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!"
LOL. Check it out. It looks like a FReeper was there.
Now Obama is throwing dead people under the bus.
NOW I get it!
Those breaks around the border give it an entirely different meaning.
It's obvious: that particular motif was common among Afro-Americans in the years after slavery. Working long hours on plantations without oil colors and unconstrained by uptight European conventions like "prospective" or "geometry" or the "human form" or "nature" or bourgeois notions like "technique" or "beauty", they produced flat dull uninspired paintings in great numbers, but they were suppressed by the white establishment until an enterprising French artist whose creativity was exhausted adopted them and signed his name to them.
ROTFLMAO! You’re killing me!!!
Woah!!!! Noice! The artist is a fraud!
LOL, the history shows that was just added today.
I am going to scan through her other images, I wonder what else she may have stolen.
Hehe. This should be intersting.
Ping
Ha ha. She has been FReeped and just rolled over in her grave.
When did Thomas do hers? In otherwords who copied who???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snail
The Snail or 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.[1] It consists of a number of colored shapes, arranged in a spiral pattern, as suggested by the title. During the early to mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health. Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in favor of his paper cutouts. The Snail, is a major example of Matisse’s final body of works known as the cutouts.[2]
Here's my GE-NBC-SNL funded version called: I'm Sarah Palin And I Can See Russia From My House:
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Always find a gullible patron who will buy your works.
See if you can get the NEA to fund THAT Obamawork.
LOL!
Rename the forgery from “Watusi” to “TOTUS Reveled” and the painting then achieves a certain reality.
I have been in an “art” gallery that has displayed exactly that. Had a different title IIRC but I dare say you should sue!
That really shows it!
Now that shows talent. Wow.
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