Digital Foundations (ART190) : Bronner

Place Yourself in a Masterpiece

Project Description

Artists have been reinventing other artists work almost since artworks have been made. For this project you will take an instructor approved masterwork and remake it digitally, set in the 21st century. Choose an artist from the list in Source Materials below.

Each remade masterwork must include the same characters as the original, but reinvented. Each completed image should be recognizable by anyone who has a basic to good knowledge of art history. To complete this reinvention you can use photography or any other media that you can import into the computer for manipulation. Your reinvented image should be seemless and original in as much as that is possible. To make it more interesting you must place yourself in the work at least twice (as a human).

Goals

To develop and refine image manipulation and editing skills
Challenge the intellect to consider how to update a famous work in an original way
Improve presentation skills
Introduction to importing digital photographs for use in digital imaging software
Improve art history knowledge

In The News

France passes Photoshop law (2017)
France passes image law for influencers (2023)

Project Materials

USB drive.
Camera, scanners and other input devices

Requirements for Finished Works

Your final images should be presented in a clean, neat, and professional manner on paper. Minimum size is 14 x 18 inches, 300 pixels per inch (PPI).
NOTE: Always set your PPI before you begin. It is difficult if not impossible to successfully increase PPI after work has begun and still maintain a clean sharp image.
Works must be mounted on black with a minimum of a 3 inch border.

Source Materials

Paintings might include:

Gericault's Raft of the Medusa
Eakins' Gross Clinic
Carravagio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter
Henri Fuseli's Nightmare
Gentileschi's Judith Beheading Holofernes
Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Time and Folly
David's Anger of Achilles
Velazquez's Drinkers
Titian's Venus of Urbino
Copley's Watson and the Shark
Homer's Gulf Stream
Edouard Manet's Dejuner sur l'herbe

Artists you may select from:

Giuseppe Ribera
el Greco
Albrecht Durer
Hieronymus Bosch
Raphael Sanzio
Michelangelo
Jacques-Louis David
Hans Holbein
Georges de la Tour
Matthias Grunewald
M. Caravaggio
Eduoard Manet
Sandro Botticelli
Leonardo da Vinci
Frans Hals
Vermeer
Gianlorenzo Bernini
Eugène Delacroix
Balthus
Bruegel
Chardin
Cimabue
Giotto
Carracci
Correggio
Lucas Cranach
Fra Angelico
Théodore Géricault
Titian
Edward Hopper
Mantegna
Rembrandt
Rubens
Poussin
Grant Wood
Tiepolo
Van Eyck
Veronese
Whistler
Bronzino
Parmigianino
Francisco Goya
Jean-Léon Gérôme
William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Grade Rubric

As always originality, craftmanship, presentation, and uniqueness of your solutions will be considered in determining your grade with the most original and highest craft receiving the best grades. For critique be prepared to discuss your process and how your work communicates the selected metaphor with the class.

10% quality presentation
20% quality of creative interpretation
30% technique and demonstration of skill in creating well-crafted image
40% demonstration of art and design principles to achieve original and well crafted image.

Suggestions

When trying to adjust your photo to fit into your chosen masterwork painting, the following Photoshop tools can be useful: smudge tool, burn tool, dodge tool, and the brush tool. Also keep in mind the painting below. Notice how when a painter makes an image of a face, solid single color brush marks often indicate the planes of the face. Using the smudge tool to blend and flatten the planes can be an effective way to transform a photographic image into a more painterly image.

Additionally, it has often worked best to chose an image where the person you replace with your likeness is prominent or larger in the painting, such as in Jacques-Louis David's Anger of Achilles or in the Mona Lisa. If you must choose an image where the people are smaller, replace many figures. The "a-ha" effect for the viewer of realizing it is you in the image doesn't work, if they can't find you or see you well enough to tell it is you.

Timeline

October 22nd, On-screen critique
October 29th, Last day to print
~~October 31st~~ November 5th, Critique of printed mounted work.

Class Rules

No cell phones may be used during class. CELL PHONES MUST BE TURNED OFF during class. If you are using a cell phone during class you may have your grade dropped by one letter grade for each instance.

Caravaggio

How does Caravaggio make his Calling of St. Matthew contemporary? Why did he do this?

Cindy Sherman

Take a look at Cindy Sherman's photography from her art history series. How does she reinvent?

Cindy Sherman, *After Caravaggio's Sick Bacchus,* photograph. circa 1990.

Diego Velázquez

What is needed to make an image contemporary?
Does Velázquez make make his Los Borrachos contemporary?
If so, how?

Masterworks in Advertising

Coca-Cola advertisment after Manet, circa 2008.

Éduoard Manet, *Dejeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass),* 1863, Musée d' Orsay, 81.9 x 104.1 inches.

Coca-Cola advertisment after Breughel, circa 2008.

Pieter Brueghel, *Peasant Wedding* , 1566-69, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 44.8 x 64.5 inches.

Clothing advertisment after Lorenzo Lotto, circa 2009.

Lorenzo Lotto, *Venus and Cupid,* late 1520s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ~36.5 x 43.8 inches.

Advertisement for Zucchi towels, circa 2009 from an Italian magazine.

Johannes Vermeer, *Girl with the Pearl Earring*, c. 1665, oil on canvas, 17.5 x 15 inches.

An example from social media that shows the relevance of this painting in our culture in 2024. This social media poster is channeling Vermeer's art.

Another example from social media in 2024.

Yet another example from social media in 2024.

Peter Lippman (photographer) for Christian Louboutin (designer of shoes and handbags), *Inspired by Georges de la Tour*, 2011.
See more examples by Lippman for Louboutin here and here.

Georges de la Tour, *Magdalene with the Smoking Flame*, c. 1640, oil on canvas, 50 x 37 inches, Louvre, Paris.

Renaissance Hotels advertisement, *After Botticelli*, 2009.

Sandro Botticelli, *The Birth of Venus*, 1484-1486, tempera and gold leaf on canvas, 67.9 in × 109.6 inches, Uffizi, Florence.

A Masterwork that Proves Time Travel /s

Parmagianino, *Portrait of a Man (clearly Keanu Reeves)*, c. 1530, Uffizi, Florence.

Keanu Reeves circa 2015. Reeves is evidently a time traveler and is the well-known star of 20th and 21st century movies such as The Matrix Trilogy, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and My Own Private Idaho, to name a few.

It is worth noting that scholars are in disagreement on who the painting by Parmigianino represents, as noted on the Wikipedia page for this work. Perhaps it really is Keanu.

Contemporary Artists inspired by Masterworks

Marcos López, *Asada en Mendiolaza (Roasted Meat in Mendiolaza)*, 2001, lambda print and hand-colored on paper mounted on aluminum, 41.8 x 112 inches.

Leonardo da Vinci, *Last Supper* , c. 1495-1498, Tempera on gesso, 181 x 346 inches, Santa Maria dell Grazie, Milan.

Luis Gispert, *untitled (Wrestling Girls) after Pollaiuolo*, photograph, 2001.

Antonio del Pollauiolo, *Hercules and Antaeus*, bronze, 17.7 inches tall, Bargello Museum, Florence, 1470s.

Eliza Reinhardt and her dog, see more works by Eliza Reinhardt here

Michelangelo Buonarroti, *The Creation of Adam*, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome, buon fresco, 1508-1512.

Alina Silaeva, photograph. I am unsure of the title for this work. I have seen it jokingly referred to as the *Patron saint of women who don't want to talk to you on public transit*. This photo was inspired by a painting (below) by another contemporary artist, Andrey Shatilov.

Andrey Shatilov, oil painting,*Moscow Prayer,* 2018. More of Shatilov's work can be found here.

Notice the hand gesture in Shatilov and Silaeva's works. It is often seen in images of Jesus or Christian saints and is understood as a gesture of blessing toward the viewer. Below are two examples.