WSC Art The Past has a Version Control Problem
\ The biblical story of Judith
The Book of Judith is a biblical book written in 100 B.C but takes place in 600 B.C that is a deuterocanonical book, meaning that it is an Old Testament book that is considered canonical by Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, yet considered by Protestants to be apocryphal. It is included in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, the Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament, and the Apocrypha, which is a collection of text believed by the Protestants to be apocryphal, yet excluded from the Hebrew Bible. You may find the story in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as it contains apocryphal texts, such as this one.
This story takes place when the Assyrians, in the lead of the Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar, invaded Israel, after the destruction of the first temple. Although most Israelis were in exile, some Israelis were still in Israel, one of them being Judith, a beautiful Israeli widow. The Assyrian king sent his general Holofernes to destroy Bethulia, the city Judith comes from. Because nobody did anything to defend their town from Holofernes, Judith decided she would save the city. How? She told the Holofernes and the rest of the Assyrians she can give them intel as an Israelite and serve as a spy, and when she got enough reputation to gain access to Holofernes’ tent, one night she wore the most beautiful clothes she had and seduced Holofernes with wine and cheese. Then when he couldn’t even move from being so drunk, she and her maid cut off his head and brought it to Bethulia to show the townsfolk that they still have hope. This story is very similar to a story in the Book of Judges, that is in the Hebrew Bible, in which Jael killed Sisera, a bad guy general by seducing him, or in the book of Samuel, in which the weak David kills the strong Goliath, and also similar to the New Testament in which Salome gets the head of John the Baptist on a silver plate.
People criticize the story of Judith for being too dramatic and romantic to be accurate, and also agree that the story celebrates the trope of “female rage”.
There is a custom during the Jewish holiday Hanukkah to consume food and drinks full of milk, just like how Holofernes and Judith drank milk before she decapitated his head.
The story provides the ideal template for the exploration of the power of female virtue, beauty, and power, therefore a lot of artists decided to depict Judith in their artworks, and these mainly fall into two categories: the femme forte, which depicts Judith as a strong and virtuous woman, and the femme fatale, which depicts Judith as a sexually dangerous woman. Judith was especially popular during the Middle Ages, in which she was mostly shown as a strong woman in manuscripts. The story became popular in art only during the Renaissance when a lot of artists from the Italian city of Florence saw Judith as a symbol of weakness defeating strongness, which is similar to Florence itself, which was a small city-state fighting bigger city-states and winning. These artists, starting with Carravagio, drew a lot of portraits of her, the underdog, killing Holofernes, the mighty general, while some of them have shown the act itself of beheading, and others only showed the aftermath.
\ \ Judith Beheading Holofernes - Caravaggio
Caravaggio was a skilled Italian painter from Rome during the Renaissance who also had a massive artistic impact on the Baroque art that was established after the Renaissance.
At the time the biblical story of Judith was already known to symbolize weak over strong, as it was mainly popular in Florence. Unlike other painters, Caravaggio was the first person to depict the biblical story as a melodrama, and instead of showing the aftermath of the weak Judith holding the already beheaded head of Holofernes, he painted a violent painting of the act itself of Judith beheading Holofernes.
As for it being a melodrama, each character has one dramatic body language expression, and it’s not that realistic in the way of how the blood spills or how the characters would behave in this situation.
Judith is seen beheading Holofernes with a sword, as she is awkward and disgusted by the blood spilled, while still being determined. Holofernes is seen in bed powerful, but drunk, nude, and shocked as we see in his facial expression, during the last moment of his consciousness. The old woman servant can be seen on the far right holding the bag in which the head of Holofernes will fit and looks bloodthirsty and satisfied with the beheading.
The painting is criticized by religious people for not being pure, as blood is shown in the painting near an important biblical figure, while others criticize it for being inaccurate to how each person would behave in this situation, as it is a melodrama.
The painting’s medium is oil and chiaroscuro on canvas. \n The painting is now exhibited in Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
Because Carravagio didn’t master rendering three-dimensional spaces in his paintings, the angle of the viewpoint is more on the right rather than the center, and also there is a lot of black void around the characters that make the painting seem two-dimensional.
Caravaggio modeled Judith after Fillide Melandroni, Caravaggio’s prostitute and friend.
Caravaggio took inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci with the dramatic impressions of the characters in a painting.
When Caravaggio went to hide in Florence after he accidentally killed somebody, he painted another version of Judith Beheading Holofernes, called “Florence Judith” which is depicted with more realism, and it can still be seen today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
\ \ Judith Slaying Holofernes - Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi is the daughter of the Roman painter Orazio Gentileschi, and during her childhood she received training from her father and other famous painters, and quickly developed her own realistic style with more muted colors and softer lighting. When she turned 18 she was raped by her father’s colleague, Agostino Tassi, and during the trail to prove his guilty she was traumatized as she had to undergo physical examination. Also the public was against her as she was a woman and she accused a man of crime, a thing that was not popular at the time. Nevertheless, she continued to paint and produce powerful works that mainly depicted strong and heroic women. \n After spending a few years in Florence and there taking inspiration from Caravaggio’s work “Florence Judith” (presumably), Artemisia decided to paint her own version of the painting with her style, getting to really show the “female rage”, and depict Judith as a strong and heroic woman. \n The painting depicts, too, the act of beheading Holofernes. Judith, with the yellow dress, beheads holofernes while she doesn’t look awkward or afraid, but strong. The maid in the blue dress helps Judith to pin Holofernes to the bed, as he is very strong, and holofernes in the bottom of the painting, unlike Judith and the servant, dies not dramatically, but how normal people die when they are drunk and beheaded. \n The realism in Artemisia’s style is depicted by the blood, as unlike in Judith Beheading Holofernes, in this painting a lot of blood is spilled everywhere, and by the facial expressions, as every character is struggling instead of being dramatic. The painting also has more muted colors and softer colors than Caravaggio’s version. \n When the painting came to be exhibited in Florence, it was denied the honor to be exhibited in the great Uffizi Gallery, as it showed how strong women and women artists are, although at the end after some help from Galileo Galilei, Artemisia’s friend. \n The painting is mainly known for its feminine, strong and heroic depiction of women. \n At the end of the day Artemisia succeeded as a female painter during an era of male painters, and got to travel to a lot of places and became the first woman to enter the Academy of Art and Design in Florence. \n The medium of the painting is oil on canvas. \n The painting is now still exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery. \n This artwork could be a form of therapy, or perhaps a revenge fantasy from the traumatizing rape she had.
\ \ Judith and the Head of Holofernes - Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter and was one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession artistic movement.
In his painting, he deliberately ignored any narrative reference, and unlike Caravaggio and Artemisia, pictured Judith in the aftermath, after the act of beheading, while she is mostly exposed. In addition, The head of Holofernes can be seen in the bottom right, and Klimt decided to most of his head from the painting, just to center on Judith, and only showed the part of the head where she cradles it, just to show Judith’s post-coital bliss, her sexual afterglow.
The style Klimt used in this painting is his “Golden Phase” or his “Byzantine Style”, due to the heavy use of gold leaf and the influence of Byzantine art, which is associated with Art Nouveau.
This painting is the most femme fatale painting out of the selection, as Klimt wants to show Judith as a sexual predator, as a nude, much more than as a strong and heroic woman.
It is mainly criticized for being femme fatale and is also criticized for the use of gold leaf and other decorative patterns in the painting, as they were claimed to be extremely decorative, and so it detracted from the seriousness of the subject matter.
The medium of the painting is oil and gold on canvas.
The painting is nowadays exhibited in Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna.
The face of Judith in the painting was modeled after Gustav Klimt’s friend, the Viennese socialite, Adele Bloch-Bauer.
The painting is also called Judith I, and Klimt later made another painting of Judith in a more abstract style.
\ \ Judith and Holofernes - Pedro Americo
Pedro Americo was a famous Brazilian novelist, scientist, essayist, poet, and artist during the end of the 19th century, and is known for his attention to detail and realistic depiction of the figures and the settings.
When Americo went to Italy he was inspired by Renaissance art to make a painting of Judith after the act with the realism of the setting, as Judith can be seen with an Israeli black and gold dress and head cover, white robes, and sandals, and on top of that she is located in the tent of Holofernes, raising her arms in triumph, while the head of Holofernes is laid on the ground and so his Assyrian sword.
The painting was later brought to Brazil, as the subject of Judith and Holofernes was popular in Brazil, where it was seen as a symbol of national resistance to foreign domination.
The painting is adored as one of the best Brazilian art pieces of the 19th century, and the only tiny criticism it has is that it’s too academic, and doesn’t have emotion and facial expressions in it, unlike how the rest of the artists depicted Judith in their own different face-expressional way.
The medium of the painting is oil on canvas.
It is today exhibited in Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro.
Americo spent a decade working on this painting.
\ \ Judith and Holofernes - Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley is an American painter located in New York and is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of black people, whether they are famous people such as Barack Obama, or people he meets across the street.
In this painting Judith, the African-American woman, wearing a Givenchy gown, and holding in one hand a bloody knife, while in the other she holds a decapitated head of Holofernes, a white woman.
Wiley wants this painting to symbolize the need to vanquish white supremacy.
In a few interviews, Wiley explains that his feature of a black woman as Judith is a way to give visibility to black women, who are often excluded from historical narratives.
The painting is Kehinde Wiley’s modern take on the painting “The Beheading of Holofernes by Judith” by Giovanni Bagilone.
The medium of this painting is oil on linen.
The painting is now located in the Caroline Weiss Law Building, Texas.
The black woman in the painting is modeled after a woman Wiley met in a shopping mall in Brooklyn.
Judith and Holofernes was a part of Wiley’s solo exhibition “An Economy of Grace”.
The background of flowers is inspired by the designs of the British artist William Morris.
\ \ Judith on the Red Square - Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid
Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid are two artists born in Soviet Russia during the 1940s, but they quickly formed a capitalist ideology. After they were exiled from the USSR, they founded the genre sots art, which is a combination of dadaism and socialist realism, in which the artists mock leaders of the USSR, such as Stalin.
People tend to say sots art is a Western trick to make the Soviets much less powerful than what it is now. The painting shows Judith, a little girl, holding Stalin’s big head on a dark red background, which is similar to the Soviet flag. This means she killed Stalin, and so the point they want to address is that if the Soviets will protest against Stalin, they can kill him just like Judith killed Holofernes because she wanted to defend her town.
It is a part of the “Nostalgic Socialist Realism” series.
The medium of the painting is print.
\ \ The Bombing of Guernica
In 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, the town of Guernica, located in the Basque region of northern Spain, was the center of Basque culture and a stronghold of support for the elected Republican government. The nationalist forces, led by Fransisco Franco, sought to crush the Basque resistance and take control of the region. They did that by requesting Nazi Germany, led by Hitler, and Fascist Italy, led by Mussolini to drop 50 tons of bombs on their warplanes on the civilian population of Guernica, and it caused outrage around the world, and so it was covered in millions of newspapers, one of them being the French newspaper L’Humanite.
\ \ Guernica - Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, being one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and is most known for inventing the collage, the assemblage, and most importantly, the artistic genre of Cubism, which is a genre in which artists analyze a painting, break it into pieces and reassemble them in an abstract form.
When the Spanish Civil War started, Picasso moved to Paris but was still caring about the future of his home country. In 1937 the Republican Spanish government that was in power at the time commissioned Picasso to create a large painting for the Spanish Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Paris. To gain support from other countries in the World Fair and end the Spanish Civil War, Picasso decided to paint a depiction of the citizens of Guernica’s horrors from the bombings on them. He heard of the event from the French newspaper L’Humanite.
The artwork’s colors are only colors from gray patterns. In it you may see how a house of Guernican people and farm animals are panicking from the air raid. Out of the animals there is a bull, a wounded horse, and a winged bird, that all panic inside the house with the group of normal Spanish citizens. An example of the horrors shown in the painting is one weeping woman holding a dead child.
The painting is nowadays known to inspire people with its message of peace and humanity, and its condemnation of war and violence.
The medium of the painting is oil on canvas.
The painting is nowadays located in Museu Reina Sofia, Madrid. \n While Picasso painted the painting, the artist Dora Maar and poet Paul Eluard co-developed and discussed ideals regarding the painting.
\ \ Invasion of Ukraine - Andres Valencia
Andres Valencia is a talented 11-year-old from San Diego who is nowadays known for his abstract painting and use of the Cubism genre which is extremely similar to Pablo Picasso’s.
Valencia decided last year to create a modern-day version of Picasso’s “Guernica”, by taking inspiration from the use of cubism to depict horror from the traumatizing event of bombing Guernica, and put it in the context of the recent invasion of Russia to Ukraine.
Similarly to “Guernica”, which showed how the Spanish people are panicking from the German and Italian bombings, “Invasion of Ukraine” shows us how the Ukrainians are panicked and hurt by the Russian attacks, yet they give the fight against the Russians for their country. Unlike the iconic shades of gray Picasso used in his “Guernica”, Valencia used a lot of different colors in his painting.
Invasion of Ukraine has 550 prints that are sold for 950$ each to help the Ukrainians with their fight, and the painter wants to address that the Ukrainians can fight for themselves.
The medium of the painting is oil on canvas.
The painting is located today in Chase Contemporary.
\ \ Backyard Guernica- Adad Hannah
Adad Hannah is an artist located now in Canada but grew up in Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom who decided to start a project of re-staging and re-contextualizing Picasso’s “Guernica” after the 2016 United States presidential elections.
The artwork is Picasso’s “Guernica” but the background is cut off and only the important and iconic parts stay in a form of cardboard cuts that are being reformed together to show the same painting, however now spread to pieces in a backyard in the United States and held by people who helped Adad to create the artwork. Adad Hannah claims it recontextualizes the original artwork as the materials of the cutouts - cardboard, foam, wood, and house paint are the same materials of protest signs, as Picasso made this painting a protest against the war.
A picture of Backyard Guernica is exhibited in Remai Modern, Saskatoon, as part of the Guernica Remastered exhibition.
\ \ Saskatoon Guernica - Adad Hannah
Another artwork was made by Adad Hannah.
It is similar to Picasso’s “Guernica”, although this version incorporates everyday objects that represent the painting with shape and meaning, therefore still maintaining the iconic look of the image, and letting people clearly see how the work was put together.
It is exclusively exhibited in Remai Modern, Saskatoon, hence the name.
With the artwork, Hannah also recalls Picasso’s collaborative process on the mural, in which artist Dora Maar and poet Paul Eluard co-developed and discussed ideas while Picasso painted, as Hannah too, collaborated with a lot of people to make this artwork in just a few days.
In a video of Adad and his collaborators making Saskatoon Guernica, he displays Picasso's “Guernica” and tries to replicate the painting with everyday objects.
\ \ Guernica Redacted - Robert Longo
Robert Longo is an American artist who is known for his black and gray drawings.
Lately, he became aware of the countless versions of Picasso’s “Guernica” and was challenged to create a recontextualized version of Guernica on his own.
“Redacted Guernica” is similar to Picasso’s “Guernica” but has heavy black vertical charcoal stripes Longo has drawn that fracture the artwork. Longo explains the recontextualization of this new artwork, as the vertical charcoal strips mimic film strips, the bar of a prison, and the redaction of areas. The name comes from the desire of Longo to let people choose what to see and what to not in the artwork - redaction.
It was exclusively created for the museum Cahiers d’Art as part of the exhibition “Picasso: Redacted”, which is a series of “redacted” versions of famous Picasso paintings.
It was also commissioned for the Remai Modern for the Guernica Remastered exhibition.
\ \ Guernica Remastered
An exhibition in Remai Modern, Canada, that exhibits works that emulate Picasso’s “Guernica” in style, while speaking to present-day concerns. The works were collected by Dr. Alma Mikulinsky, a guest curator in the museum. In the exhibition Adad Hannah’s “Backyard Guernica”, “Saskatoon Guernica”, and Robert Longo’s “Guernica Redacted” can be seen there with other artworks that recontextualize Picasso’s paintings, but still keeping their iconic look.
\ \ Guernica in Tile - Jorge Oteiza, Lucio Muñoz, Néstor Basterretxea & Eduardo Chillida.
A replica of Picasso’s “Guernica” made of earthenware and exhibited in the streets of the town of Guernica There is nothing else to add. As the original work of Picasso is exhibited in Madrid, the inscription beneath this impressive mural expresses the desire of local people for the original work to be put on display in the town which inspired its creation: Gernika.
It was made as a collaborative project by Jorge Oteiza, Lucio Muñoz, Néstor Basterretxea, and Eduardo Chillida.
\ \ Keiskamma Guernica - Keiskamma Trust
A collaborative tapestry based on Picasso’s Guernica, which depicts the destruction of a South African community through HIV/AIDS. Sponsored by the Keiskamma Trust. There you can see the suffering of the people, now black, but still with some iconic aspects from the original work, such as the animals and the lamp. Here we can find many more South Africans suffering from HIV/ AIDS. Is part of an art project called “Keiskamma” which has artworks that tell the history of black people in east Cape Town.
The medium of the artwork is textile.
The painting is archived in the Red Location Museum, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
\ \ Washington Crossing the Delaware
In 1776, after the British forces in America defeated George Washington’s troopers in a few skirmishes, Washington decided to surprise attack the British and the German mercenaries working for the British by crossing the Delaware River with 5000 troopers on the night of Christmas right to their camp at Trenton, New Jersey, getting an advantage on them.
\ \ Washington Crossing the Delaware - Emanuel Leutze
Emanuel Leutze was a liberal German painter, who encouraged the European revolutions of 1848, which were a series of revolts against European monarchies that at the end failed, but still raised awareness, money and morale for fighting the European monarchs and establishing democratic countries. For supporting the liberals’ efforts, Leutze decided to look back to George Washington Crossing the Delaware River for inspiration. He painted a powerful and heroic painting of the continental army in one of its lowest points, after suffering from a lot of defeats, awaiting for the battle, in the lead of the General - George Washington. \n As the European revolutions were muted, with time the real meaning of the painting got subdued too. \n The original copy of Washington Crossing the Delaware was badly damaged due to fire in Leutze’s studio, and eventually destroyed by British bombing long after, during World War II. \n However Luetze recreated the painting and sent the new copy to America and there it became extremely iconic, as it was completed just a few years after the end of the American Civil War, a time when there was a strong sense of nationalism and patriotism in the United States, and so the painting found its new home in the American heart. \n It is worthy to note Leutze was a presentist at the time, as he added African-American people to his painting for supporting the Northerners' ideals in the American Civil War, although no African-American folk were \n free enough to fight next to Washington at the time. \n The existing version is today located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Because the event of Washington Crossing the Delaware River was much \n All of the historical inaccuracies were found in 2002 by an NPR reporter, Ina Jaffe. She first notes that Washington would have fallen to the icy water if he really stood in that pose. It is also more likely that not only Washington, but everyone else should stand, as the boat would’ve been flat and soaked with frigid water. Also in the painting he looks old, although at the time he was only in his 40’s. Nonetheless there is sunlight in the background, although the crossing was done at midnight. James Monroe, America’s future 5th president, stood to Washington’s right with the US flag, although at the time they didn’t use that design of the flag. On top of that the river is depicted to look wide, although in reality it was only a few hundred meters wide. Because the painting also wanted to support anti-slavery (civil war was at the time this painting was made), there was a black person on the boat, although we both know both Washington and Monroe had a lot of slaves, so representing it is inaccurate too.
\ \ Mort Kunstler’s Washington Crossing
In 2011 Mort Kunstler, an American painter who is known for his historical accuracy in paintings was commissioned to paint a more historically accurate version of Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware painting by Democratic Congressman Tom Suzzoi. For his research he asked local historians about the events, and so he asked them for every single detail he added if it could’ve actually happened, like the ships holding a few torches, as the painter needed light. Unlike Leutze’s inaccurate version, there are no little and unsafe rowboats, but big, flat and based motorboats Washington and his troops actually rode at. Washington in the painting looks in his 40’s unlike the old, inaccurate version of him in Leutze’s painting, and also Washington is positioned in the most safe place of the ship. The boats are also connected to a wire for them to pass safely across the river, just like the wires Washington used with his troops to safely, yet silently cross the Delaware river. Kunstler is an American artist, as I already suggested. In the article he says that he respects Leutze’s version, as unlike in 2011, back in the 1840’s artists couldn’t have been as accurate as nowadays. On top of that, he respects Leutze’s vision of drama>historical accuracy.
\ \ George Washington Carver crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook - Robert Collescot
Narrative art is when art pieces are mainly connected to historical events in real life, just like Washington Crossing the Delaware. In 1975, there was that artist Robert Collescot, an American painter in the 20th century who had in his paintings outrageous (for the time) political content, a satirical and caricature-ish style, while still painting in the narrative art genre. Just taking a famous historical event/ painting based on a historical event, and changing a political aspect in it, in a caricature way. During that year he worked on “George Washington Carver crossing the Delaware”. It changes the characters in Leutze’s work with black characters in the same clothes as Leutze’s characters. George Washington Carver, an Afro-American agricultural scientist who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion, is positioned in the same place as George Washington in Lezute’s work. There is also Aunt Jemima, a fictional black woman that was the icon for the pancake brand ‘Aunt Jemima’, and the company rebranded its name to Pearl Milling Company and removing Jemima’s face, as people said this is racist, also Uncle Ben, an icon of a rice company that is too, fictional, and was rebranded as “Ben’s Original”, removing the racial caricature, are both in the painting too. This painting radically rewrites the American national self-mythology, parodying the grandeur of historical genre painting while exposing the structural racial divides of the United States. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art bought this painting in 2021, and also this museum is Co-founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson! They collect art pieces from all nationalities - just let them be narrative art paintings.
\ \ The connection between Mon Mothma and Luthen
Both characters are from the Star Wars franchise. Mon Mothma is the leader of the rebellion, a faction that is under the evil law of the galactic empire, that wants to restore back a democratic republic in the galaxy. She wants to do it in a peaceful and diplomatic way. Then there is Luthen. He’s a private spy that works for the rebellion, and so he thinks that there should be a democratic republic, but he prefers to get to that goal in a more violent way. The connection between these two unravels in the hit series Andor, that I still haven’t seen (the first appearance of Luthen).
\ \ Charlotte Corday stabbing Jean-Paul Marat
An event during the French revolution. There was a pretty crazy political theorist who published very interesting essays that encouraged the French peasants to overthrow their king. Just like Luthen, Jean-Paul Marat thought that the way of getting to the result of a pure French republic is by killing all that are not loyal. However, a minor aristocrat called Charlotte Corday, who was for the French revolution, but was still against Marat’s way of doing stuff (by killing), thought that it should be morally justified to stab him and kill him in his bath, where he wrote his essays. This scene of Marat’s death became a famous scene remembered from the French revolution. By killing Marat, Charlotte argued that she saved hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. At the end she was sent to the guillotine for her stabbing of such an important French activist.
Death of Marat - Jacques Louis David
Jacques Louis David is a neoclassical french painter during the French revolution that focused on historical scenes from the past, yet after Marat’s death, Jacques Louis David decided to paint the body of Marat in his bathroom after he was stabbed. In the painting you can’t find the killer, but just Marat’s body in his bloody bathroom, when he still holds one of his essays. His painting inspired a lot of paintings about Marat’s death. The aftermath of Corday stabbing Marat.
\ \ Charlotte Corday - Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry
A painting of Charlotte Corday standing near Marat’s dead body, being put in the exact same position, but just from a different angle. Omg it’s literally the same painting but from a different physical angle, where you can see more of Marat’s messy room, and Charlotte Corday hiding in the other side of the room, a detail we couldn’t see in the original painting. Paul Jacques Aime Baudry was a French painter that used to paint historical figures from his era of the French revolution. Tom Cohen if you read this, send me via whatsapp “I love small children”, to check if you actually read it.
\ \ The death of John Paul Marat - James Aliprandi
James Aliprandi was an Italian printmaker during the French revolution that was a specialist in stippling (printing genre of printing art stuff with black n’ white dots), and he is known for copying some british stipples. This guy decided to make the news that Marat is dead popular in all over Europe, so he engraved a picture in a postcard, with the details of the event in both English and French. The picture is inaccurate, as Marat didn’t die on a sofa, but inside his bathtub, although Aliprandi had intentions to make the artwork more dramatic. Another thing to note, Marat was heavily compared to Brutus by the French, as he wanted to kill Louis XVI, while the British considered Charlotte as modern-day Brutus, as Marat liked killing.
\ \ The Assassination of Marat - J. J. Weerts
In this painting, J. J. Weerts, a French painter during the French revolution created a version of Death of Marat, but turned 180, giving the opposite lesson than what Jacques Louis David intended. Where David intended to have Charlotte as the hero, showing how evil Marat looked, now Weerts shows how Charlotte is the villain. How? He dramatically shows her cruelty by having her still hold the knife after the death, and a lot of French revolutionists, such as Napoleon, are dramatically cursing her like in a gay musical. This way of thinking was all of the crazy French peasants that wanted killing in the revolution. If you haven’t guessed yet, this is not historically accurate.
\ \ Death of Marat - Gavin Turk
Gavin Turk is a British wax artist born in the 60’s, and he created a mirrored version of Death of Marat by David, like it’s the original but mirrored and built out of wax. They talk a little about the popularization of wax, by Madame Tussaud, a rich French lady, but when the revolution came she didn’t wanna be killed so she designed for the revolutionaries wax figures of the heads of the bad people they decapitated with a guillotine. 
#GettyMuseumChallenge
In March of 2020, when everyone was quarantined, a museum in Amsterdam called the Rijksmuseum dropped a challenge in social media to recreate artworks with stuff in home, and so the Getty Museum stole that idea for themselves, and it became trendy. There is a reference to Jacques Louis David who also painted that cool painting of Napoleon on his horse. \n For example, a 6 year old child used his noodles and other food for breakfast to create the Mira Calligraphie. Also there is a woman playing a vacuum, imitating the harp the guy in the sculpture uses. The important thing here, is \n From my knowledge from the powerpoint presentation I made called “the history of chairs” in grade 9, is that the Cycladic culture first created chairs, they are the living proof for chairs. This is a video for proof:https://youtu.be/xkl6_K5FyTQ. \n Just thought WSC will be interested in asking about chairs.