Big Studio

Shadows of the Masters

Page Two


Gustav Courbet: Studio of a Painter: A Real Allegory Summarizing My Seven Years of Life as an Artist, 1855 Joel-Peter Witkin: Studio of a Painter (Courbet), 1990

Exhibit Six: Courbet's Studio

Witkin includes redo's of two Courbet paintings:
   Demoiselles on the Bank of the Seine
   The Bathers
as well as an illustration from Etienne-Jules Moray's Man in a Black Suit..."

Georges Seurat: The Models, 1888, London, National Gallery Joel-Peter Witkin: Three Kinds of Women, 1992

Exhibit Seven:
Seurat's Bathers

(view outside frame)

Diego Velasquez: Las Meniñas Joel-Peter Witkin: Las Meninas

Exhibit Eight: Las Meniñas

Witkin's version is dedicated to Spain and to Foucault. He identifies the figure in the doorway as Christ.

Jean Fouquet: The Melun Diptych, detail featuring The Virgin and Child, 1453-54, panel painting, Musée de l'Hospice at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. Peter Blake: Madonna at Venice Beach

Exhibit Nine: Virgin and Child
Cindy Sherman: Untitled, # 216, 1989

Gustav Courbet: The Meeting Peter Blake: The Meeting, or, Have a Nice Day Mr. Hockney, Tate Gallery, 1996

Exhibit Ten: Peter Blake does Courbet

The painter (David Hockney) is greeted by his friends Peter Blake and Howard Hodgen in Venice Beach, Hockney's adopted home. (See Homi Bhabha, "Postmodernism/Postcolonialism" in Critical Terms for Art History, eds. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Schiff, Chicago, 1996)

Rembrandt: Posed as Prodigal Son (with Saskia) Yasumasa Morimura: Untitled

Exhibit Eleven: Painter Posed as Prodigal Son

Pieter de Ring (or Jan Davidsz de Heem): Still Life with Fruit and Lobster Joel-Peter Witkin: Feast of Fools, 1990

Exhibit Twelve: Still Lives

This pairing, as all with Joel-Peter Witkin's work, is from Germano Celano's Witkin, Scalo, 1995. 

The bottom pairing with Barry Kite is my idea.

Franciso Goya: Manuel Osorio de Zuniga, ca. 1788, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art Joel-Peter Witkin: Manuel Osorio, 1982

Exhibit Thirteen: The Child



Istvan Horkay: Digital Gallery VII/Goya (2001)

Sandro Botticelli (just kidding!--this is a sketch/study for The Gods of Earth and Heaven) Joel-Peter Witkin, The Gods of Earth and Heaven, 1988

Exhibit Fourteen: The Birth of Venus

Closeup, center

Edward Hopper: The Office at Night, 1940 Victor Burgin, Office at Night, no.1, 1986

Exhibit Fifteen: The Office at Night

Burgin discusses the making of this in Between

Michelangelo: Christ Sitting in Judgement, Sistine Chapel Joel-Peter Witkin: Decadent Artists, 1983

Exhibit Sixteen: Christus Rex

The model appears to be Witkin himself.

On to Part III –>