Week #1 ('21) Art Appreciation
Welcome to my weekly Art Appreciation post, where I provide a list of some amazing album covers, single art, and random art that have come out within the past week. I’ll give you the artist/photographer/painter/magician’s name, as well as any social media or websites where you can go and check out more of their work. Click here to go back and see some other Art Appreciation posts.
——————————
For our first Art Appreciation post of 2021, we’re taking things right back into my wheelhouse with paintings that are old as shit, a more recent trend to take old paintings and editing them to serve some other aesthetic. My love of art starts with grand oil paintings, wanting to know more about the motivations and circumstances around the artistic movements and their participants (reminds me a lot of what I do around here in regards to music doesn’t it?), so seeing these guys bringing back these classic pieces gives me those warm fuzzy feelings inside.
Remember, use this post to follow and subscribe to these artists; they deserve as much recognition as the musicians they collaborate with.
Artist(s): RDRB
Le Dernier Royaume, by Observe Since ‘98
So, a little history lesson: portraits of Napoleon are some of the most treasured paintings in the world to this day, up there with the Henry VIII, brought to life and prominence by the legendary Jacques-Louis David. What makes these paintings (like The Emperor Napoleon in his Study at Tuileries and Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass) so world-renowned is the reversion to a stylistic simplicity relative to that of previous movements; Rococo was on the way out, Neoclassicism was on the way in, and David rode in on that horse to change the direction of high-art for a century to come. HOWEVER, while David was Napoleon’s premier portraitist, Francois Gerard, a student of David’s, was a bridge between the two movements, with a clear preference for the older color palettes. So THAT’S what we have here for you today, with RDRB taking Gerard’s Portrait of Emperor Napoleon 1 (complete with the opulent robes and austere contrasting reds and whites that defined the Rococo style) and throwing some of that new-school scuzz on top for added effect. The one obvious difference between the original: the mask. Observe Since ’98 has always been about mystery and intrigue, so a Phantom-style mask fits the aesthetic to a T. Some less obvious differences: the scribbles and wispy pencil marks overlaying the painting, almost feeling like a scene out of the Matrix or a Assassin’s Creed desynchronization sequence. But the key difference, and something that is actually fascinating from a design perspective, is the orb sitting on the luscious pillow (complete with the hand-tipped sceptre), which has been completely reworked to include ANOTHER painting in the reflection. It’s a painting by Philip James de Loutherbourg called Battle at Sea between Soldiers, photoshopped onto the orb (which was once dull and lifeless), a sort of foreshadowing of the fire we’re about to find on this album. I see it as Observe standing as Napoleon, with his album sitting on the pillow ready to be displayed to the world. A beautiful use of the original work, as well as a clever rework of the source material utilizing another totally unrelated piece to get the message across.
RDRB's Instagram
——————————————————
