UnMasterclass 11

Welcome back to another episode of UnMasterclass and this week the twin icons of a masterpiece from the Metropolitan in NYC and the forefather of America are taken on by the UnMaster in his studio. Little of the majesty of the original painting or the great George Washington are retained. It is strange how whatever it is that makes painting still a vital thing (for me anyway) is unable to be replicated through digital means and this is something being proved over and again here at UnMasterclass as everything that is good about the original paintings we paint from are lost when we come to paint them ourselves. And furthermore any qualities that might seem apparent in the paintings you see online are only there on the web, in reality the paintings truly are awful. So in one way the reproduction of the original paintings diminishes their power and conversely heightens the quality of the copy.
Michael Borremans has said " A Painting is an object with a complex character, and because of the historical dimension it is impossible to treat it impartially. In our reality, a portrayal is also always a reproduction. Jean Baudrillard said that painting had become pointless because we live in a world in which paintings are simply reproduced.Yet they are paintings that are among the most widely reproduced pictures. It makes you think." Well we at UnMasterclass are not adverse to thinking and have come to the conclusion that maybe painting is pointless, so if that is the case then we might as well paint other peoples paintings, which is surely more pointless than painting on it's own?
Anyway if you have some time to kill and you cannot pop along to Central park to drop into the Metropolitan Museum of art then pop along to see a reproduction of a painting of reproduction of painting here http://vimeo.com/20932101