explosion

Explosion of the Spanish flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607 by Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen, c1621

The explosion isn't in Industrial Light and Magic style but it is interesting that the flames are in Spanish red and yellow. Note the sails of each ship are blown to the left while the Spanish ship's sails are all blown away from the center of the explosion

detail #1 (from near the top of the painting)
a brush for cleaning a cannon bore and 2.5 people

detail #2
a drum, 2 men and, likely, the other half of the guy seen in detail #1 (that must be one tight fitting hat). The guy at the bottom left appears to wear a bandolier of cartridges for his rifle or arquebus

Word of the Day : pandiculate

Self-Portrait, Yawning, Joseph Ducreux, before 1783. Oil on canvas, 45 x 35 in. 

pandiculate : To fully stretch the torso and upper limbs, typically accompanied by yawning.

recto

This might help those who can't remember the difference between verso and recto.


click to embiggen

Kneeling Nun, verso, by Martin van Meytens, c1731

a notable detail of the painting revealed below

Chuck Close at work

click to embiggen 

Chuck Close at work. From Graphis Magazine #313 (no date printed but I think it is from around 1998) It is an interesting insight to how he works.  It looks like a two inch square grid at a 45º angle, he starts at the top blocking color in several rows, and then each grid tile is given a "dot."

 At first it might appear to be that he fills in a band of the grid from the top down but compared to the finished piece and there were changes made in the corners. Aside from the background there is a little use of line that extends outside of an individual grid box. For example, part of his glasses and part of the shirt collar.

The lift he uses to raise himself to paint higher portions of the painting appears to be a Big Joe Lift In-Between Handling Manual Stacker IBH1018 or a very similar model.

Another photo in the article shows Close working in a different workspace where the painting can be lowered down into a hole in the floor. When he moved studios he retired his Big Joe lift and started moving the painting. 

Below is the finished painting.

Alphonse Mucha's wife and the painting Woman in the Wilderness

detail of Alphonse Mucha's painting Woman in the Wilderness, 1923 juxtaposed with the photograph of his wife Maruška posing for the painting.
(click to embiggen)

seen here

Woman in the Wilderness, 1923, oil on canvas, 201.5 x 299.5 cm (79.3" x 117.9")
(click to embiggen)

an attempt to show the scale of the painting

civility : pissing on a grave

Eduardo Labarca appears to urinate on the grave of Jose Luis Borges on the cover of his book The Enigma of the Modules

"Peeing on that tomb was a legitimate artistic act," … "I am not just a person who goes around peeing on tombs, but a writer with a serious oeuvre," he said today.

By legitimate he means fake :

 The photo has provoked outrage in Borges's native Argentina, even though Labarca admits the stream of water descending on the great man's grave actually came from a bottle of water hidden in his right hand.

 The reason for it all :

"Anyone who is offended by this is very short-sighted," he said. "Borges was a giant as a writer but I feel complete contempt for him as a citizen. As an old man, almost blind, he came to meet the dictator Pinochet in the days when he was busy killing."

p.s. if you find the design of Borges' gravestone as interesting as I do there then someone has already done the research on it.