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PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS OF FAMOUS ARTIST’S PAINT PALETTES BY MATTHIAS SCHALLER

Palette of Marc Chagall Since 2007 photographer Matthias Schaller has photographed raw, abstract paintings. The paintings however are not found on canvas, but rather smeared onto the tools used to craft each work of art—the palettes. His series, Das Meisterstück (The Masterpiece), claims these behind-the-scene objects as portraits of the artist, while also giving a direct insight into the detailed techniques […]
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Palette of Marc Chagall

Since 2007 photographer Matthias Schaller has photographed raw, abstract paintings. The paintings however are not found on canvas, but rather smeared onto the tools used to craft each work of art—the palettes. His series, Das Meisterstück (The Masterpiece), claims these behind-the-scene objects as portraits of the artist, while also giving a direct insight into the detailed techniques performed by each painter.

Schaller was first inspired to begin his photographic collection during a visit to Cy Twombly’s late studio. During the visit he stumbled upon the artist’s palette, which he discovered to be an accurate reflection of the artist’s paintings, even if created purely by accident. As he puts it, “The palette is an abstract landscape of the painter’s artistic production.” Schaller’s practice focuses on non traditional portraits, which he considers “indirect portraits”.

Encouraged to further discover the similarities between palette and painting, Schaller has gone on to photograph over two hundred of these historic portraits. His search has led him to collect palettes from all across Europe and the United States, finding the objects in major museums such as Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée d’Orsay, Tate, Centre Pompidou, and private foundations and in the custody of artists’ relatives and collectors. The palettes he’s photographed so far in the series belong to seventy painters from both the 19th and 20th century, and include such artists as Monet, van Gogh, Matisse, and Picasso. To accurately analyze the details from paint hue to brushstroke, Schaller presents the images in large format, each work existing at approximately 190 × 150 cm.

A gradient blur of colors accumulated on the palette of Camille Pissarro, while orderly dark streaks of paint still echo the short expressionist career of Paula Modersohn-Becker on her wooden board. We can see dusky hues on the palette of John Singer Sargent, the synthetic vibrancy on that of Vincent van Gogh, the mottled splotches left by Paul Gaugin, the dense color field accumulated by Pierre Bonnard, and the overlapping disorder of rich colors left by Frida Kahlo.

Schaller has an ongoing interest in the accidental marks people leave behind, and what they can say about that absent presence. As he puts it, the palettes represent the “paint before the painting.” On them are the phantoms of brush movement and mixed colors reflecting the hand of the artist, poised right before touching color to canvas.

Palette of Paula Modersohn-Becker

Palette of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Palette of Wassily Kandinsky, 2007, 190×156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Lenbachhaus, München

Palette of Claude Monet

Palette of Édouard Manet

Palette of Edgar Degas

Palette of Eugene Delacroix

Palette of Georges Seurat

Palette of J.M.W. Turner, 2013, 190×156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, The Royal Academy of Arts, London

Palette of Francis Bacon, 2007, 190×156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin

Palette of Cy Twombly, 2007, 190×156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Collezione Nicola del Roscio, Gaeta

Palette of Pablo Picasso

Palette of Henri Matisse

Palette of Vincent van Gogh, 2007, 190×156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

 

Source: Pinterest, Dangerous Mind, Colossal, Hyperallergic

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