What if Picasso and Rembrandt had met to have cocktails in 1953? You can imagine the talks they would have had: electric, inspired, and maybe even heated. The work that could have spawned from such a conversation might have looked a bit like that of Cesar Santos. His paintings seemingly bring the works of masters – from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century to Modernism – together, juxtaposing their styles one on top of the other. It’s a patchwork of inspired painting. [Read more...]
Using his lovely daughter as the model, Melbourne based photographer Bill Gekas recreates some of the classic paintings from famous artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Caravaggio. Bill is a self-taught photographer who took up photographing portraits in 2005 and describes his style as “portraiture with a fine art aesthetics.” [Read more...]
When we look at classic portraits, it’s easy to feel disassociated from the lives of the people we’re viewing. Often they are surrounded by opulent interiors and clothed in equal splendor, with poses which seem rigid and contrived compared to our modern world of quick snapshots and relaxed clothing. Not until we take one aspect of these images, that which is most timelessly human, do the people become obviously real and easily personalized. That’s just what artist Dorothee Golz has done in her fascinating digital paintings. [Read more...]
When I ran across these old 50′s pin-up gals the other day, I couldn’t help but hear some lonely Korean War soldier remarking, “wow, will you look at the gams on this dame!” If these did make it to that war, they came all the way from the advertising pages of America. These classic examples of the mid-century feminine ideal were created by legendary advertising painter Gil Elvgren during his long and successful career. Each image features his original photograph, mocking up the scene to be painted later. His models pose in campy and sometimes awkward positions, doing their best to emulate the scene and demonstrating what must be some of the earliest examples of the dreaded “duck face.” [Read more...]
Cats. You either love them or hate them. Recently, some cats have made a bold artistic statement by posing as models from famous paintings from the past 500 years. Works that were stroked by the likes of Rembrandt and Degas or nurtured by the Renaissance period were some of the pieces the felines have chosen to channel. [Read more...]
What happens when you take world-famous artworks from the distant past and re-interpret them through the lens of modern fantasy? I’m not sure what’s more exciting about these artworks, the fact that they where made based on some of the worlds most famous paintings, or how well each re-working stands up on its own. [Read more...]
“What would have happened if the aesthetic standard of our society had belonged to the collective unconscious of the great artists of the past?” So asks Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano in her Venus project, which re-imagines classic artistic depictions of Venus with a modern and extreme Photoshop makeover. What begin as mostly Rubenesque beauties are transformed into busty, slim-waisted figures more closely matching the ideals we are bombarded with today. [Read more...]
Baptiste Debombourg recently created something beautiful out of a medium usually described as an office supply: a mural created entirely using staples. Inspired by the ancient story of Icarus and rendered in a classic style reminicent of the Renaissance, his modern work is also sure to leave a mark. Titled “Air Force One” –a symbol of sublime power, he says — the piece took a notable 35,000 staples to complete. [Read more...]
