#ArtReimagined, a photographic project for Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
+ Wrapping up the series with a prize game: win a fine art print!
Over the years, I have collaborated on many creative projects, having the good fortune to choose what to do and what to reject. I have always considered this an enormous privilege that has allowed me to decide what to work on. It sounds like a given, but it is not, especially these days when we are often chosen based on the number of followers rather than the quality content we provide. I let the influencers do their sponsorships, which usually have strict and not-so-creative guidelines on how to advertise, and I grow my niche by accepting anything that allows me to express my artistic vision, my style, and ultimately my feelings.
This restricted but amazing niche is generally where the juiciest opportunities for creating valuable content hide. They are usually creative projects that involve creating images in which I can bring out my nostalgic poetics through anything that has a "dark academia" aesthetic and perhaps wink at the world of fine arts, especially painting. After all, that's my favorite area of focus: looking at painting masterpieces and being inspired by light, table settings, and still life.
So, when one of the most famous art museums in the world, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, asked me to work on a project to photograph stage some paintings in their collection, well, I don't think I've been so excited about an assignment in years!
Moreover, the assignment asked me to choose paintings myself from which to take inspiration—not to replicate them perfectly—hence the project's name: "Art ReImagined."
The Museum offers a wonderful online archive, where I spent several delightful hours admiring the incredible collection of artworks housed in this sacred temple in the heart of Vienna.
The choice of paintings
The online archive has nearly 40,000 objects with images and descriptions; however, (thank goodness) there are filters so that keywords can be applied in addition to selecting works by type and historical period to ease the search. This way, I could go through only the paintings, particularly the still life section (using keywords like table settings, objects, flowers, food, etc.) and the women's portraits section (using keywords like Madonna, Mary, lady, etc.).
It was difficult to choose because I had to consider only paintings that were somehow " realistic" and not too whimsical, so I had to exclude everything that would be hard to realize in practice.
This considered objects, some of which were unlikely if beautiful ancient artifacts, perishable items such as fruit or flowers (in winter it is almost impossible, or costly, to find watermelons or peonies), but also the poses of the figures, like Madonnas for example, often depicted in unnatural body twists.
I kept a folder on my PC desktop with about ten possible paintings. Still, the final choice was determined by a fortuitous set of elements, including the most important one: finding the right props and fabrics. Ultimately, I agreed with the Museum to create #3 staged photographs.
Planning the shots
I began searching for objects, like a Sunday treasure hunt, the day of flea markets. I searched far and wide and then ended up, as always, rummaging through the family painting studios, the place to find everything or almost everything.
Surprisingly, I found some fabrics that resembled those in some of the paintings I had selected. Still in the ateliers, I had a second inspiration: I could have had my mom (who, like my father, is a painter) paint a backdrop with blue-green tones, which would have been the perfect setting for one of the still lives.
Finally, I spent several hours on eBay looking for those beautiful amber-green wine glasses rarely missing from Flemish paintings but found nothing. Then, the flash of genius! The Rijks Museum in Amsterdam! I remember seeing those magnificent Rummer glasses in the museum shop several years ago.
The rest was easy to plan from here on, such as finding fresh ingredients as a last thing, given their quick perishability.
Making of “Breakfast still life”, by Abraham van Beyern, 1666.
Art-historical insights from project curator Anna Attems of @kunstfueruns: Abraham Hendrickz van Beijeren, or van Beyeren, is best known for his still-lifes of fish. His style is characterized by a warm palette dominated by browns. Another characteristic is his virtuoso play with form and light. The source of light is usually hidden. The light appears in shimmering gold, silver, glass, and porcelain surfaces.
The first thing that caught my eye about this painting is the luminous reflections on the drape covering the table. It looks like velvet in green and golden tones, and it immediately reminds me of the Fortuny fabric of the heavy curtains covering the windows of Palazzo Pesaro Orfei in Venice, Mariano Fortuny's studio, and home until the early twentieth century. The second thing that strikes me is the tones in this painting, especially in the background. Not the light, which is still beautiful, but the painterly tones, which, while cool in many green and blue hues, give back a warm image.
In transparency, I notice an almost orange-ochre background, similar to the color of the wooden table that is barely visible in the right corner.
The third thing that strikes me is the accuracy of the reflections on the glass and silverware. Even before I knew it, the typical Flemish glass leaves me guessing that the painter is almost certainly Dutch.
My gaze lingered for a long time on the splendid reflection that gives a glimpse of the amber wine inside the rummer glass. It has led me to imagine the window that illuminates the table from the side of the scene. Only later did I discover that the author, Abraham van Beyern, besides being one of the greatest Flemish still life painters, was the son of a glassmaker. This made me fantasize even more about him as a child watching his father work with glass, and that to pass the time, he watched the colorful reflections it returned when illuminated by the light.
I like to imagine that maybe that is why he became so skilled at painting reflections. I also like to think that, in my way, I, too, learned to observe light by looking at my father's and mother's paintings. (Yes, they're both artists!).
In this work, I see much of my mother's painting world, especially in the background of abstract fields, wide brush strokes, and cool "northern" tones. I asked her to paint the backdrop for this shot!! This painting brings back a familiar and intimate memory of that warm and cozy atmosphere that is home and an artist’s studio, like the place where I grew up.
I made this photograph first precisely because, perceiving it as so "familiar," I thought it was the easiest of the three. How wrong I was!
My research on this composition is mainly about perspective and the proportion between the objects with different heights. I don't think there's any way to know for sure, but I think the author painted this still life without copying it from life because there are perspective issues concerning the viewer's point of view. Maybe I'm wrong, but this has given me a lot to think about.
Making of “Mary with Child”, attributed to Bernardino Luini, around 1510
Art-historical insights from project curator Anna Attems of @kunstfueruns: An X-ray picture that was made from this painting reveals figures on both sides of the Madonna. It was only later on that the master placed the Madonna in an isolated position against a dark background! Presumably, the artist had planned this as a depiction of paying homage to Christ.
The artist’s inspiration was the work of Leonardo da Vinci - especially his nature studies on the mother-child theme. Leonardo was likewise to become a model for Luini in terms of positioning of figures and composition.
Italy may be one of the countries with one of the greatest artistic heritages in the world. Christian iconography certainly plays an important role in this country's cultural and artistic history (as well as a large slice of this rich heritage!). Still, in general, I don't exaggerate when I say that every art museum in the world holds at least one painting with the subject Mary with a child made by an Italian painter. There are all kinds, and for some reason, I don't remember any in particular.
I admit that my interest in this type of painting was never such that I could admire them thoroughly. Then, I became a mother, and something in me changed. My new point of view as a mom with a child somehow brought me closer to that loving compassion that I now detect and partly even understand by observing the gaze of some Madonnas.
That was what first hit me about this painting: that low, dreamy gaze, somewhere between serene bliss and restrained concern. Never before have I understood and empathized with this feeling that continually swings between two extreme poles, merging into one constant immense, never knowing fully how to feel about this "mystery" that is motherhood. This look makes me think of many things, as does the pose of the hands, delicate in a grip that is more like a caress.
Immediately, my attention shifts to the colors, complementary and strangely iridescent those of the fabrics, pale and delicate those of the skin tone. Madonna and the child have the same hair color, a reddish blond, just like my daughter Flora's and mine. This draws me into an endless stream of thoughts, those same thoughts that several times a day find me gawping and dreaming of her soft, velvet-smooth skin, white and perfect in its lovely chubby folds.
There is a world made up of little things between mother and child, a world ephemeral and destined to change but precious for building the memory of an unrepeatable time in our lives. Like those simple and spontaneous gestures. That little hand caressing his mom’s face unexpectedly pierced my heart.
I decided to “re-imagine” this painting in a photograph on a February afternoon when Flora and I turned into ‘Mary with Child’ together. She looked at me, perhaps surprised to see that beautiful bright green covering my garment. It just made her curious, and she raised her small hand to caress my face. A few seconds, just the time of a photo, eternally immortalized in that sweetest gesture that, perhaps, speaks right to the hearts of so many other women... or so I like to think.
Making of “Still Life with Lobster”, Dutch, 2nd half of 17th century
Usually, when making a still life makes me cry with frustration, it means that I am doing it right. However, I have also underestimated some aspects that sometimes lead me to an overwhelming urge to give up and say, "I am incapable."
In particular, this beautiful painting fooled me twice. First, the composition as a whole does not seem that complex, but it is, and second, I underestimated the moral implications of handling (and cooking) a live lobster. It rather devastated me that I was the horrible human being who ended its miserable life. On the other hand, I had considered any other option that did not involve using a live animal, such as buying a fake one, but no examples seemed realistic.
This also led me to consider artificial intelligence to overcome the problem, leading me to a huge and tedious personal conflict about the legitimacy of using or not using this tool. I don't want to open a debate on this topic that deserves a post of its own, but—briefly—and for this specific context, I considered this option a shortcut and not a solution.
The existence of art (or even part of it) produced in this way calls into question the unambiguous relationship that has always existed between subject and object, between author and work created by the latter's intellect. It also puts a substantial distance between the shared experience of the artists before us, whose creative process has always also been a kind of temporary loss of control, which is nothing more than the outcome between the artist's original intention and the surprise of what the work of art becomes at the end of the creative process.
In a few words, my approach to this project simply wanted to be as similar as possible to that of the painters who made these paintings, with their hands on the subject -objects as well as the material, and perhaps with their moral and existential crises when faced with something that can put them in trouble.
I saved the making of this still life for last, thinking it would be the easiest of the three. Instead, positioning the leaves and lobster—almost poised on the edge of the table—required several attempts and ingenious solutions.
One might ask why I chose this painting, and the answer is because of its light.
What struck me immediately was the chiaroscuro that dramatically brought out the fruit and lobster from the darkness. Dramatic is precisely the word I would use to describe the creative process behind the making of this image, which, even now that I look at it, creates a certain tension in me. Perhaps it is that same creative tension that I felt by making it, and that somehow relates to the sense of possible - of the real - of making with hands - so necessary today. That "possible" which is the result of the human capacity to access beauty through art and the creative practices of life.
Wrapping up the series with a prize game: win a fine art print!
We are wrapping up our #ArtReImagined series with a chance for you to win a fine art print!!!! To celebrate the end of the project in collaboration with @kunsthistorischesmuseumvienna & @kunstfueruns, we are giving away “Still Life with Lobster” to one lucky winner!
You can enter the competition by following @thefreakytable and @kunsthistorischesmuseumvienna on Instagram, sharing a post of the series in your Stories, or commenting with your favorite # StillLife emoji.
👉 From all the participating accounts, a winner will be selected randomly and announced on 30 April. (The competition stands in no connection to META/ Instagram.) Click here to enter the prize game!
All three #ArtReImagined photos realized so far are now available on my e-shop in a limited edition of 10 copies. Signed, numbered, and dated, the prints will be shipped with a Certificate of Authenticity. For custom sizes of the photographs, please contact me directly at thefreakytable@zairazarotti.com Each artwork is created upon order.
Thank you for following the project so far! The posts are on Instagram, where you can comment below your favorite image and see a behind-the-scenes reel of these shots!
