Knitting and embroidering famous painting masterpieces

The group "The Materialistics" based in UK have recreated 50 masterpieces that enchanted the world. Works of famous artists like Kandinsky, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Andy Warhol, Vermeer, Piet Mondrian, Rossetti, Klimt, Picasso, Munch were redone through knitting, embroidery and crochet and started being exhibited last November at The Customs House in South Shields, has been presented in other cities and is gaining international recognition.

They name the creations based on the original title so "The Scream" by Munch is turned into "The Seam"; "Girl with Pearl earring by Vermeer" recreated becomes " Girl with the Purled Earring" and so on.

Some of the recreations are done in weeks but others can take months.

Executive director Ray Spencer said: “Our work with The Materialistics stems from our belief art should be inclusive, not elitist."

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The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

(right picture: detail)

I thought that I had to publish "The Kiss", 1908, by Klimt even thou it is very famous but since Munch's painting is at the post below it is easier to compare them.

I could swear that the couple is the same in another place shrouded in gold on a bed made of flowers.

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Munch's The Kiss: "I try to dissect souls"

Right: The Kiss, 1895. etching

Left: The Kiss, 1897. painting

These are two versions of Munch's "The kiss" that inspired Gustav Klimt's famous painting with the same title.

Some of Munch's quotations explain not only his intentions, and the expressionist attitude, but also distance him from impressionism:

"No longer shall I paint interiors, and people reading, and women knitting. I shall paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love."

"Certainly a chair can be just as interesting as a human being. But first the chair must be perceived by a human being... You should not paint the chair, but only what someone has felt about it."

"Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected corpses, so I try to dissect souls."

"I do not paint what I see, but what I saw."

Edward Munch

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Auguste Renoir: "your favorite painting is at a private collection"

Right: Self-portrait, 1910

Left: Woman with a necklace, 1910

I was searching for Renoir's paintings that I do not know and I noticed that many of his paintings are at private collections including the two above and some that I have published.

At this site there is a list of Renoir's paintings with the indication of their whereabouts and 47 are at private collections at the hands of people who might not even admire the artist and have them as a way to show how wealthy and powerful they are. The real number of Renoir's paintings at private collection I did not find yet and what these 47 have in common is that they were all done in 1910.

This is really sad thinking that these paintings are in the possession of people who seldom look at them and are maybe storing them in an ambient that might not be appropriate for conservation.

But this is the market of art and there is nothing to be done about it but it is amazing that the name of those who possess what is world's heritage is not known facilitating the black marketing of famous works of arts that are stolen.

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The insanely astonishing universe of Karin Taylor

This is magical, fantastic, incredible, incredibly beautiful, so cute, these colors!, childhood, elephant in my garden!, amazing, and so many words pop in your head while you are browsing Karin Taylor's portfolio.

She is an Australian artist that masters many techniques that she uses to make her pieces of incredible magical universes.

She also has a blog where she wrote:

"Drawing is what gives me peace of mind, and i think that's the gift I share with the world. I am so fortunate to be able to share my heart and my thoughts through my art.

The other day, i had this little revelation, that when a pencil is available to me, it's like having a microphone in my hand. I get to say, feel, express and outwardly share what i feel in my innermost parts and dreams, I'm so enjoying this process. I'd forgotten how good it felt."

Not only a great artist, what a great woman! Go, go... Take a look at her portfolio!

Pictures Copyright

© all rights Karin Taylor

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Rembrandt: A Young Girl Leaning on a Window-still

Two reproductions of A Young Girl Leaning on a Window-still, 1645, so that you can see how different they are as I stressed on the post below.

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Roger de Piles anecdote about Rembrandt

Right: Girl at an Open Half-Door, 1645

Left: A Young Girl Leaning on a Window-still, 1645

The art critic and art dealer Roger de Piles wrote this anecdote in his book "L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres" (The Art of Painting and the Lives of the Painters, 1699):

“Rembrandt diverted himself one day by making a portrait of his servant in order to exhibit it at his window and deceive the eyes of the pedestrians. He succeeded because the deception was only noticed a few days later. It was not beautiful drawing, nor a noble expression which produced this effect. One does not look for these qualities in his work. While in Holland I was curious to see the portrait. I found it painted well and with great strength. I bought it and still exhibit it in an important position in my cabinet”

Poor Rembrandt.

These reproductions are terrible but it is getting harder an harder to find a good reproduction of some paintings because now when we search there are many sites that sell posters and painted in oil reproductions that change the colors of the original to match coughs I believe. In some of them they show how your acquisition will be at a living room. As you can see these two paintings are from the same year but the colors are totally different. I will publish two versions of the same painting again to make visible how we cannot rely on reproductions.

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Two Calder's sculptures missing since 1984 in Rio de Janeiro

As today Calder would have celebrated his 113th birthday I cannot help remembering that Rio de Janeiro's city hall took these two works by Calder from the park where they were for restoration but in November, 1985 they disappeared.

Nobody knows what happened and they are missing till today 26 years later.

It was a scandal and many people have manifested in newspapers wrote letters and petitions to the mayor and even the police has a record of the occurrence but they are still missing.

The right one, Stable, 1941, was a donation by Calder during the acquisition of the mobile "Rio", 1951, by Rio de Janeiro government.

Another work by the Brazilian sculptor Sérgio Camargo was broken last Mars and it is still there as if nothing had happened.

They were really amazing and I have a very good recollection being at the park and stopping to interact with one of the sculptures that were there.

This is a shame.

Happy birthday Alexander Calder but be careful to whom you donate your work.

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Two paintings by Caravaggio

Right: Judith beheading Holoferne, 1599.

Left: The conversion of Mary Magdalene, 1598.

I love Caravaggio but I never read too much about his life that was very difficult because of his temper.

At this site you can find good reproductions and his biography. I took this excerpt because it is important to understand his work:

"Caravaggio's three paintings for the Contarelli Chapel not only caused a sensation in Rome but also marked a radical change in his artistic preoccupation. Henceforth he would devote himself almost entirely to the painting of traditional religious themes, to which, however, he gave a whole new iconography and interpretation. He often chose subjects that are susceptible to a dramatic, violent, or macabre emphasis, and he proceeded to divest them of their idealized associations, taking his models from the streets. Caravaggio may have used a lantern hung to one side in his shuttered studio while painting from his models. The result in his paintings is a harsh, raking light that strikes across the composition, illuminating parts of it while plunging the rest into deep shadow. This dramatic illumination heightens the emotional tension, focuses the details, and isolates the figures, which are usually placed in the foreground of the picture in a deliberately casual grouping. This insistence on clarity and concentration, together with the firm and vigorous drawing of the figures, links Caravaggio's mature Roman works with the classical tradition of Italian painting during the Renaissance."

Caravaggio painted on the canvas without and previous drawing.

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David Hockney, Homage to Van Gogh and wisps

Left: Homage to Van Gogh, 1988.

Right: Moving wisps. 1995.

It is a party of colors. The right is at a private collection and I feel very sad that such a great painting, that makes our eyes move to one texture to another, is not available to the public.

In the left Hockney homages Van Gogh by recreating the artist famous chair "Chair and Pipe" done in 1888 a century ago. I will do a post about how this chair became part of Van Gogh's iconography.

I created a label for David Hockney because he has been coming here many times.

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Botticelli's Madonna of the Pomegranate and Gregorian Chants

Gregorian Chants by Anonymous

This is a detail of Botticelli's Madonna of the Pomegranate, 1487. I added the Gregorian Chants because it helps quieting my mind and I wanted to share it with you. About the Madonna:

"Botticelli painted many images that include the Virgin, the Child and the angels. In this image, Mary is sitting holding the Holy Child with a heavenly light shining directly on her. Botticelli painted an oversized Mary to symbolize how her arms can support Christ. There is no visible architecture; the angels and Mary themselves become the supportive structure symbolizing that God can handle anything. 

 The elements of this image contain many symbolic items. Each figure wears a sad expression as if their mind is somewhere else thinking of Christ’s death. The seed of the pomegranate the infant is holding signifies that Christ will receive resurrection through rebirth just as the seed will cause the birth of a new plant. The angel in front is holding lilies and roses which are both symbols of the Virgin. That same angel is wearing sashes with the words AVE GRAZIA PLENA which mean “Hail [Mary] full of grace.”" (emphasis mine)

BE AT PEACE 

Gregorian Chants: here. 
Text about the painting: here.

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Van Gogh's La Pietà after Eugene Delacroix

Right: La Pietà by Eugene Delacroix, 1850.

Left: Van Gogh's La Pietà after Delacroix, 1889.

While Van Gogh was at the hospital in Saint-Rémy he kept painting and he had a lithograph of Delacroix's painting that he used as model.

Van Gogh seldom used biblical themes thou he wanted to be a pastor during his youth following his father.

“I am not indifferent, and pious thoughts often console me in my suffering.” he wrote to Theo, his brother.

This is how he describes Delacroix's Pietà:

"The Delacroix is a "Pietà" that is to say the dead Christ with the Mater Dolorosa. The exhausted corpse lies on the ground in the entrance of a cave, the hands held before it on the left side, and the woman is behind it. It is in the evening after a thunderstorm, and that forlorn figure in blue clothes - the loose clothes are agitated by the wind - is sharply outlined against a sky in which violet clouds with golden edges are floating. She too stretches out her empty arms before her in a large gesture of despair, and one sees the good sturdy hands of a working woman. The shape of the figure with its streaming clothes is nearly as broad as it is high. And the face of the dead man is in the shadow - but the pale head of the woman stands out clearly against a cloud - a contrast which causes those two heads to seem like one somber-hued flower and one pale flower, arranged in such a way as mutually to intensify the effect."

Looking at the two paintings side by side is amazing.

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Delacroix's Women of Algier

"The Women of Algiers in their apartment", done in 1834, is another of the most 
famous of Delacroix's painting.
The right photography (Reuters) depicts the painting in an exhibition and a woman looking 
at the version Picasso did.
Picasso did versions, reinterpretations of 
other artists like Velazquez's Las Meninas, and works of Monet and El Greco. I will publish them.

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David Hockney lobbying for "Amend the Tobacco Smoke Ban"

The right picture, depicting artist David Hockney with the Rt Hon Greg Knight MP at the House of Commons, I received by e-mail from Save our Pubs and Clubs.

According to the Tobacco Reporter Magazine:

Hockney decries UK’s busy-bodies and “curtain sniffers”
Jun 30, 2011—

"About 250 people gathered at the UK’s House of Commons for a reception aimed at building a groundswell of support for amending the public-places smoking ban cheered loudly when the artist, David Hockney, told them he was fed up with the “curtain sniffers”.

Yesterday’s reception, at the Terrace Pavilion, was organized by Forest under the Save Our Pubs & Clubs, Amend the Tobacco Ban banner.

Hockney, who has been a smoker for 56 years, told an appreciative audience that he didn’t like busy-body politicians; that he didn’t like the meanness that had entered the anti-tobacco debate; and that he was concerned about the end of the essential Bohemian spirit.

He sounded angry but spoke with a twinkle in his eye, and Simon Clark, the director of Forest, described Hockney as the happiest angry man he’d ever heard." (keep reading)

David Hackney has already created his art on a Apple iPhone and recently, above, on the iPad. Revolutionary as always.

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Erin McGuire's adventures in blue

Last May I did a post about Erin Mcguire's work at the moment I found her blog and was spelled by her art.
I went back and was enchanted again and as it's always hard to chose two in a good collection I decided for these because I love blue.
At least there is a criterion not very orthodox but a criterion.
But notice that the "action" is not in blue. The cat and the boy with a book in his hand as a shadow and the light that comes from inside is amazing.

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Tessellation or tiling by M. C. Escher

Wikipedia:

"A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. One may also speak of tessellations of parts of the plane or of other surfaces. Generalizations to higher dimensions are also possible. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art of M. C. Escher, who was inspired by studying the Moorish use of symmetry in theAlhambra tiles during a visit in 1922. Tessellations are seen throughout art history, from ancient architecture to modern art.

In Latin, tessella is a small cubical piece of clay, stone or glass used to make mosaics.^[1] The word "tessella" means "small square" (from "tessera", square, which in its turn is from the Greek word for "four"). It corresponds with the everyday term tilingwhich refers to applications of tessellations, often made of glazed clay."

M. C. Escher's work is so diverse and amazing that it is impossible to be indifferent when someone stumble upon one of his creations."He was fascinated by mathematics:

"By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analysing the observations that I have made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics, Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists."

This is a key to understand his source of imagination. Still these two printings, left created in 1950 and right 1959, are fascinating and capture our eyes because they make us dream.

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"She dreamt of Love" by Lavanya Naido: discovering the quilling capabilities

I never heard about quilling:

"Quilling, the coiling and shaping of narrow paper strips to create a design, has been around for years — hundreds, in fact. During the Renaissance, nuns and monks would roll gold-gilded paper remnants trimmed during the bookmaking process, and use them to decorate religious objects as an alternative to costly gold filigree. Quilling later became a pastime of 18th and 19th century young ladies in England, who would decorate tea caddies and pieces of furniture with paper filigree. The practice crossed the Atlantic with colonists, who added quilling to candle sconces and trays as home decorations." by Ann Martin at her blog Craftzine.

"She dreamt of Love" project by the South African Lavanya Naido was presented to me via All Things Paper and I think it show how amazing quilling is. There are numerous amazing quilling works but I decided to share this one because it shows that it is not only a decorating art and it can even tell a story in a kind of 3D technique.

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Representing books: William Barnett and Jan D. de Heem

Right: Music and Literature, 1878, by William Barnett

Left: Still Life of Books, 1628, by Jan Davidsz de Heem

Although these two paintings are separated by two centuries they have a lot in common. The right one depicts books and some objects we cannot quickly recognize as being part of our lives and we have the feeling that everything that is on he table was put carefully at each place so that the painter could show his skills in painting realistically.

The left one has an atmosphere that someone is working at these place and can reappear at any moment making the scene part of quotidian life but we can feel that it was one of the painters intention. Jan Davidsz de Heem has many still lives where it is clear that objects were arranged. 
We can only hope that someone was there to clean them or the painter would not be able to see the texture of the metal, glass or the other materials accurately.

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Paintings that reproduce reality will never stop amazing. Why?

These are not photos, they are acrylic painting by  by ~duytter . The wet effect of the right one is amazing.
Why paintings that represent reality move us? 

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Artist and activist Ai Weiwei is released in China after 81 days in Chinese prison

After 81 days in Chinese prison the artist and activist Ai Weiwei is back at this studio as the Reuter's picture shows. I knew Ai Weiwei because of videos, statements and interviews the British sculptor Anish Kapoor, that I like very much, did to denounce Ai Weiwei imprisonment. In one of them he rejects a British exhibition in China that would take place at Tienanmen Square as a protest for Ai Weiwei imprisonment.  
I loved Weiwei  work immediately and felt ashamed I didn't know him yet. 
He has a great work and is a very bright man, a man of dignity and integrity. Still that is the way Chinese government treats one of it's most important artist because they cannot listen to any phrase that shows any kind of dissent.
The most ridiculous example: this blog. After I published two posts this one and this the blog was blocked in China.  What does this blog have of importance? What is written in these posts that is so offensive? The truth?
Yes. Chinese people in general don't know about Tienanmen Square, 1989, when the Chinese government massacred young people in one of the most cowards ways.  

Now with Lybia and Syria and others it is hard to rank who is the worst.
But having these kind of massacres, I'm listening to the TV and they are reporting crackdowns. How to describe it? 
I changed the subject.
But as Kapoor said in May, 10 for BBC about Ai Weiwei prison and he don't even know him personally:

"It's a month now that the poor man has been held without a voice, but not only that, his family doesn't know where he is," said Kapoor.

"This is not a situation that is acceptable in any circumstances.

Kapoor, left, has called on the art world to support Ai Weiwei

"It does bear witness to the barbarity of governments if they're that paranoid that they have to put away artists. It's a ridiculous situation."

Kapoor exhorted the artistic class and galleries and museums to be active in situations like that saying that museums, for instance could be closed for one day.
I agree with Kapoor. Too much is happening and I don't see artists and those people who belong to the "cultural elite" doing what they used to do: say "NO".
"This make us back to a Soviet-style time when the voice of artists... were seen as being dangerous."
Kappor said.
I remembered dictatorship times in South America when artists also "disappeared". This is unacceptable and we have to say it repeatedly: "NO!" NEVER AGAIN!"


Welcome back Ai Weiwei! We'll be watching Chinese government watching you.

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