"When people think of Roy [Lichtenstein], they think of those cartoon images from the early ‘60s."

"But he had another close to 40 years after that working on other imagery," Said the late artist's second wife Dorothy, adding that Roy "was not a fan of comics and cartoons" which "seemed about as far away from the artistic image as you can get." It's because of the disconnect from art that he found it appealing to "transform" comics "into a formal painting."

You appropriate the stuff, and you disparage it. Is that right? It's an old debate about Lichtenstein, but there's a big new show at a museum, so you might want to talk about it.

What was the later work like? One thing he did was take an officially high art work like Van Gogh's bedroom at Arles and redo it:





He liked cranking something through his art-machine. Van Gogh/comics/whatever. Why trash the comics artists? It just seems peevish. Discourteous. Now, Roy's dead and the widow is speaking for him. Something icky about all that.

"Some time ago a stranger asked me to make his portrait... So I did. I sent him the image and I never heard back from him again since that moment."

"Not long ago I saw one painting and I felt that it was very familiar to me. And then I got it — It was a copy of my photo! I did a little research on that and it seem that the guy who [copied] it is quite well known around... His name is Vincent Van Gogh or something..."

(More here.)

Van Gogh's "Starry Night" in 7,000 dominoes.

This took 11 hours of work... which makes me wonder how long it took Van Gogh to paint "Starry Night." Less than 11 hours?

"A still life once thought to be by Vincent van Gogh but later downgraded to being the work of an anonymous artist..."

"... is indeed by the tormented Dutch impressionist himself," writes AP reporter Mike Corder, presumably with some accuracy, though obviously not full accuracy, since Van Gogh was not an impressionist. He was a Post Impressionist.

Maybe we should call the Associated Press "post journalism."

By the way, it's not the greatest Van Gogh painting in the world, so you can see why it got "downgraded." But then X-ray technology somehow got to the truth. It had Van Gogh insides:

A detailed X-ray of an underlying painting of two wrestlers and knowledge of the painter's period at a Belgian art academy led a team of researchers to conclude that the painting really is by Van Gogh.

Nothing says "Van Gogh" like wrestlers! No, wait. Googling "Van Gogh wrestlers," I got to this much better written news story from The Independent, explaining the reasoning so it doesn't sound ridiculous:

The wrestlers’ existence was known only from a reference in one of the Dutch master’s letters, written aged 33, just four years before his tragic death. On 22 January 1886, he wrote: “This week I painted a large thing with two nude torsos – two wrestlers.”

There is no other painting of wrestlers. It is this painting that now confirms the still life’s authenticity. They are both on the same canvas. Van Gogh painted the still life over his wrestlers which could not be seen until now.

Maybe Van Gogh wouldn't have been so "tortured" if he hadn't felt the urge to paint stodgy flowers over top of his nude male torsos!

Professor Joris Dik of Delft University spoke of the excitement: “What makes it very tangible is this letter which refers to a painting that was thought to have been lost or had not survived.” He said that it was in Paris that Van Gogh became “obsessed” with flower painting, leaving behind his Dutch period, “where he used mostly dark colours”.

What happened in Paris? What was he really saying with flowers? Was there an underlying nude male torso message?

Steal me once, shame on you; steal me twice, shame on me.

This Van Gogh painting should be ashamed of itself.

And... they can't even produce a clear photo of the painting? Double shame.

"If you don't fuck too hard, your painting will be all the spunkier for it."

Advice from Vincent Van Gogh:

"I already told you last spring. Eat well, do your military drill well, don't fuck too hard; if you don't fuck too hard, your painting will be all the spunkier for it."

It's your choice. Do you want spunky paintings or not?

Another room in the Obama Museum.

We've been playing off a photograph of Obama looking at paintings in a museum. Henry the commenter, combined the original photo with Chip Ahoy's photoshopped Obama as Van Gogh, so the idea is Obama looking at paintings of himself.

Palladian was inspired by Andy Warhol's "Mao" paintings, which were hung on his "Mao" wallpaper at a 1974 exhibition in Paris, like this:



Here's the new concept:

Obama at the museum

Background.

Closeup:

Obamalisa and Obama Van Gogh.

"Mona Lisa. Please, someone do it! The sly smile would be so perfect," said Kentuckyliz, in that post yesterday where I'd asked for Photoshoppings of Obama in French impressionist/post-impressionists paintings.

Palladian gave us this:



Chip Ahoy was all:

Ha ha ha ha ha

I can't stand it. But Palladian, Post- Impressionist? Allow me recommend filter/pixelate/pointillize for Seurat-like dotage to conform Obamalisa, ha ha ha ha ha, that kills me all over again, with our Hostess' bleg.

Nothing like a hilarious anachronism. Let's celebrate with a reprise Chip's delightful Obama Van Gogh:



ADDED: MPH does the Modigliani variation:

"Van Gogh's ear was cut off by friend Gauguin with a sword."

Hot news.

Although the historians [Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans] provide no "smoking gun" to back up their claims, they argue theirs is the most logical interpretation, and explains why in his final recorded words to Gauguin, Van Gogh writes: "You are quiet, I will be, too".

They cite correspondence between Vincent and his brother, Theo, in which the painter hints at what happened without directly breaking the "pact of silence" made with his estranged friend.

He mentions Gauguin's request to recover his fencing mask and gloves from Arles, but not the épée....

He also pointed to one of Van Gogh's sketches of an ear, with the word "ictus" – the Latin term used in fencing to mean a hit. The authors believe that curious zigzags above the ear represent Gauguin's Zoro-like sword-stroke.

Yeah, well, Gauguin was such a jerk to Van Gogh. Just look:

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 9: "The Shirt Page."

It's Day 9 of this 35 day project. (The set thus far.) Today's page collects three drawings -- scattered about the original notebooks -- that are all about shirts.

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 7.

It's Day 7 of this 35 day project. (The set thus far.) As you may remember, I've just made my way into the Van Gogh Museum, which was the #1 thing I came to Amsterdam to see. I'm looking at the paintings and watching the people: