As I was thumbing through the glossy brochure our local art museum puts out today, I came across “Elijah in the Desert Fed by Ravens,” by Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) c. 1619-1620. It’s a pen and ink on brown paper, not his massive oil. I was struck by how the raven in the Guercino drawing is similar to that of the O’Keefe. Because it’s a drawing (probably a study), Guercino has a sense of space and lightness. I like it better than his oil

I don’t know what point I’m making here — but I did like it that the glossy PR brochure that I was about to throw away had something in it to catch my attention.

As for a visual mash-up — I’m sure I have done similar things, but I don’t remember doing so. But then you didn’t know you had until you went looking for the original of your memory.

There is a big field of research in psychology called Illusory Conjunction. It seems to have gone out of fashion now. Here is an example of a paper. Ann Treisman was the main force in this research, I think she discovered it.

Birgit, I do something similar to this often. A really spectacular example is the statue of Athena that once existed in the Parthenon in Athens. It seems I have my own version. I am quite sure that the supposedly correct reconstructions are wrong. There is NO WAY that Phidias would have tolerated that ghastly Assyrian bug eyed stare that is used in say, the statue in the imitation Parthenon they built in Tennessee. (I don’t care to link to that because it’s so awful). I always remember the Mona Lisa with eyebrows intact and the eyes not so yellowed or Donatello’s David as fresh, bright, golden coppery bronze.

It seems I filter out time and damage and see works as new again. I’m often astonished to see how badly deteriorated various works are when I see them again after a few years.

I prefer my versions.

<img alt=”image.jpg” width=”xxx” height=”xxx” src=”http://yourwebsite.net/image.jpg” />

This assumes you have an image on some server somewhere, ot course, and the hieght and width tags are not strictly speaking necessary but they do speed up the page loading time.