Iconic Portraits Formed by Clusters of Tiny People. Starting his creative career as a street artist,
Craig Alan developed his portraiture skills while earning a living to further fund his artistic pursuits. Since that point, the artist has been honing in on his craft and creating something more than your average portrait. He represents people as an amalgam of other people. The artist's portfolio boasts a series of inventive portraits of iconic figures whose visage appears to be composed of tiny pixels. Upon closer inspection, the spectator can see that the pixels are, in fact, people.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jul 2, 2012 -
14 comments
Britain's finest Baroque portraitist , on a par with Frans Hals, has been all but forgotten, but a new BBC documentary and associated website seek to address that. William Dobson, 1611-46, was painter to Charles I's court during the English Civil War, and the turmoil of the period meant that much of his biography and even the names of the subjects of his portraits were lost. But
many of his portraits have survived, and they're astonishing.
[more inside]
posted by rory
on Oct 1, 2011 -
18 comments
"It had a sign outside it saying Museum of the Americas, but no one ever visited it. Anyway, so he opened this door, turned on the lights one by one, and
the sight that met my eyes is something I shall never, ever forget because instead of a congregation of people in this disused church,
it was a congregation of portraits."
Philip Mould, an art expert and a host of the British version of Antiques Roadshow, describes an early business trip where he met
Earle Newton. Newton's home grown Museum of the Americas,
a collection of over 300 rare 17th- and 18th-century English and American portraits, was housed in a nondescript church on the side of a road in rural Vermont. The collection, later valued at over nine million dollars, became the
Earle W. Newton Center for British and American Studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design upon Newton's death.
[via]
posted by jessamyn
on Nov 9, 2010 -
14 comments
Retratos Pintados "Since the late 19th century through the 1990s, hand-painted photographic portraits were a common feature in homes in the rural areas of the northeastern Brazilian states. At a time when black-and-white photographs were not considered dramatic enough, the retratos
pintados (“painted portraits”) glamorized and idealized their subjects. Black-and-white family photos were enlarged and painted, conferring status on members of the family and portraying them as icons or saints. Using oil washes and other techniques specific to the region, local artisans embellished clothing with pattern and color, smoothed wrinkles, added jewelry or resurrected deceased relatives, illustrating the fantasies and desires of their customers."
posted by puny human
on Jul 19, 2010 -
7 comments
Photographs of the dancers, actresses, cafe-life figures and prostitutes who were the subjects of Toulouse Lautrec's paintings, including such luminaries as
Sarah Bernhardt, "
La Goulue" (Louise Weber;
remember this?), and
Jane Avril, who was the model for
this last, iconic, Lautrec poster. View pages of the art matched up with photos,
here,
here, and
here, and
go to this page to rummage around in even more collections that include photos of Lautrec, his friends and family, street and location scenes, and lots of other tidbits.
[Spanish language site; NUDITY]
posted by taz
on Jul 5, 2007 -
10 comments
Burned: a photoset on Flickr "In 2001 I met a burn survivor who allowed me to photograph her. She told me that she wanted to be photographed so that people could stare at her without feeling embarrassed. It was such an extraordinary experience that a few months later I flew to a burn conference and set up a makeshift studio in a hotel room, and asked people to let me know if they would like their portraits made. I was astonished at how many people did. What I learned from this extraordinary experience was that every burn survivor has a tale of courage to tell, and that the burns have their own eerie beauty." Amazing, unsettling, inspiring.
posted by mathowie
on Jun 30, 2006 -
48 comments
Wrestling with Diane Arbus "She set up no lights, just pulled out her Rolleiflex, which was half as big as she was, checked the aperture and the exposure, and tested the flash. Then she asked me to lie on the bed, flat on my back on the shabby counterpane.
I did as I was told. Clutching the camera she climbed on to the bed and straddled me, moving up until she was kneeling with a knee on both sides of my chest. She held the Rolleiflex at waist height with the lens right in my face. She bent her head to look through the viewfinder on top of the camera, and waited".
posted by matteo
on Oct 8, 2005 -
25 comments
20th-century American artist, Alice Neele , "
The Auntie Hero": "
While
Uptowners were making their way downtown to have their portraits painted by Warhol, Downtowners were going up to 107th Street to sit for this bohemian, auntie-like artist." Check out seven decades of raw, sometimes amazing, but always deeply humane portraits of the often larger-than-life figures who peopled the New York art/lit scene and Neel's personal landscape, including such iconic irrepressibles as
Joe Gould,
Andy Warhol,
Annie Sprinkle, and
Bella Abzug. (NSFW)
posted by taz
on Sep 16, 2004 -
13 comments
Bug Portraits by Frank Phillips. ". . .I always keep in mind the goal of capturing the bug from an angle that we humans don't normally see...and I believe that it shows in my work."
posted by Feisty
on Mar 9, 2004 -
15 comments
Piven World - a fun flash portfolio of celebrity caricatures and portraits. I like his witty technique of incorporating "defining" objects.
(via oink!)
posted by madamjujujive
on Jul 2, 2003 -
5 comments
