Cézanne mashed up!
‘How do you get your ideas?’ is a question I sometimes gets asked and although it’s tempting to reply with some rubbish like ‘I meditate for a few hours on a particular painting until I find a good match!’ the truth is rather more banal.
Paul Cézanne. The Card Players (Les Joueurs de cartes), 1890–1892, Oil on canvas.
To be honest, I don’t have a freakin’ clue!
For example, I had been thinking of using Paul Cézanne’s card players and suddenly remembered something about a very different card session with dogs…
A quick Google revealed them to be Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s ‘A Friend in Need’, from 1903.
For me, a good mash-up needs to include a connection and/or contrast, and there are plenty here.
The contrast is obvious, I’d say (style art vs kitsch *), and the connections as well: card playing & paintings on the wall.
Coolidge’s piece even had a kind of impressionist piece painting, but Cézanne’s only had half a frame…
I lifted Cézanne’s half frame out of his piece, pasted it on a blanc jpeg, and sprinkled some fairy Photoshop dust on it.
Now I had a full frame in which I could squeeze Coolidge’s dogs!
It looked pretty good at full size, but after pasting it back into Cézanne’s card players, it looked rather small, especially considering that most people nowadays only look at my work on mobile phones…
Obviously that didn’t work!
Cézanne’s frame had to go, and instead I used a very basic thin brown line; this way I could make better use of the available space.
I think it came out quite acceptable (although Jolk disagrees massively!), but what do you think?!
(*) Actually, that kitschy painting has become quite iconic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_Playing_Poker
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Super. There is a high correlation between creativity and happiness. I guess, you are very happy doing these!