After noticing Homage To Francis Bacon (Three Studies of Lucian Freud) by Takashi Murakami during his recent exhibition I spent most of the last weekend and weekday evenings fascinated by the artworks by Francis Bacon and his inspirations from and influences on other artists.
This “creative entity” has an impressive Behance portfolio and messaged me to connect.
We had an half-hour Zoom call on Friday afternoon, during which he remains anonymous and faceless.
From his voice I can figure out that he is a young European male whose is on an early stage of architecture design day job.
I absolutely love the hand-painted oil effects of this film which I watched on hoopladigital.
The backgrounds are mostly flat and static and thus can be painted more sparsely while the foreground characters and objects are rotoscoped over (green-screen) captured live actions.
The actors were chosen to resemble the subjects in the original paintings which were used as style references for the painting process.
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I visited the opening exhibition of day jobs in Cantor today and found it fascinating.
The descriptions, as quote from the exhibition website, can be applied to other creative fields such as scientific research and product development as well:
This exhibition examines the overlooked impact of day jobs on the visual arts. Success for artists is often measured by their ability to quit a day job and focus full time on their practice. Yet, these jobs can often spur creative growth by providing artists with new materials and methods, hands-on knowledge of a specific industry that becomes an area of artistic investigation, or a predictable paycheck and structure that enable unpredictable ideas.
By examining the impact of day jobs on artists, the exhibition seeks to demystify artistic production and overturn the romanticized concept of the artist sequestered in their studio, waiting for inspiration to strike. Conceived as a corrective to traditional art historical narratives, Day Jobs encourages us to more openly acknowledge the precarious and generative ways that economic and creative pursuits are intertwined.
This is a compact and yet engaging book about the most prolific and efficient art thief in history.
To understand such an extraordinary individual, his deeds, and the shocking ending, it is important to know his “state machine” – how he perceives the world, his relationships, incentives, and actions.
To reconstruct this state machine, the author interviewed the thief in person and also talked to people who knew him, including his small circle of friends and family, his victims (e.g., museums, antique stores, and auction houses staff), psychoanalysts, and law enforcement officers.
The book also describes the history of art market and theft (e.g., Picasso commissioned a theft from Louvre early on and then became the most stolen artist later), and the author’s own journey in writing this book.
Highly recommend, especially for those who are interested in art, psychology, and crime.
I probably will see things differently during my future museum visits.
Instead of stealing artworks and put them in an attic for personal peruse, I dream about the opposite: sneak artworks created by people I know into museums so that they can be appreciated by more people and better preserved by art professionals.
I learned from this exhibition that Morris Hirshfield was a self-taught artist who started painting at the age of 65, with a unique style of non-traditional proportion/perspective and strong emphasis on textures and patterns.
In the same exhibition are works by several other self-taught artists who also have unique styles and some also started very late (like “Grandma Moses” at age 78).
On one hand, it is never too late (or too non-conventional) to start something new.
On the other hand, the start is likely more gradual than sudden, with a long period of incubation.
In Hirshfield’s case, his career in the garment industry has an obvious impact in how he applied patterns in his paintings.
I went to see this exhibition today and was astonished by the details and accuracies of these large scale oil paintings and bronze sculptures made all within the past two years!
How did the artist accomplish such combination of care, size, and speed?
Quote from this article:
… he considered becoming a pro photographer. However, fearing that working on commission would blunt the spontaneity of his images, he decided to continue in his chosen career in the medical profession.
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