Turning People Into Paintings: Alexa Meade's Canvas is the Human Body!

Alexa Meade today is a recognized artist, yet not long ago she was a political science student dreaming of working for the government in Washington, sitting at a desk...Whatever you may think of her work, she is an unusual artist and nowadays that's becoming exceedingly rare.

With her, we are far away from the people who turn themselves into statues at street corners. And far away from body art performances. The way Alexa Meade treats her subjects reminds me of the way Lucien Freud handles brush strokes:





Or see this one:


For comparison, here's a typical Lucien Freud, of the more recent period:



Of course, Lucien Freud is...Lucien Freud, one of the greatest painter of the 20th century, no question about that. And he works in a conventional mean, oil painting, obtaining a 3-D effect on a 2-D medium (the canvas). Whereas Alexa Meade does the reverse: 3-D back down to 2-D when she snaps a photo of her work. Presumably, she sells her photos...

And here's the delightful TED talk she gave, watch it, you're in for a few surprises:


Her website: http://www.alexameade.com/

Is this Art with a capital A? It certainly would fall in the category of art photography, the kind where the scene to be photographed is pre-set and all the details are controlled by the photographer.

Is it a spoof on art? Maybe. But it certainly takes a special kind of talent to paint people that way. And a lot of patience on the part of the models who have to bear paint everywhere on themselves including inside their ears!

What do you think?


(Source of photograph of Lucien Freud's self portrait:  the detail is on www.medeaonline.net)

Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments

Kathryn Goldman said…
Wow! This is great. It's time for me to put up a new profile picture on my blog and website. I wonder if Alexa will paint me.

She's like a modern day Bernini who combined sculpture, painting and architecture. She combines the person, the place and the paint. Thanks for posting.
Harleena Singh said…
Hi Claude,

It's good to be over at your blog, especially after we met at Adrienne's place yesterday :)

This art does look amazing! I've seen many paintings like these but always thought them to be paintings. Never thought they were models or were painted upon...how interesting! They'd have to sit so still and get the paint all over them and then wait to be clicked.

Thanks for sharing this with us. Have a nice week ahead :)
Harleen and Kathryna, thanks for your comments, I'm so happy you enjoyed the post. Kathryna, I'm glad the post gave you new ideas and Harleen, yes, we are new friends but I hope we will keep going for a long time together!

I was struck by the novelty of Meade's art even though I personally have doubts about working this way: in sculpture, for example, you do not have the person underneath serving as a direct guide to your modeling, unless you are modeling a death mask!

So what she does with her painting is similar to what the guy who does a death mask is doing. The question is: is that art? I think it becomes artistic the minute she takes a picture of what she's done. Because the photo does two things: it keeps it for posterity, it is something you can hang on your wall. And how she takes that photo is important too, because that is where her sense of art photography comes into play.

Now,in her TED talk, she doesn't talk about how she takes those pictures or what kind of material she uses to print them, but I hope that she pays a lot of attention to this aspect of her art activities, because that is what will remain behind her when she's dead, that's her artistic legacy!