THE NEW ART QUIZ
You have already seen the new Art Quiz. It is the title image. I call this photoshop Innocence and Decadence and Curiosity. You might call it a blasphemous bastardization of a masterpiece, and we’d both be right.
Your charge is as follows: Figure out the names of the fourteen paintings that are represented in the photoshop along with the thirteen painters who created those original masterworks. Of the twenty-seven responses you should have on your answer sheet, I can tell you that a few are very easy, some are pretty hard, some are very hard, and one might be impossible.
To keep you from cheating—YOU ONLY HURT YOURSELF BY CHEATING—I’ve placed the Answer Key below the next section, which is a reminder about the KOS Art Expo 2023 publishing New Year's Day at 2:00 pm (Eastern).
Pencils up!
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KOS ART EXPO 2023
New Year's Day, after you’ve had time enough to sleep off that hangover, your friends at daily kos will publish the KOS Art Expo! This is so much fun, as Artists, Photographers, Ceramic Artisans, Draughtsmen, Draughtswomen, Painters, Fractal Artists, Musicians and more have set up what I like to call a “Museum of the Beautiful and the Curious.”
This is a painting by Ralphdog from a previous Kos Art Expo:
We hope to see you New Year's Day!
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ANSWER KEY
Pencils down! I hope you had as much fun solving the Art Quiz as I had in making it. I screwed up perspective pretty badly, no doubt, and I am very weak with shadows, but, hey, it’s for entertainment purposes only. First a reminder of what you saw, then your answers:
1. Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans
Doing his part for the Pop Art Movement, Andy Warhol used his screen printing process to create thirty-two separate canvases covered with each of the then-current Campbell Soups flavors.
These were done in late 1961 and early 1962. The paintings were part of Warhol’s first one-man gallery showing in Los Angeles. He brought Pop Art to the West Coast.
Since our Art Quiz took place in and around a diner or coffee shop, it was only natural to include some Campbell’s Soup, said to be good to the last drop.
2. The Arnolfini Portrait (detail) by Jan van Eyck
This painting by an early Dutch Master contains a curiosity that has mesmerized generations. The humans are thought to represent a merchant named Giovanni Arnolfini and his bride.
The curiosity was the ten-toothed sprocket-shaped mirror that served as an additional eyewitness to the proceeding. That mirror depicts other figures in front of the wedded couple (not seen otherwise in the painting itself) who are thought to have been those who presided over the wedding and witnessed it.
That curiosity was placed over the bathroom or kitchen door of our photoshop. Van Eyck’s painting was created in 1434, and it is one of the first to consist of oils rather than tempera. The Arnolfini Portrait is hailed for its early use of geometric perspective, the iconography, and its complexity. The painting hangs in the National Gallery, London.
3. Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrell del Caso
Del Caso was a Spanish painter most frequently associated with his trompe-l’œil paintings, which were meant to trick the eye. In Spanish, the practice is called trampantojo.
This particular painting has a young boy sneaking out of the canvas with his head, one hand, a thumb and a foot already poking out from the painting’s “surface.”
One of his portraits, Two Laughing Girls, has a young girl sticking her elbow out onto the frame, while another’s finger seems to stick out into our space. You can find other of his portraits and religious pieces in museums, but unfortunately his murals were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.
Was he the Banksy of his time? Del Caso painted Escaping Criticism (below) in 1874, the same year of the Bourbon Restoration which saw a military coup insert Alfonso XII as King. The painting is now owned by the Bank of Spain.
4. The Son of Man by René Magritte
This painting is world famous surrealism and has creeped me out since I first ogled it. You have a typical European male figure with a bowler hat that you might see in a Monty Python sketch playing a banker or an accountant except a gravity-defying apple obscures most of his face with only one eye peeking out.
If you think I made a bad job of photoshopping an arm onto the bar consider this: In the original below, the man’s left arm appears to bend backwards. How that arm would lay on a bar is anybody’s guess.
Magritte said, “There is an interest in that which is hidden….” He was right about that! He created this masterpiece of Surrealism with the biblical name and motif in 1964. It is owned by a private collector.
5. The Treachery of Images by René Magritte
Is it possible that René Magritte is the patron Saint of Pedants? He painted a picture of a pipe and then announced in French underneath it, “This is not a pipe.”
Of course it is only the image of a pipe and not an actual pipe, but most people would still point to it and call it a pipe. In defense of his masterpiece, the Artist stated that if he had written below the image that it was a pipe, he’d have been lying. Ha!
Wikipedia claims that the painting is an example of Surrealism, but I think it is more akin to Ultrarealism.
The image of a pipe in the photoshop replaced a cigar that appeared in the original painting. Apparently the diner sold cigars for five cents. Pipes, I think, would’ve been a bit more expensive.
The painting was created by Magritte in 1929, and it now hangs in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
6. Man Hanging From a Window, by Banksy
There was this nondescript wall on Frogmore Street, Bristol, Jolly Old that Banksy decided to adorn with one of his signature creations. The gentleman hanging from the window nudam plenamque ignominia, we assume, is a clandestine lover caught during an affair.
The woman, so the assumption continues, is his lover, while the second gentleman hanging out of the window looks around suspiciously for a possible rival, but, so far at least, he hasn’t noticed the nude fellow just below him.
This is from Wikipedia and is quoted for your pleasure:
Well Hung Lover appeared at a time when the [Bristol] City Council's policy was to crack down on graffiti; the council were initially opposed to the mural. However, some residents supported the work, saying it "brightened up" the area. Following pressure to keep the mural, the council created an online poll asking whether or not it should be kept; 97% of respondents supported it, leading to retrospective permission being granted for the mural- the first legal street art mural in the UK. The council stressed that this was an exception, and that future street art would not necessarily be tolerated.
And, yet, the “stenciled graffiti” has been vandalized multiple times since then. That’s too bad because I think it probably adds some charm to Frogmore Street.
7. Two Women at a Window by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
As you can see, I only placed one of the women in the photoshop. She seemed to perfectly fit the window and embody the concept of curiosity. This magnificent painting was painted in the mid-1600s by Spanish Artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and it can be seen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where admission is always free.
Like Escaping Criticism above, there is a trompe-l’œil effect with the young woman seemingly hanging outside of the frame.
In the original below, the young woman looks out into the street in bemused interest while her older companion seems to be suppressing a smile behind her shawl. There are many iconic works of Art in the National Gallery, and this is one of them.
8. The Scream by Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch created two painted and two pastel versions of his iconic Expressionist work. They are part of the collections of the National Gallery of Norway and the Munch Museum.
The story is that in 1893 on a sunset walk, Munch witnessed an angry heavens and felt an "infinite scream passing through nature." It is no coincidence that the Industrial Revolution ran its course from 1760 to 1840. Munch was able to observe some of the side effects.
As Charles Dickens wrote sarcastically in the voice of a villain factory owner in his 1854 novel Hard Times,
First of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the lungs.”
9. Portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent
It has always been my opinion that Edgar Degas was the smartest of all the painters, as he concentrated on images of ballerinas, race horses and nude women, the beautiful. John Singer Sargent fits that mold.
His image of beauty was a powerful woman who strained against societal repression. That’s why he would have one of his models stare directly at the viewer, or in the Portrait of Madame X, first produce a painting with the right strap of his sitter’s gown falling down.
Because that caused quite a storm, he repainted it as you see below.
According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Madame Pierre Gautreau (the Louisiana-born Virginie Amélie Avegno; 1859–1915) was known in Paris for her artful appearance.” Sargent noted that, “’I suppose it is the best thing I have done,’ but asked that the Museum disguise the sitter’s name.”
If you are in New York, you can see this amazing Art at The Met Fifth Avenue, in Gallery 771.
10. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (detail) by Georges Seurat
The most famous example of the Pointillist technique is A Sunday Afternoon by Seurat. The technique requires the painter to color the canvas with dots and very tiny brush strokes, millions of them. It took two years, from 1884 to 1886, to complete the finished work below.
The painting is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Seurat first exhibited with the Impressionists but he became known as a Neo-Impressionist.
The painting is almost seven by ten feet in size, which required a lot of miniature dots and tiny brush strokes of oil paint. He even included dots around the edges of the painting to heighten the experience for the viewer. Cameron has a deeply personal experience with the painting in this video:
A scene from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in which the gang hangs out at the Art Institute of Chicago. Nighthawks and A Sunday Afternoon have roles in the movie.
Besides being an icon of Post-Impressionism, the painting has found its way into popular culture as a Broadway Play, the cover for an issue of Playboy magazine, a foil in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (above video), and television series such as The Office and The Simpsons.
11. Self-Portrait with Her Daughter, Julie by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
This amazing painter has an equally amazing biography full of twists and turns and great escapes. Marie Antoinette became Le Brun’s patron, and the artist painted the Queen and her entourage thirty times.
When things began to go south for the French Queen, Le Brun escaped with her daughter Julie, then aged nine, to exile.
Besides being one of the best Artists of all time, she was also a pioneer in Women’s Rights, having joined numerous Art societies and leagues and guilds when women were usually frowned upon for doing so. She also broke convention in painting, as you can see in the image below. Her direct stare back at you from the canvas and the visibility of her teeth caused many a strong man to faint back in her day.
12. Portrait of the Boy Eutyches, Unknown Artist
There is nothing as fascinating to me as the Mummy portraits of Egypt. They ask so many questions. I saw a couple in Washington, D.C., but not in the National Gallery, but at the Smithsonian.
Sure, they are an amazing part of Egyptian history, but they are also the most fantastic Art. While the rest of the world was producing primitive two-dimensional portraits, the Egyptians and the ancient Greeks added the third dimension.
This was a Faiyum painting with a special purpose as described by The Met:
Most of them are painted in the elaborate encaustic technique, in which pigments were mixed with hot or cold beeswax and other ingredients, such as egg, resin, and linseed oil. This versatile medium allowed artists to create images that in many ways are akin to oil paintings…. Most arresting are the dark brown eyes with black pupils reflecting the light with bright spots…. When a person died, the portrait panel was placed over the face of the mummy with parts of the outermost wrapping holding it in place. This implies Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.
I purposefully placed Portrait of the Boy Eutyches next to the self-portrait of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun with her daughter because I think she’s a top five portrait artist of all time. That shows you how close Egyptian Art was 1,700 years before her masterpiece.
13. The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio
What you see is a detail from Caravaggio’s masterpiece, which, in my opinion, shows motion in all forms. Even the still life of a fruit basket depicts what I call “impending motion.”
You see, Caravaggio painted the fruit basket to hang over the edge of a table. When an apostle hits the table surprised that the stranger before him is actually Jesus (see the actual painting below), the fruit basket will likely fall to the floor.
The Master’s Master, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, humorously created motion, or at least potential motion, from a still life!
You can watch my study of motion in The Supper at Emmaus in this video entitled, “An Art Mystery: Caravaggio’s Moving Hand.” Here, you can read it in the pages of Daily Kos. Yes. I believe that the Artist intended to depict all forms of motion in this painting including actual motion.
You will find the real thing in the National Gallery in London. It was painted in 1601 by the greatest Painter to grace our planet.
14. Nighthawks by Edward Hopper
The canvas for my ugly photoshop is Nighthawks, one of my Sister’s favorite paintings. (She also ordered me to include The Scream). From there, it was just the addition of congruous and incongruous elements to, hopefully, make the photoshop interesting.
The original painting is very interesting in a “paint noir” kind of way, showing the loneliness and darkness of night in the city.
Hopper finished the painting in 1942. It was sold within a few months for $3,000 (about $50,000 today) to the Art Institute of Chicago where it is still displayed. The Art Institute and the painting play a role in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is shown in the video above.
The Nighthawks diner was reproduced, at least to an extent—or in calculated thematic effort—in movies such as Pennies from Heaven (1981), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and The End of Violence (1997). The director of Blade Runner showed a reproduction of the painting to his set and background team because that’s what he wanted his bleak noir future to look like.
See you New Year's Day at the Expo!