On Saturday I went to see the most amaaaaaaazing exhibit of works by Jean-Leon Gerome at the
Getty. It's running until September 12th, 2010. If you live even remotely close to Los Angeles (and, actually, even if you don't), you HAVE to go see this. Of the small handful of people that I would give my left pinky finger to be in same room with too see how the heck they did what they did, Gerome is definitely on that list. How I wish sometimes for time travel. The astonishingly accurate skin tones and the ludicrous level of perfect detail that he did on these heads the size of your thumb.... (I mean, did he use a hair off a fly to do that, or what?) It's enough to make you cry from jealousy. Or from happiness. I don't know.
Unfortuntely, it's pretty hard to find a picture online that does some justice to any of the originals I saw. For some reason, most of them look like a cheap Kinko's copy of the real thing. (No offense to Kinko's, I use you all the time.) But this one is pretty good:
Carpet Merchant in Cairo by Jean-Leon Gerome
Carpet Merchant in Cairo by Jean-Leon Gerome
hi natalie! i'm so glad you were able to spend some time at the getty.....and especially with one of your favorite artists!!! i love that about art.....we're never really done learning, there's always something else that's waiting to be taught to us! i hope you're having fun with your new pan pastels....i have a set (did i see you over at dick blick?!!) that i love too! thanks so much for stopping by my blog....it's great to meet you! :))
ReplyDeleteLove this! Easy to understand scene yet has some mystery to it.
ReplyDeleteRJ