Vija Celmins. Rhinoceros. 1965.[Vija] Celmins is a painter of nature who operates at a considerable distance from her subjects. She works from clippings of reproduced, usually black-and-white photographs, some of them decrepit or blurry, and builds her labor-intensive paintings with many glazed and sanded layers of alkyd or oil on wood-backed linen. ... She has convincingly demonstrated that photography, far from being the "death of painting," can give the medium a foundation on which to reëstablish its exclusive powers.
Albrect Durer. Rhinoceros. 1515
Durer's Rhinoceros attempts to illustrate an animal -- which he had never seen -- from a description of it's armour and a sketch by an unknown artist. From a considerable distance to his subject, Durer works, in this case, from an imperfect representation of a very real thing - a clipping. His image was accepted as a true representation of a Rhincoerous well into the 18th century.
Durer's Rhinoceros attempts to illustrate an animal -- which he had never seen -- from a description of it's armour and a sketch by an unknown artist. From a considerable distance to his subject, Durer works, in this case, from an imperfect representation of a very real thing - a clipping. His image was accepted as a true representation of a Rhincoerous well into the 18th century.
