Painting + OPEN SOURCE

Cultural production, an ongoing collaborative, creative experiment.

Can we talk of pre-digital artworks in terms of code?

CODES: APPEARANCES

• Composition• Iconographic conventions• Formal + stylistic references • Etc.

History of Painting as Remix

Poussin: A Bacchanalian Revel… (1632-3)

Cézanne: Les Grandes Baigneuses (1900-6)

Remix: Picasso + Tribal Art

What About Metaphorical “Code”?

painting as an encoded object

Andy Warhol:

Red Race Riot (1963)

L: Confrontation 1 (Gegenüberstellung 1) (1988) R: Gudrun Ensslin from “October 18, 1977,” based on “ubiquitous photographs” of the Baader-Meinhof.

Gerhard Richter: Painting + Photography

Remix over the centuries, across disciplines and media…

conscious and unconscious borrowing

Che Guevera’s corpse

Rembrandt : The Anatomy Lesson of Dr NicholaesTulp (1632)

Freddy Alborta, Che Guevera’s Death, 1967

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi “il Sodoma”: Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (1503)

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna (c.1490)

The Lamentation, or Mourning of Christ (1305-1308) Giotto

19th Century Remix:

Edouard Manet &

The Execution of Maximilian

Manet’s SOURCES:both art-historical + documentary

- rumors + reports + news- drawings - paintings of photographs of paintings- photo-collages- earlier paintings of executions (Goya…)- his own paintings of other events (funerals, bullfights…)- etc., etc.

Edouard Manet: The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. 1868–69. Kunsthalle Mannheim

Francisco de Goya's The Third of May, 1808, (1814) which Manet undoubtedly saw in 1865 on a visit to the Museo del Prado in

Madrid

Photography was banned at the actual execution of Maximilian and his generals. There are therefore no photographic images of the event itself. This drawing was made by Maximilian's official photographer in Mexico, who claimed to have been present at the time of the execution. …the single execution squad, anonymity of the soldiers, and wall in the background coincide with Manet's representations. (catalogue)

Left: Painting by an Unknown Mexican Artist, based on a Carte de Visite (right), which is a photograph of a painting (now lost) of a photograph (now lost)…

Photo-collage/ carte de visite

More 19th Century Remixing:

This small carte de visite demonstrates a kind of photo-collage technique that was used in early photography. It was composed by cutting out the figures of the firing squad from a pre-existing photograph, dividing the squad in half, and placing the halves to either side of three larger figures onto which the victims' heads, also taken from earlier photos, were then placed. This composite was set against another, larger photograph showing the place of execution. This entire arrangement was then rephotographed to produce a single work. (catalogue)

Edouard Manet. Bullfight. 1865–66. Oil on canvas.

18 7/8 x 23 3/4" (48 x 60.4 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. A Picador is Unhorsed and Falls Under the Bull. Plate 26 from the series La Tauromaquia. 1816. Etching, burnished aquatint, and drypoint (24.6 x 35 cm). The

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Edouard Manet. The Funeral. c. 1867. Oil on canvas, 28

5/8 x 35 5/8" The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

SOURCES TODAY

• Digital technology; copy & paste

• Web 2.0

• File sharing P2P

• Sources multiplied a zillion-fold

(to be continued…)