English Interior (After Las Meninas #9)
m/m © Howard Podeswa ,
2006
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Velazquez’s Las Meninas
The painting Las Meninas by Velazquez, which currently resides at the
Prado Museum in Madrid, has been hailed by many painters and critics
as “The Best Painting in the World”. And its influence on
the history of Western art is profound. There exists a long list of artists for whom Las Meninas has become
a kind of standard and who have “riffed” on the work through
homage and variation. These artists include Picasso (who was so obsessed
with Las Meninas that he created over 40 versions of his own), Sargent,
Eakins, Rembrandt, Manet and Hockney.
Artist’s statement:
No person is a complete original. Everything we do or think is heavily
influenced by the things we have seen and heard. Yet in the creative world,
the myth of originality not only exists, but is enforced by patent and
copyright law. At the same time, artists have often quoted each others’
work – and the copies and interpretations have always been displayed
as legitimate works of art in their own right. As a visual artist, I have
often wondered, “Am I a business entity, patenting my originality
– or more like a pure scientist, who happily shares his findings
in scientific journals so that others can expand on it?”
These questions were much in my mind as I viewed Picasso’s 50-odd
obsessive series of paintings - all of which were interpretations of one
painting - Velazquez’s Las Meninas. Many painters, like Picasso,
have been driven to create interpretations of this piece. I, myself, had
been stricken with the obsession to do so ever since viewing it at the
Prado in 1998. I wanted to know what the age-old fascination with Las
Meninas had to say about the piece itself – and, in a broader sense,
about the issue of originality and influence in art.
I began by exploring my own infatuation in a series of paintings that
quote directly from the original. Next I began looking at the artists
before me who had similarly been obsessed with the masterpiece: Sargent’s
version, The Daughters of Edward Boit, and Eakins’ The Gross Clinic.
I took things a step further by re-interpreting their interpretations
of Las Meninas. In the act of painting their paintings, I hoped to glean
what it was about the original that had captivated them – and
ultimately to understand the nature of the desire of artists to copy
and interpret each others’ work.
- Howard Podeswa, May, 2006
Howard Podeswa is a Toronto artist. Recent exhibitions include
“OOPS – Object Oriented Painting Show” (Fran Hill
Gallery, 2004), “Chatter” (Fran Hill Gallery, 2003), “PoHo
(Red Head, 2001), Spit of Love (AVA, CapeTown, 2001) and the group show
“Commute (Chicago, 2001). Podeswa is the recipient of awards from
the Canada, Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils. He is the subject of
the TV pilot “Inside the Artist” (2002) and has been profiled
in dart International (dartad). |
