F

Flavorwire

Vincent Van Gogh

Art

Famous Paintings to Peruse on Google’s New Indoor Maps Feature

By Leigh Patterson on

Ever wanted to see the Met’s Impressionist wing without booking a trip to New York? To browse presidential portraits inside the White House? Take in the newest MOMA exhibition from your couch? You can.

While Google Maps may get you to the front door of your destination, its newest feature, “Indoor Maps,” can help you figure out where to go next. Originally a feature exclusive to Android, last week Google expanded Indoor Maps to be available on web browsers, bringing the user inside an assortment of transportation, shopping, and cultural destinations, from airports to malls, casinos to train stations; a full list of locations is available here. … Read More

Art

Personal Letters From Great Artists to Their Friends and Family

By Emily Temple on

Here at Flavorpill, we’re great fans of artistic ephemera, endlessly fascinated by everything from the journals of creative geniuses to postcards from famous authors. After all, once you’re famous, there’s just no way to keep your private papers out of the hands of the curious masses — not that we’re complaining: sometimes, the best way to learn about someone is to see the way they correspond to those closest to them. To that end, we’ve collected a few beautiful letters from great artists to their friends and family, each one as visually evocative as you’d expect. Take a look after the jump, and if we’ve missed a stellar letter, send it our way in the comments! … Read More

Art

Famous Works of Art Halloween Costumes

By Jennifer Lewis on

Halloween is right around the corner, party people! When it comes to costumes, are you one of those perfectionists who will settle for nothing short of a handmade masterpiece? If yes, this one’s for you. If you’re still searching for some Halloween “masterpiece” costume inspiration, why not just dress like an actual masterpiece? After the jump, you’ll find a smorgasbord of art costumes from the realms of surrealism, post-impressionism, symbolism, pop art, and more. Check ‘em out, and hit the comments to add your artsy and/or spooky tips for those who might actually try to execute these suckers. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we read an open letter to Rihanna asking her to please use more words. We looked at pictures of Halloween-themed weddings. We appreciated this Lisa Frank-style Romney poster. We listened to a few dads sing songs from Little Mermaid. We dug this … Read More

Art

Famous Artworks Inspired by Their Creators’ Nervous Breakdowns

By Heba Hasan on

Van Gogh cut his ear off. Gauguin had a mid-life crisis and shacked up with frighteningly young Tahitian girls. Munch suffered from hallucinations. It’s a cliché that all great artists are crazy. However, the “tortured artist” stereotype certainly has a basis in fact — many famous artists’ most emotionally resonant works were created during times of emotional turmoil, the result of an all-consuming mental ailment. Not merely aesthetic masterpieces, these pieces offer great insight into an artist’s inner torment. Inspired by the fantastic Yayoi Kusama retrospective that’s currently up at the Whitney Museum, after the jump we look at some of history’s greatest mentally unstable artists and the work that beautifully captures their crises. … Read More

Art

Reproductions of Famous Paintings Made from Torn Magazines

By Caroline Stanley on

He has worked with materials ranging from luncheon meat and chocolate to coins and tiny toys. Notably, he once created a piece about sugar cane child laborers out of sugar. But give Sao Paulo-born, Brooklyn-based artist Vik Muniz a pair of scissors, a stack of magazines, and a camera, and he can recreate some of art history’s most famous paintings, all in surprising detail. It’s a tad gimmicky, but it works. You want to reach out and touch the photo enlargements of his paper collages, even when viewing them on a computer screen.

As New York Times critic Roberta Smith wrote when reviewing his Pictures of Magazines 2 series last fall, “[Muniz] operates with impunity in the Bermuda Triangle bordered by commercial, popular and fine art, which can drive the art world a bit nuts. (He resembles David Hockney in this regard.) But he almost always puts on a good show in terms of sheer showmanship, and his current one is even better than usual. It reminds us that part of the razzle-dazzle of his art stems from physical texture, which almost no photographer has exploited with such optical richness.” Click through to check out a slideshow of the work, currently on display at Galerie Xippas in Paris, which we spotted thanks to Colossal. … Read More

Art

Watch Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Recreated in 7,000 Dominoes

By Emily Temple on

We’ve seen lots of re-creations and re-imaginings of classic art over the years, but this is something a little bit unusual and definitely surprising in its beauty — Vincent Van Gogh’s classic painting Starry Night recreated in dominoes. It took domino artist FlippyCat 11 hours and some 7,000-odd dominoes to build the piece, which of course had to be immediately knocked down to achieve the full effect. Watch the creation of this cool project in the video below, and let us know if you had the same a-ha! moment that we did when the blocks came tumbling down. … Read More

Art

Early Exhibition Reviews of Famous Artists

By Alison Nastasi on

Picasso visited Paris for the first time in 1900. The city had such a profound effect on him, he returned the following year with 100 paintings in hand, hoping to land a show. The 19-year-old painter was introduced to Ambroise Vollard — the same dealer who sponsored the works of Cezanne and other notable artists — who immediately secured a spot for him at a gallery on the prestigious Rue Laffitte. Picasso was unknown at the time, but the 75 paintings that ranged from moody portraits to representational works featuring landscapes, prostitutes, and society ladies proved he was extremely talented and driven.

This Sunday marks the 111th anniversary of Picasso’s Paris exhibition. The few critics that did attend the show gave him favorable reviews. Years later, the painter’s exhibit in Switzerland drew enormous crowds and the criticisms of some very prominent figures. Find out who after the break, and see what other reviewers had to say about famous artists throughout history during the early part of their careers. … Read More

Art

10 Famous Artworks Inspired by Other Famous Artworks

By Judy Berman on

We tend to think of appropriation as a postmodern thing, with artists in all media drawing on, referring to, and mashing up the most influential works of the past. But we forget that this has been happening for centuries — millennia, actually — as Renaissance painters paid tribute to Greek art, ideas circulated within the 19th-century French art scene, and Dada hijacked the course of art history, mocking and inverting everything that came before it. After the jump, we round up some of the best, most famous, and all-around strangest artworks inspired by other artworks. Some are homages, some are parodies, some are responses, and a few seem to function as all three. … Read More

Art

A Casual Voyeur’s Mini-Tour of Paris Through Art

By Marina Galperina on

There are reasons we fall in love with cities. Those who are luck enough to experience them firsthand get wrapped up in the sights, the smells, the sensations, or whatnot. Then there are the others, the voyeurs who haven’t been there yet, who spend hours squinting over the cities’ visual culture. Here’s one for the swooning, the dreaming, the superficially attracted, and the deeply in love. First stop: Paris, France. Let’s hop around some of the city’s definitive and iconic painting and photographs. Let’s happily wallow in that luscious Parisian propaganda that makes us our hearts beat faster, from a distance. Do you want to go to there?  … Read More