Julianne Moore is… Modigliani’s muse, a Klimt damsel, and a tousled temptress by Egon Schiele. Recently, this incredible photo shoot with the actress has surfaced out of an old Harper’s Bazaar and into the art-minded Tumblr-sphere. Check out the shots taken by the famous fashion photographer Peter Linderbergh, side-by-side with their original inspirations, as spotted by Museum Nerd. What strikes us isn’t just the meticulous styling, strategically echoing the visuals of the original artwork with couture. Moore is doing a splendid job channeling the subjects, beaming with vigor of a glamorous “cripple” by John Currin, as if she was a Currin model frozen in a frame. You be the judge. Do these do it for you?
There’s something about artists that makes them compelling biopic subjects, especially if there’s something sexy, traumatic, Bohemian and otherwise scandalous about their personal life. In honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s birthday — he would have been 51 today — we present a few recommendations, just to get you started. Here you will find those dramatic details artfully exploited on celluloid with various degrees of salaciousness and, we hope, some valuable background on Bacon’s, Van Gogh’s, and Kahlo’s actual artistic careers. First up? The birthday boy himself.
What happens when an artist drops his brush or a photographer lowers his camera to pose for a portrait by a colleague? We investigated and found a snap of a young Nan Goldin, pre-fame and sans blouse, Francis Bacon’s face deconstructed by the strokes of Lucian Freud, and Picasso romping around in a big blond wig for Brassaï. Often starkly casual peeks, these portraits are brimming with a friendly intimacy and professional camaraderie. Take a look at some of our favorite cultural figures as models in the slide show. Read More »
The most iconic paintings of eras past can’t escape traveling the world economy class, as cheap Monet posters taped up on dorm-room walls and off-brand Rothko reproductions hanging in the living rooms of the gullible. But who said knockoffs couldn’t be creative? Some of our favorite songs are covers and mashups — just like the reimaginations of famous paintings after the jump. The “cover” artists featured below used everything from coffee to balloons to celebrities — everything but paint, really — to pay homage to the classic artworks that inspired them.
Barbie is one girl that’s really done it all – she’s had every job in the book and then some. She’s even been Lady Gaga. But can she pull off being a painting? Fine Art Barbies, a new line from Mattel that was recently unveiled at this year’s Toy Fair, has translated three of the most iconic paintings of all time into, well, Barbies. We don’t know about you, but we don’t really think the famous Mona Lisa smile translates very well into plastic, though we can’t say we don’t dig the hair on the Klimt. Works of art or tasteless mockeries of the real thing? Let us know what you think in the comments!
From a strange, sexy, mechanical shrine that occupied Marcel Duchamp for the last two decades of his life to Vincent van Gogh’s and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s disputed paintings — final works of famous artists are always something of a curiosity. What were their near-death obsessions? What was that artist’s last artistic hurrah? From a loving tribute to Stalin to the act of dying itself, find the controversial, surprising and affirming end chapter pieces from art history’s heroes in our gallery.
Earlier this week, National Gallery visitor Susan Burns was so enraged by the “evil” and “very homosexual” painting of Paul Gauguin’s partially-nude Two Tahitian Women, that she attacked it with fists and curses, until she was tackled by a social worker from the Bronx. She has now joined the ranks of the famous holy avenger Kathy Folden, whose crowbar-wielding antics at Colorado’s Loveland Museum destroyed Enrique Chagoya’s The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals for its XXX-ish transgendered Jesus. Which reminds us: There are some seriously sexy paintings in art history that must be cleaned up. Obviously, we can’t get them all, but click through our gallery of a few works we’ve put through some much needed censoring, before the next art attack.
The Depression-era song “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” which Louis Armstrong made famous in the ’50s, finishes with the lyrics: “Oh give me your lips for just a moment/ And my imagination will make that moment live/ Oh give me what you alone can give/ A kiss to build a dream on.” Over the course of art history, painters, sculptors, poets, and photographers have — as the song suggests — used their vivid imaginations to bring the kiss to life as a symbol of fresh love, renewed love, and even black-and-blue love.
With Valentine’s Day in mind, we’ve selected the 10 best art kisses — ranging from erotic embraces in paintings by Gérôme and Klimt and sensual smooches in sculptures by Rodin and Brancusi to lustful lip-locking in works on paper by Picasso and Man Ray — so that you, too, can share the love. If we missed one of your favorite make-out moments in art, tell us about it in the comments.
A death mask, as the name suggests, is a wax or plaster cast made of a person’s face following death. While the Ancient Egyptians used them as part of the mummification process, Westerners adopted the tradition as a way to document what a person looked like, before photography became more popular. Life Magazine just posted a slideshow of 12 rather famous ones, and we’ve picked five of our favorites for you to ID after the jump. But don’t get cocky. Thanks to slight distortions caused by the weight of the plaster during the making of the mold, subjects can sometimes be hard to recognize. So we’ll give you a few hints. There are two famous poets (one Italian, one English), one American president, an Austrian painter, and one playwright who you probably read in high school more than once. Good luck!
