Showing posts with label Annie Leibovitz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Annie Leibovitz. Show all posts

Pocahontas

Annie Leibovitz is well known for her "Disney Dream Portrait Series" where different stars are posing as Disney fantasy heroines. Here it’s Jessica Biel as Pocahontas with the title "Where Dreams Run Free".

To me it’s not only a simple quotation of the Disney movie, it matches much more the pretension of Leibovitz to tell stories, to be narrative. There’s not only a model running trough the woods, it’s a whole legend, which is told.

Patriotic Pin-Ups

On the cover of Vanity Fair in January 2009 was a very patriotic photo by Annie Leibovitz (so it may be more ironical).

But this photo is a quotation of a pin-up by the painter Rolf Armstrong (1889-1960). It dates from 1945 and was called "The Winning Combination". So it was a celebration of the end of the Second World War.

Maybe Leibovitz was just celebrating the end of the Bush era.

Academic Art by Leibovitz

These two images are by the famous American portrait photographer Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz.

She made them for the Lavazza Calendar 2009.


Despite I got no special paintings as model for this images, I find them very typical in the style of 19th century academic painting.

There is the narrative arrangement, the perfect surface, the cool colors and the subjects: a couple on a bridge over the Tiber and Romulus and Remus in the Colosseum.

Sure that Leibovitz got more irony than these academic painters but anyhow it’s a kind of quotation, not of a special painting but of a style.

The Three Graces

Sure three women together doesn't always refer to the Three Graces. But if they are in a certain pose and dressed in a classical style there can be no discussion.

The term "Three Graces" refers to three Greek goddesses of charm, beauty, and creativity. Or sometimes to Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. In European art they are one of the oldest topics.

Because it was a good excuse to paint three naked women the examples may be uncountable. So I want to present only two nice and typical ones.

This is by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) a German Renaissance painter and from about 1535.

The second is by Charles-AndrĂ© van Loo (1705–1765) a French Rococo painter and from about 1763.

And the last one is by Annie Leibovitz and was the cover of Vanity Fair in April 2008.

In this case Leibovitz didn't make a quotation of a special painting, its more her own interpretation of the old art topic.