Educational Media Reviews Online

Through computer animation, Famous Paintings takes the two dimensional aspect of traditional painting and pushes it into the third dimension. Sixteen paintings are given a storyline - the animator’s subtexts to the paintings - so that we actually see characters and objects move and come alive on what was originally a stationary plane.

A novel approach, Famous Paintings expands upon the concept of time and space in art and combines the aesthetics of painting, cinema, and storytelling. The paintings are given a narrative structure and taken on a very different life than the one the viewer may have known.

The paintings explored include: Breugel’s Tower of Babel, Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles, Dali’s La Persistance de la Memorie, Monet’s Nympheus, Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, Vermeer’s Girl With Pearl, Van Der Goes’s The Fall, Arcimboldo’s The Summer, Cezanne’s Still Life With Apples and Mug, Magritte’s La Grande Guerre, Ceci N’est Pas Une Pomme, La Duree Poignardee, Ensor’s Squellettes Se Disputant Un Pendu, Goya’s Maja Desnuda, Bosch’s Prodigal Son, and Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride.

Through the art of animation we see a room being physically constructed as chair and easel move into place on the canvas of Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles. A tree grows and blossoms into a geometric design and grid pattern in Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. Appropriate jazz music is an integral part of this segment. In Magritte’s Ceci N’est Pas Une Pomme, Adam and Eve appear and the apple finds its way onto a man’s face. In Ensor’s Squellettes Se Disputant Un Pendu, we watch a nightmarish fantasy of skeletons fighting. Dali’s famous La Persistance de la Memorie has a loud ticking clock and trees growing in a landscape. Brueghel’s Tower of Babel is literally constructed before our eyes.

Famous Paintings is an imaginative work that can help students break out of the mold of seeing painting as two dimensional art. It provides a refreshing way of looking at well-known masterpieces and can inspire students to conceptualize visual art as narrative form. Recommended it for studio art, art history, and animation courses.