Saturday, January 12, 2013

THE TWO ARTISTIC DISASTERS OF 2012

ONE USE ONLY National Portrait Gallery undated handout photo of the portrait of the Kate Middleton by Paul Emsley which was unveiled today at the Gallery in London.
The portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge by Paul Emsley 
who won the prestigious British Portrait Award in 2007
I think most of us didn't know whether we should laugh or cry when we heard of the old lady who tried to restore a portrait of Jesus in her local Spanish church. Her attempt at doing good was quite heart warming, but it was hard not to find the result very amusing and muppet-like...

Elias Garcia Martinez' artwork "restored" - read more here

The other disaster was released yesterday, it's the portrait of the Duchess Kate Middleton by Paul Elmsley. Not only is it schmaltzy low brow art (that is, if you can call it art at all) that aims to please the masses, but it's also anatomically incorrect. Look at the left cheek - it's blown out of all proportion! Her right iris is also square and the high lights don't seem quite right. Her normally very lovely hair is smudgy... She looks like she's 50, and high on dope or worse (I'll leave that to your imagination)! It actually looks like a photograph of her was sent to an art student in China - that's how bad the result is. Yikes. Read more in the Telegraph, the review is very accurate! How terrible to imagine that this would sit alongside a Holbein or Gainsboroug... or even a less famous portrait painter of the past. This doesn't exactly further the cause of good figurative painting.

Both of these "artistic perpetrators" were elderly. I think when you get older you have to work a bit harder on not falling into habitual and conventional thinking and let your discernment slip...

Hans Holbein: Probably of Lady Elizabeth Ughtred-Cromwell (?1511 - 1563),
younger sister of Queen Jane Seymour.

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