« Look what happens when you’re not trying. | Main | Some Old Maps »
February 24, 2009
Getting life to imitate art
Julieanne Moore can be found in several photographs which endeavour to copy or pay homage to classic paintings.
Seated Woman with Bent Knee, Egon Schiele, 1917 / Peter Lindbergh
The Cripple, John Currin, 1997 / Peter Lindbergh
La Grande Odelisk, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1814 / Michael Thompson
To a greater or lesser degree of success depending on your point of view. Which highlights the dilemma of image making. Do we just hold up a mirror to the world?
Do we just copy what’s in front of us, verbatim, or do we try and interpret it? For years, before the camera, there wasn’t the choice. And now digital technology means we can manipulate reality like never before.
Lady with an Ermine, Leonardo da Vinci 1490 / Rainer Elstermann
Personally I think it’s important to impart some opinion, some other dynamic to a picture, be it a painting or a photograph. Just to reproduce an image is merely a clever trick and should be on the end of the pier. It’s a one-liner, an Ah! or even a Wow! but art it isn’t.
It’s not just Julieanne that’s been at it though: Naoto Kawahara gets up to it sometimes, though with oil paint rather than photography.
The Guitar Lesson, Balthus 1934 / Naoto Kawahara
And Michael Sanders produced this rendition of the famous picture of Gabrielle d’Estrées and one of her two sisters. Incidentally the pinching of Gabrielle’s nipple, by one of her two sisters, is thought to symbolise that Gabrielle, mistress of Henry IV of France, was pregnant.
Gabrielle d’Estrées et de sa soeur a Duchesse de Villars, School of Fontainebleau, c.1594 / Michael Sanders
Posted by john at February 24, 2009 01:57 PM