Amateur Forgeries: August 11-25, 2022
The Mission:
Pick an existing work of art (a favorite from a famous artist, or just one you’ve seen and like - painting, sculpture, whatever) and attempt to recreate it yourself. Doesn’t matter how good or bad your result is, or how faithful to the original it looks - just mimic it in whatever way you like, using whatever medium you choose. Bonus points if you use interesting or unusual materials to create your piece.
The Submissions:
by Journal Kurtz
For my birthday my wife gave me a paint-by-numbers postcard set. She also gave me the ingredients for Negroni. Below is the result of enjoying both gifts simultaneously.
“Guernica” - painting by Pablo Picasso and collage by Captain Quillard
I recently had told myself that I was going to try to not do any more political art in my submissions for a while. I still think that’s a good plan, but when I decided to take a stab at Guernica, all I could see was the bull’s horns becoming the Q-Anon Shaman. And, here we are: a January 6th take on Guernica. My apologies. Next week I’ll try to do kittens or rainbows or something.
“No. 2 (Red Maroons)” - by Mark Rothko (left) and Captain Quillard
This is (obviously) too bad to even post. But, I love Rothko and wanted to honor him here even though I knew better than to make a serious attempt to copy his work. Instead, I grabbed some crayons and spent three minutes making this abomination on a notecard. Sorry, Mark - Hopefully my version will illustrate how off-base people are when they claim your work is “just some colored rectangles.”
Koi - by Jeremy Novy (top row) and Captain Quillard (bottom two rows)
I’ll be honest: These were done about a month or so ago - not during this week’s assignment. Also, I’m hoping that putting these online won’t lead to getting sued by the artist whose work I essentially copied/stole.
The artist Jeremy Novy has been doing these stenciled, spray painted koi on the streets of New Orleans, San Francisco, and other cities for years. Every time I visit New Orleans, I enjoy spotting his fish in random areas. Recently, I decided to try to duplicate them on my patio at home. It took several weeks of creating stencil layers from photographs in Photoshop, digitally tracing each line or shape and separating them into individual files, printing those files to use as templates from which to hand cut Mylar stencils with an X-acto knife, hunting down the right shades of spray paint, and painting each layer one by one, crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t permanently ruin my patio in the process. Ultimately, I love how they turned out. We’ll see if the home owners’ association loves them as much as I do…
“Pearl with the girl ear ring” - by Anonymous Frau Redux
Anonymous Frau Redux busting into your electronic mailbox and phoning this one in, quite literally.
Photo on phone enlarged, added emoji icons and changed the filter to noir(why? cause I like it and that’s how I’m rolling today).
Title of the work is “Pearl with the girl ear ring” multimedia. It’s not my best work, however like the inspiration (girl with the pearl earring) the mysterious expression and pose make one stop and ponder what’s going on there?
“Sorry Knit” - by Anonymous Frau Redux
Yes, this is a second submission. After searching through my stash I was inspired to utilize some scraps of yarn to create another work. Initially I thought “Oh, thats crap!” but with some filtering on the photo app it’s ok. Just hold it out at arms length, take off your glasses and squint a bit?
An alternate take on “Starry Night” by Van Gogh, the work is “Sorry Knit” a yarn on plastic bin lid compilation thrown together by Anonymous Frau Redux.
Next Week’s Assignment:
Gather a supply of single color swatches (raid the paint aisle at Lowe’s, round up some fabric samples, or make your own swatches - as long as each is a small rectangle or square of one color, it’ll work). Make a piece of art using these swatches - a mosaic, a sculpture, whatever you like.