Degas and Manet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 2023

This is for all of you who sneer at AI as unoriginal copies made with an unworthy artistic tool. I went one last time to the Degas/Manet show at the MET and was struck by how many times they attempted to copy each other. I decided to take up the challenge and do my own "copies" in my own universe. I started with Manet's Ham, thinking it might be easier, then moved on to Degas hat shop. I tackled Manat's painting of Mary Cassatt at an exhibition, Degas' bath, and finally Manet's painting of Morisot grieving--a heart wrenching painting. I think I succeeded in this homage especially in the one of Morisot in grief. I put myself in there thinking of Kurt. AI ain't bad...it's just another tool in the paintbox. Remember R. Mutt?

P.S. I forgot to mention that as I was working on Degas' bath. I kept getting blocked by the AI program refusing to render the image saying I wasn't meeting their community standards.

 

 

I expose myself

Today I expose myself. I have been taking pieces of earlier paintings and exploring them inside my current work. It started with a chance remark by Cora Cohen, who questioned my landscape/truck paintings as being too cinematic. It got me thinking about earlier landscape painters. I decided to follow a time honored painterly tradition of repainting others work in the service of one's own. Here are some examples: Chardin followed by Soutine, Manet followed by Mark Ryden, Jan Davidz de Heem followed by Matisse, Cezanne followed by Susan Shaw, Albert Marquet followed by Susan Shaw. The most terrifying thing for me was to realize that I had turned Cezanne's beautiful late afternoon stormy landscape onto a post-industrial slag heap.