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Dear Puffin,
I have received a communiqué from one of our reporters in the field. Bigwig, of The Album Project and Animal News; The Podcast has been working in South Korea for last year or so, and has finally managed to smuggle out a dispatch hidden, as is traditional, in the navel of a lady who is beyond reproach and unlikely to be groped by the TSA. I decoded it for you Puffin, and here it is:
Dear MacGuffin and Puffin,
As a huge fan of your blog, I’ve been keeping my eye out for contributions to it. I love your Asshole stamped posts, and I really enjoy the internet tourism, but by far, my favorite is the various Art related posts that you guys do. So, when I stumbled across Tommervik’s Picasso inspired cubist Star Wars paintings, I knew that I had to send it in.
Look, I love Star Wars. I love the Original Trilogy. I appreciate the intent of the prequels. The iconic visuals of the series are actually embedded in my brain. I remember when I made my first home movies, I purposefully aped the whole thing. So, whenever I see the mask of Vader, or the lightsaber, or R2, I feel my body get involved.
This is why this was such a cool find. Picasso and Star Wars together?
Really, all of them are pretty damn beautiful, but my personal favorite is the Yoda one. I would love to get a print of that for my wall.
Anyway, hope you guys liked these as much as I did, and I hope you guys like this letter. It’s not as good as yours, but it’s words!
Bigwig
PS. If it is cool for me to plug my stuff, I’d love it if your readers would check out my podcast, The Animal News or my music blog, The Album Project. Thanks!
Well Puffin, what do you think? I think Bigwig has stumbled on something quite wonderful. I checked out Tommervik’s site, and there are more Picasso Star Wars pictures as well as some really neat sports paintings. He has a lovely expressive way with curves, which works well with the already exaggerated body shape of football players in their padding. The Star Wars ones would be golden purely for their nerd-cred, and I’m no art critic, but I think these are pretty damn fine art. Certainly a worthy addition to my over-crowded bathroom nerd shrine. Why the hell do I keep my nerd art in the bathroom anyway Puffin? I must move them all at some point.
Love
MacGuffin
Dear Puffin,
As you know, I’m kind of an art nerd. Hence my obsession with poster designs and stuff. I’m also deeply enamored with mashups. I love the idea of combining two totally unrelated but somehow complimentary things. So this was right up my street: Modern Renaissance, renaissance portraits of modern celebrities (although plenty of these stray far fat away from the renaissance). Some of them don’t really work- either they’re too photohopped, or the expression isn’t right, or whathaveyou. But there is an awful lot of awesome hanging around in there, and I’ve picked a few of my favorites. I chose some because they were just plain cool, some because the execution was especially good, and some just because I liked them. But go poke around in the galleries, there are tons and tons more to see. So the challenge: merge the faces of modern celebrities with the kind of art you’d see in a museum.
Challenge accepted! (Click on each image to see the original)
General Neil Patrick Harris, by Katdamage; based on Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington. Neil Patrick Harris, if you ever read this, I hereby demand that you have a copy of this made, put in a gilt frame, and displayed proudly in your home. Normally that would be an Alex Rodriguez level of douchery, but in this case sir, rock on.
King Connery I, by MarcusAurelius; based on the portrait of King Edward VII by Sir Samuel Luke. It is a goddamn shame that this is not, in fact, reality. King James Bond? Oh I think so. See also King Connery VIII.
Mr Bean, aka Rear Admiral Sir Bean, by potikare; based on the portrait of Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, by Lemuel Francis Abbott. See also Sir Horatio Wilson. Yes it’s Owen Wilson, yes it’s awesome.
Harrison Ford, by oilcorner; based on the Portrait of John William Mackay by Alexandre Cabanel.
Jack Nicholson is a mother fucking badass, by Toothfairy; based on ”Self-portrait of the artist in the guise of a mockingbird“ by Joseph Ducreux. And yes, this also came up as the fisticuffs meme. Remember this one?
Save Us Gary Oldman!, by Silkenfairy; based on Portrait of a Knight of Malta, by Caravaggio. See also, this.
This makes me uncomfortable on a lot of levels. Ozzy, by Carol Coelho.
Hugh Laurie, by Mandrak (yes, again. He did a lot of these). Based on a self portrait by Jaques-Louis David. This is just really really good.
Johnny Depp by Ziaphra; based on Willem Coymans by Franz Hals. I feel like this could very well be an accurate depiction of Johnny Depp’s life.
Robin Williams, by mandrak; based on Albecht Dürer’s portrait of Jakob Muffel.
On the left: Kevin Bacon, by mandrak; based on Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington. On the right: George Clooney, by Silentjonny;
The Death of Mr Bean, by Stadsman; based on The Death of Marat by Jaques Louis David. In some ways I think this is the best of the bunch.
I will leave you with this…. picture.
Justin Bieber, by Scott Cecil, who has a really sick sense of humor. I need some eye bleach immediately! Based on Bia de Medici, by Angelo Bronzio.
I put a couple more interesting pics behind the cut. I hope you like these Puffin. You’d better, since this post took forever to write.
Love
MacGuffin
Other posts tagged as art
Christopher Jonasson’s Photography: A Guessing Game
Art Nouveau Slave Leia, sinful Disney princesses, and more
It’s Star Wars! It’s steam-punk-esque! It’s our first ever caption contest with actual prizes!
I say, Puffin:
Have you seen these fantastic Victorian portraits of Star Wars characters by Greg Peltz? I adore them, but they seem to be begging for captions, so I shall solicit input from the wider world. I’ve already put some ideas up, but we know enough fabulous people that I’m sure someone will improve on my lackadaisical labels. What can I say, it’s pouring rain and my feathers are ruffled. The person with the best single caption gets a six pack of Granny Squibb’s Iced Tea. Leave your captions in the comments, along with a way to reach you (twitter name, email, your blog, whatever). You will be judged by mysterious people (possibly us, possibly not us), according to inscrutable standards. Sounds like fun, right? RIGHT!
It’s against my programming to impersonate a deity.
No disintegrations? Yeah. Sure.
Compared to my be-monocled spiffitude, you are nothing but a scruffy looking nerf-herder
Bring me a scantily clad human female in a metal bikini. At once!
You may dispense with the pleasantries, Commander. I’m here to put you back on schedule….. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.
Submit comments until Sunday night (5/22), at which time I (or someone else) will pick the winners, or, if we can’t chose, we will open it up for a vote.
Puffin, I must, sadly, prohibit you from playing among the kids. It just wouldn’t be fair to them. While I know your captions will be the best, and I know we shall chuckle over them on AIM later tonight, you are not in the running for a six pack of crack iced tea.
Love
MacGuffin (who will bring you your very own six pack when she sees you on Monday)
Dear Puffin
I’ve had a love affair with the work of Charles Van Sandwyk for a long, long time. Ever since I found one of his postcards at Courtyards in Tiverton. It was an eerily perfect illustration of Toad, from the Wind in the Willows, and I was in love pretty much immediately. The shop had a pile of his books, most of which come out in limited editions. Like, seriously limited. Like a couple of hundred ever. And Van Sandwyk was sort of obviously going to be a hit with me, given my well-known obsession with books as works of art, and my less well-known obsessions with art nouveau, letterpress, illustration art (Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland are my favorite thing ever) and fairies (not Disney fairies, I might add, the sinister Arthur Rackam type. Think the Wee Free men). So when I ran across Van Sandwyk it was like cold fusion of all my interests. These are some of my favorite books:
You can also get the two frogs as a card and I may or may not have a copy framed. I meant to give it to my parents as an anniversary card, but I couldn’t bear to part with it. But Van Sandwyk’s crowing glory, according to both him and me, is his fantastic edition of the Wind in the Willows, which is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
Van Sandwyk describes pitching his idea for the Folio Society’s edition of The Wind in the Willows: “I sat down in his (the editor’s) office and he said, ‘Right, we’d like another fairly modest version, because we’d like children to be able to buy it, maybe eight or 10 paintings.’ I thought to myself, Oh dear, I want to do so many things here. I said, ‘Please listen.’ He looked at the door, and then at me, and said, ‘Right, what do you want?’ And in a great rush I said, ‘I want two-colour gold blocking on the cover. I want lots of green cloth that looks like willow leaves. Inside, the flyleaf paper should smell and taste completely different than what’s in the middle, and there should be the smell of very expensive glue. And there should be at least 100 paintings or drawings—one for every year I’ve missed doing The Willows, which is almost 100 years. And I think we should have a little engraved tipped-on label for the cover.’ He agreed to take it to the board, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so relieved when I left their office.” From an interview here.
Those are the endpapers. It’s an architectural plan of Toad Hall. I mean come on, could you get more perfecter? And look at this. This is what those Penguin classics editions wish they looked like. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Penguins, in fact I kind of love them. But this…. this is the real deal.
The Centenary Edition goes for $1800 Canadian. And you know why? This is why. “In my mind’s eye, I saw each illustration already finished in the medium it was going to be in, and I think that also comes from having thought this book through for 30 years. Etchings are certainly more work, but they’re a lot more fun. I think my favourite images are the ones I decided to do as etchings, because etching is one of my favourite mediums” (Via.)
Is that or is that not lovely? Anyway, this is all an elaborate ruse to write something with tons of Van Sandwyk illustrations all over it.
Love
MacGuffin
PS: look at Toad Hall!
