Posted on 10/08/2009 12:05:05 PM PDT by Atlas Sneezed
Yesterday, the NYT ran a story about the White House acquiring art. It included a slide show of a dozen artworks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/arts/design/07borrow.html?_r=1
This Freeper took a look and found one abstract work he admired:
"Watusi (Hard Edge)," by Alma Thomas, a longtime Washington resident who is an African-American painter. Photo: Gift of Vincent Melzac/Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
As I admired it, I thought it reminiscent, even derivative of a favorite artwork of mine by Matisse. I recall seeing that one decades ago at the Tate Gallery in London. A giant collage (about ten feet tall) from late in Matisse's life, when his eyesight was failing:
The Snail (L'escargot), by Henri Matisse, Nice-Cimiez, Hotel Regina, [summer 1952-early] 1953, Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, on white paper, 9'4 3/4" x 9' 5" (287 x 288 cm) collection Tate Gallery, London.
I had planned to post them for comparison, and to share my admiration for both. But when I saw them side-by-side, the similarity clarified. I realized that the new one was EXACTLY the same composition as the Matisse, rotated 90 degrees.
Is this fraud? If the new piece has been titled "Homage to Collage" or "Matisse in Blue", I would think the artist wasn't trying to hide the copying. But I wonder whether anyone realized that the artist copied almost every aspect of a famous work to sell her artwork. Perhaps everyone involved knew that this is a re-colored reprint. If not, it seems to be an embarrassment for the "sophisticates" who failed to spot a copy hiding in plain sight.
As too many people say about abstract expressionist art: "Even I could have done THAT!"
Thanks for doing that overlay. Very illustrative of the plagiarism.
See 120, I was wrong, also, it is well a known ‘study’ piece of Matisse’s work. I think we all (myself included) jumped the gun.
It is also different media.
We were right about the copy/similarity, but wrong about the motive.
I'm proud of FR that the truth came out though.
How much is that painting worth in Obama Money?
Mine too, with colored tissue paper and glue.
Found this on an art website:
A good place to begin thinking about Alma Thomas’s ravishing late work might be the moment in 1964 when, close to paralysis and bedridden, the 73-year-old artist found herself staring at the hollyhock shadows she had known her entire life and calculating how to use them in her paintings. A year earlier, she had seen the late Matisse cutouts at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Matisse’s work had prompted her to paint an acrylic-on-canvas version of his collage The Snail (1953), in which nearly all the original colors were reversed. Thomas named her painting Watusi (Hard Edge), after Chubby Checker’s dance hit “The Watusi.”
Exactly, she was open about it being a study and it is listed as such, pretty common for artists to do this. It was, however, a fun intellectual exercise and a chance for a little art research.. now on to important topics.
study=copy
If you haven't yet seen it, rent this very unique documentary which explores the monumental larceny of that very bad painter and his degenerate cronies.
http://www.rapeofeuropa.com/home.asp
But no intent to deceive.
Looks like someone kidnapped Sherwin Williams and this is the ransom note.
I sent it to Breitbart.
you now owe me one new keyboard since mine is covered with a beverage that was supposed to wet my whistle.
I don’t believe it was a “study” of Matisse. More like a rip-off.
LOL I like it!
I disagree. Modernism/ Liberalism killed art. Modernism and Liberalism must deny the existence of truth, or any other objective and universal standard.
Beauty is truth, and portrayal of beauty necessarily affirms the existence of truth. Therefore just as liberalism and modernism must stamp out any notion of truth in all human endeavors, it must also destroy the expression of beauty, hence the movement towards abstraction, and the denial of any aesthetic sense or standard as “bourgeoisie sentimentality” or a “cultural prejudice”.
As such modern art is devoid of meaning, beauty and at best can trigger an emotional provocation in the viewer.
Without truth, there is no right, justice or beauty, only power, and power issues from the barrel of a gun.
Frgds,
3/M
>>> the Nazis stole and hid all politiically incorreect works of art <<<<
Actually they stole everything they liked and could get away with (particularly if it had been owned by Jewish patrons or art dealers), and burned and destroyed the “politically incorrrect” stuff that they didn’t like.
See #131 above. “The Rape Of Europa” is an excellent documentary of it all.
No different than the coppied “art” of Ward Churchill.
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