than color out of darkness. Fields of flowers bursting with color, bright with pigment and promise, no longer shrouded in black. This spring BIGBANG will join VIPs on this flower road we’ve been faithfully walking… together at last.