entombment series rembrandt 2: the starting point

rembrandt van rijn, entombment (photoshop alteration)

the famous-artist-or-not question: i wrote about it earlier, in the context of quality and art. to illustrate some points regarding this question, i made the above photoshop alteration of the rembrandt drawing `entombment' (see previous post for the unaltered version) and posted it on a dutch art forum in the category `own work'. by posting it there (without text) i silently suggested it was my own drawing. for this the photoshop alteration was necessary, otherwise the age of the drawing would have given everything away immediately. i changed the colour of the ink to blue, and with some work managed to edit away the browning and spots from old age.

after posting, i received a lot of comments by fellow artists who were not so impressed with either composition, or clarity, or drawing ability. to be fair, there were two who said: not bad, it reminds me of old masters, rembrandt even.

after some time i decided to give up the deception. and most were very amused.

then, since i dislike real deception, i felt i owed it to the forum to try and create some really own work depicting entombment. because of recent passing away in my direct vicinity, i was very much reminded of this series. and i thought to give some of them a place on this blog.

so if i find time and energy we will see a series around death of beloved ones, final goodbye, grief, and comfort...

famous artist or not: take this test

ok. test yourself here: http://reverent.org/great_art_or_not.html . with pain in my heart i reveal that i only scored 67%. missed out on 2 famous ones and 2 infamous ones...

but the question would have been better put differently, since there are many works by famous artists which i do not consider great, which probably explains the 4 mistakes above (all the 4 paintings that i missed out on didn't impress me very much, all the paintings that i thought interesting were by great artists)

still, why not do tests like these regularly, i like to take them even though i'm often mistaken. of course, one would have to look at the real works...

[but still, i remember seeing works in the dali museum in figueres which were exquisite, hanging next to works which could have been painted by any 15yr old with a rushed assignment for art class. to me famous is no guarantee at all.]