Untitled 296

  

An erotic illusion

This is a painting I stumbled on, End of the Ball by Rogelio de Egusquiza, as usual when I was looking for something else. I thought it was supremely gorgeous, quite erotic, and seemed to embody that old term "swept off her feet". She looks like she is swooning in his arms, resting her full weight on him. If he let go of her, she would fall. He holds her delicately, almost gingerly, as she collapses into him in an attitude of erotic surrender. 

But then, hey hey, what is this?

It's some sort of odd old photograph, obviously meant as a model of sorts for the gorgeous erotic painting. But it is hardly erotic. She leans awkwardly towards his shoulder while he holds her stiffly (the two don't know each other, after all), and their hands are literally held up by a pole, reminding me of the braces used in Victorian post-mortem photography where the corpse was propped up in a "lifelike" pose. Most ludicrous of all is the wooden stool holding up the train of her exquisite gown, presumably so the artist can get the racy, shocking exposed foot just right. (I can't see the foot in the photo. Perhaps it was just too unthinkable to expose oneself in such a manner.)

It's kind of like seeing the undergirding of an exquisite building or sculpture, the mundane bones of the thing. I wonder here however if this photo was taken merely as a reference. Any artist worth his salt would need to work from "life", not a two-dimensional black-and-white photo. He would need to see skin pigment and folds of silk and individual petals. These models, if they did pose for him, probably had to hold the pose for hours. No wonder they used that prop. (And what if they had to go to the bathroom? It's hard for me to believe that people DID go to the bathroom in those days.) But the stool under the skirt just ruins the whole thing.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Chapters/Indigo
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CHRIST! Look what they've done to this painting!

 

 





‘Good deed’ by rogue restoration pensioner ruins 19th-century Spanish fresco

 

 

 

Masterpiece no more: the alterations to Elias Garcia Martinez's Ecce Homo were made by an elderly Spanish woman trying to do a good deed.

 

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) was a prized Spanish fresco — the pride of the Sanctuary of Mercy Church in Borja, near Zaragoza, where it has delighted parishioners for more than 100 years.

But after a botched restoration attempt by a well-meaning DIY pensioner, Elias Garcia Martinez’s 19th-century masterpiece looks more like a child’s finger-painting.

The unauthorized alterations were made by a Spanish woman in her 80s who had apparently grown upset over the worsening state of the painting.

The leftmost image is how the painting looked two years ago; the middle image is how it looked in July, when it was photographed for a catalogue of regional religious art. The image on right is how it looked on Aug. 6, when the Centro de Estudios Borjanos, a local cultural organisation, went to check on it after receiving a donation for its restoration.

A spokesman from the Centre said: “The value of the original work was not very high but it was more of a sentimental value.” It was painted by Elias Garcia Martinez who is the father of two well known local artists and the family had made a donation towards its preservation.

“The lady, who is in her 80s, acted without authorisation from anyone.

“The church is always open because many people visit and although there is a guard, no one realised what the old woman was doing until she had finished,” the spokesman said.

The woman contacted Juan Maria Ojeda, the city councillor in charge of cultural affairs, after recognizing her error. Ojeda says that art historians are now discussing if the painting can be saved.
“I think she had good intentions. Next week she will meet with a repairer and explain what kind of materials she used,” Mr Ojeda said. ”If we can’t fix it, we will probably cover the wall with a photo of the painting.”



Blogger's note. HEY! How about covering it with wallpaper? Any kind would do, even Hello Kitty or those freaky dolls from Monster High.

I now feel a whole lot better about my own non-existent artistic skills.

But I will say this: it's the most unusual iconic depiction of Jesus I've ever seen, beating even those burnt-grilled-cheese varieties that sell on eBay for a zillion dollars.

I kept looking at this face, and it dern-toonderin'-well reminded me of something, or someone, but at first I just couldn't figure out what.

 

Surely Jesus resembles, if ever so vaguely, Alice the Goon from the old Popeye series.

No?

Alice just isn't brown and smeary enough. How about a botched gingerbread man?

There's a small resemblance about the mouth, but it's not quite smooshy enough.

 

 

Chocolate chip? I think there must be a special stamp for these things. This one has a delightful Shroud of Turin aspect, but it doesn't quite match Mr. Ecce.

 

 

 

Flip and tilt him, and he looks alarmingly like Bob Dylan in his Self Portrait days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's weird how many resemblances you spot when you stare at this monstrosity long enough Such as. . .

 

 

 

 

 

"I am not an animal! I am just a bad restoration!"

 

 

 

 

Scary.

 

 

But what's this? It's Homo Erectus! His hair (fur?) doesn't quite cqpture the Inuit-fur-hood-with-chin-strap-effect, and to tell you the truth I think he's more evolved than Cookie Face with the smarmed mouth. But still. . .

Ecce Homo Erectus? I think it might fly.

From the weird to the strange

Strangeness leads to strangeness. I don't remember what inspired me to start painting, but it was at a time when I felt like I had nothing to lose: I badly needed some form of expression, a new one I hadn't tried before, and it didn't really matter whether I was any good at it or not.

At first I used plain paper gobbed up with poster paint, which soon became as wrinkled as a child's glitter-glue project, so switched to a sort of heavy stuff like construction paper. It turned depressingly brown after a few years. I fairly quickly stopped painting, realizing my brilliant works of art really weren't so hot. Mostly brush-stroke experiments, color patterns, nothing representational.

I just found scans of a few of them, and with my diabolical need to change things, I reversed the colors on a primitive program called, appropriately, Paint. Now they look eerily three-dimensional (I think) and say things (I think) they didn't say before (or did they?)

I recently tried painting again, this time with proper acrylics, brushes, etc., and got nowhere. It seems I have very little visual sense. My neurons are tangled around music, like Al Jolson's heartstrings around A-la-bammy.

So this is an experiment, a very weird one, which may be one-of-a-kind.

Chagall dreams

I

Don't have anything much to say

today

except that life

is an endless

returning

that genius exists, that it draws and taunts me

that blue can be the quiet of the universe

don't have much to say

for if a horse can fly

and angels appear in the back yard

then,

isn't anything possible?