David’s Self-Portrait with Raven reminded me of this picture of a black bird that I carried in my mind: 
I thought that it was a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe but I could not find it in my art books. What I found instead were these two paintings by Georgia O’Keefe:
A Black Bird with Snow-Covered Red Hills + It was Blue and Green
Have you ever unknowingly invented a picture in your mind that is based on other people’s artwork? In my mind, the artwork of others appears to attain a life of its own.
Does your mind also usurp the artwork of others and then plays with it? If yes, does it diminish as you focus more on your own art?
Birgit,
Could you explain in more down-to-Earth terms what your goals are and what you have done here with these images? Are both of the smaller paintings by O’Keefe?
To the extent that I understand what your contribution is, I think you have made the best image of the three. How did you do it? Did you make a new painting? Did you cut the images out of the art book and paste them together with glue? Do you think you deserve credit for completing O’Keefe’s work? If not, why not?
The mind’s eye is an unfortunate metaphor. Eyes are a tool for seeing, but there is no perception in the eye itself, and the eye is not required for seeing. Doubt that? What are you doing when you dream? You are seeing, of course.
You put the two small images side by side. I naturally tried to fuse them by crossing my eyes. It is difficult, because the pictures have no features in common. If there were a dark outline around the images, this would help. As they are, I could fuse them a bit and the result is interesting. I see the bird moving in front of the cloud.
I think “stereo painting” is a wonderful and underutilized art form. I got amazing results using stereo in my work in vision research. Why are painters reluctant to make stereo images? Is it too much work? I think it will be the next big thing, moving painting into the third dimension. Remember, you heard it here first (or did you?)
Okay, here is a stereo painting. I also include a copy of the O’Keefe paintings with a border to make fusion easier.
Birgit, why do you think that cerebral areas in inferior temporal cortex are all that is involved in seeing art? I think that is quite a limited viewpoint for a brain scientist. As you might have heard, basic figure/ground segregation seems to have strong perceptual correlates as early as primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe.
Wait, I get it — you’re using that standard blogger’s trick: make a provocative statement to generate reader participation. Gee wiz, I fall for that one every time. Now I’ve got to get to work!
Almost 20 yr ago, I saw an exhibit of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings at the Art Institute in Chicago. Before that, I had not been impressed by reproductions of her work.
Seeing the originals, I was blown away by the 3-D of her New Mexico paintings. I bought picture books showing her New Mexico painting. I had my own intense New Mexico experience visiting there frequently for the following 5 yr. Back home in Michigan, I saw New Mexico landscapes in my mind before falling asleep.
After that, memories of New Mexico and Georgia O’Keefe were replaced by other experiences. All that remained in my inferior temporal cortex was the first picture shown here.
Thus, answering Karl, originally, I had not integrated Georgia O’Keefe’s two pictures using photoshop. In contrast, I was not even aware that I had integrated them. Last December, I was baffled that I could not find the picture shown here. Searching through my books and the web, I realized that, unbeknownst to my consciousness, my mind had generated the composite.
In my mind’s picture, the raven flew at a higher elevation. Integrating the digital images of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings now in AP, I put the raven closer to the lake so that it would not intersect with the streams above. If I had painted the picture shown here, I would have separated the streams so that the raven could soar higher.
What I love about Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings and my composite of them are the colors – the elegant and spiritual blues and greens and their separation by beautiful grey tones – the 3-Dimensionality-, and last not least – the elegant flight of the raven.
Seen together in one picture, the streaming of the water and the gliding of the raven make perfect sense to me. Integrating these pictures is like writing a review article on bits and pieces published earlier.
Birgit,
I’ve seen “It was Blue and Green” before (in a book), but not the other. I like some O’Keefe a lot, but not this one especially. But I think hers would be easier to combine in this way, deliberately or not, because of the large, flat areas and the general similarity of color and outline.
As for unknowingly distorting or mis-remembering artwork, I’m sure I have, but I can’t recall at the moment an instance where I discovered my error. Memory distortions are far more common than people realize, and it’s very easy to influence people’s “memory” of something, by things that happen either at the time of the event or later at recall time. Eyewitness testimony can be very problematic.
Karl,
I take exception to your dismissal of “mind’s eye” as unfortunate metaphor. I’ll agree “perception” is better associated with brain areas involved in higher processing. But if you want to call the visual content of dreams “seeing,” then it makes some (admittedly vague) neurological sense as well as metaphorical sense to consider something else as the source, replacing the eye which is the source of images from the real world. Of course the terminology is quite vexed, in particular the common use of “see” to refer to understanding that is non-visual.
Most people have two eyes but only one vision.
How about the ‘third eye’?
A tangent:
http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/02/226.html
I was reminded of what can be listened to at 35:20.
Birgit, I like what you’ve done with the O’Keefes, and I think your version is better than either of her two.
In music these days, it’s pretty common for artists to remix each other’s work. It can be done in guerrilla fashion by sampling, like The Grey Album, but more and more these days artists are giving each other their original recorded tracks and letting others do (and release) remixes. Often there are multiple, and sometimes very different, versions (mixes) of the same recording. So you’re working in a contemporary music tradition.
DJ Birgit!
As far as having unknowingly created something based on another person’s work, my own main experience with this has been musical as well. My friend Barry and I wrote a pretty good R&B song, and found out later that the title and the chorus were almost identical to another song that one of us must have heard and forgotten about. Our bridge and verses were different, but we decided to shelve it anyway. George Harrison had his own (litigated) experience, with My Sweet Lord being similar to He’s So Fine.
Birgit,
Your mash up of O’Keef is very good. On the same remix track that David was alluding to, I would like to say that there are a lot of instances where an originally historic picture was distorted/remixed to convey a new message relevant to its times. A classic example of a mash up of this sort was the transformation of descriptions from the classical myths of the antiquities to nude figures in the landscape artists such as Titian (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/esm/IAM/Titian.jpg) to works like Les Grandes Baigneuses (Cezanne http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/bath/cezanne.grandes-baigneuses.jpg) to works like Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso http://pablo-picasso.paintings.name/images/Les-Demoiselles-d-Avignon.jpg) to many more reinterpretations of the same by modern day contemporary artists. I think that unknowingly or knowingly (with purpose) distorting or mis-representing artwork is just one of the many ways by which the artwork can communicate what is on the artists mind. I remember creating a painting after being very inspired by the face of one of the angels in Da Vinci’s ‘The Virgin’ painting (which I think was my best to date…)
By the way, Karl, if there was some way to insert images into comments. That would have been so much more useful…
What’s the difference between a “mash-up” and juxtaposition like Leslie’s Hello Kitty series?
The way I’ve understood it used, a mash-up combines two or more pre-existing songs (or artworks?) in making a new one. Kind of like a medley I guess, but with more overlap. So Leslie’s paintings might fit into that.
The only difference is that, in painting representations of these things, the final result is a work of her own creation, as opposed to copying and pasting pre-existing elements together. It would be like the difference between combining pre-existing recordings by other musicians or performing the whole thing yourself (or with other musicians). Very grey area though.
Sunil, it is possible to post images in the comments:
how do you post images?
I have learned from the comments that there are many variations of my experience. I think that I compare most closely to a faulty eye witness. I did not intend to create something new. I also did not expand on an old theme like painting Jesus Christ on a cross. Instead, I was convinced that Georgia O’Keefe had painted the picture that lives in my inferior temporal cortex and now also on A&P.
Well, I was going to comment on the main question, but here, Birgit and Sunil, is how you insert images into the comment.
<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.
Now to the main question…
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.
Birgit,
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,
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.