I saw this photo the other day on Flickr. It is the result of a group of people in Beloit, Wisconsin who tried to recreate a painting of Seurat’s called Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte – or Un dimanche après-midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte if you want to get all French about it. The full story is in their local paper, and a first-hand account on this blog.
The effect is a bit like the Bow Wow Wow album cover where they recreated Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, but on a much larger scale, and I think it works. Not only that, but I’ll bet they had a great time doing it.
I don’t know why more people don’t do this sort of thing. It passes an hour or two, encourages a large group to work together and possibly make new friends, fosters a sort of community spirit and generates some interest in the original painting too.
Anyone up for recreating Picasso’s Guernica in Broadfield Playing Fields? Or some of Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge paintings in the Rat & Parrot? I won’t suggest anything by Lowry unless I can take the photos – my figure is hardly suited to ‘matchstick men’!
I do like the idea of trying to recreate Guernica – it would be like that Monty Python sketch where the Batley Townswomen’s Guild re-enact the battle of Pearl Harbour!
(Photo by OldOnliner. See his other photos and his blog)
It really is a wonderful idea. I would stick out like a sore thumb in a Lowry but I daresay I could pass muster for one of the more grotesque looking figures in one of Hogarth’s work
Ah but what a great chat-up line… “I am trying to re-create paintings through a series of tableax vivants and I thought you might like to help me do Titian’s Venus of Urbine”.
I hope that my fellow ‘bloggers 4 Labour’ will get the ball rolling at their piss-up on Thursday (which I can’t attend due to a clash with a branch meeting) by trying to do Da Vinci’s Last Supper.