Five Visual Artists Collaborations
Collaboration is at the core of creative activity and as the following five examples show it has been taking place for a long time. I hope you will be inspired by the range of possibilities evident here, ranging from Raphael to Bjork, and reflect on how they may be used in our new digital age.
Raimondi and Raphael promoting Renaissance visions
Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael – engraver and painte . In about 1510 Raimondi target=”_blank”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcantonio_Raimondi arrived in Rome. And by 1513 he had met Raphael, who included a depiction of Raimondi in the Vatican fresco Expulsion of Heliodorus (1513). Raimondi’s best engravings, such as Massacre of the Innocents, were done during the first years with Raphael. In these he retains Raphael’s idealized figures, but, also managed to add his own style to the background, and landscapes.
Their relationship was very successful financially and attracted a large number of pupils, of whom the two most distinguished were Marco Dente, known as Marco da Ravenna, and Agostino de Musi, known as Agostino Veneziano. This form of engraver and painter relationship carried on into the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
Munch and Reinehardt’s Nineteenth century dark reflections
Edward Munch, Max Reinhardt and Henrik Insen – Painter, Theatre director and Playwriter – Munch’s target=”_blank”>http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/ theatrical career began when a theatre in Paris asked him to design programmes for productions of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and John Gabriel Borkman. In 1906, the German theatre director Max Reinhardt who had seen Munch’s paintings invited the artist to design a Munich production of Ibsen’s Ghosts and, when that was successful, Munch collaborated again with Reinhardt on Hedda Gabler.
Munch inspired by the themes or moods of Ibsen’s work created a series of paintings. Work often focussed on desperate women – the howling face in Munch’s The Scream reflecting Ibsen’s trapped wives, such as Hedda Gabler and Nora in A Doll’s House. A collaboration in one form sparking a creative expression in another.
Visual artists and theatrical creations were an on going source of collaborations throughout the 20th century.
Pablo Picasso and Erik Satie’s Surreal/Cubist Experiment
Pablo Picasso and Eriik Satie – Painter and Composer – Parade, a 1917 ballet performed by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, was a coming together of various artists across the creative spectrum in a collaboration which not only involved Picasso and Satie but also the choreography by Léonide Massine and a script by Jean Cocteau. This story story of a trio of circus artists attempting to lure an audience to their performance, included Cocteau’s addition of foghorns, typewriters, which apparently drowned out much of Satie’s composition. Whlle Picasso’s cubist costumes, many of them made from cardboard, proved problematic for the actors when they wanted to move.
An example of collaboration where too much was bring tried at one time, but as you will see from the video below could still proved some arresting images/performances.
Extracts from a later version of ‘Parade’ performed by Europa Danse, can be seen here
The arrival of digital interpretations opened up the scope of collaborative work and new versions of representation.
Salvador Dalí and Alice Cooper’s “First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram of Alice Cooper’s Brain”
Salvidor Dali and Alice Cooper – Painter and Rock Musician – The creative coupling of surrealist Salvador Dalí and American rocker Alice Cooper was not an obvious collaboration, which is exactly what makes it one of the most exciting. They were mutual fans of each other who eventually met up in 1973. An encounter at which Dali gave Cooper a plaster brain sculpture covered in chocolate and ants. This led to them spending the next few weeks together creating a three-dimensional piece with Cooper as its subject. From their (literal) brainstorming came the now-famous First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram of Alice Cooper’s Brain, a five-and-a-half-foot hologram portrait in which Cooper is biting the head off of Venus de Milo. An image reflective of an earlier Spanish painter’s work – Goya’s Satan [sometimes, Saturn] Devouring One of His Children.
You can see a short video of the hologram here
Collaborative Reinterpretation
Chris Olfi, The Royal Ballet, Titian and Ovid – Painter, Dance Company, painter and poet -Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 a new commission for the Royal ballet, organised by Monica Mason, gave Chris Olfi the chance to create his biggest paintings. The work was inspired by Titian’s Diana and Actaeon, , which in turn was based on a poem by Ovid.
Olfi’s backdrop design had to be scaled up by a factor of 50, and required two helpers – a professional set painter and someone to mix the paints (a skilled job in itself). Working on such a scale, involved working with a stick of charcoal fixed inside a length of bamboo rather than a pencil, and buckets of paint. It took a month to complete the actual painting, and the whole project was two years in the planning. It changed the way he works, Olfi said.
An institutionally inspired collaboration, which obviously required technical collaborators an aspect of the artistic collaborative process so often overlooked when the final work is appraised.
Transmedia Collaboration
Matthew Barney and Björk – Multi-media artists and performance artist – 2006 saw the release of “Drawing Restraint 9” a video installation which went on to have a web/theatrical release.
Long before ARTPOP, Björk and artist Matthew Barney, were collaboration and sharing some screen time, in Drawing Restraint 9, a feature-length video art installation that uses drawings, photographs, sculptures, and moving images. This video based installation follows a fictional whaling vessel from the Sea of Japan to Antarctica. Barney and Björk star in the video, which had a small theatrical release in 2006 courtesy of IFC Films, with Björk providing the soundtrack.
You can visit the official website below, to see a limited view of the massive installation
or watch the trailer here
These five examples of collaboration are the first of many I will highlight over the coming months.
Please add your own examples of other visual artists and those they collaborated with to create interesting, challenging and diverting work. Look forward to hearing from you and seeing you work with others on www,bcre8ive.eu
