Aspect Art | art history, info & news

He’s made a likeness of the Mona Lisa.There’s a portrait of Albert Einstein.

He’s even recreated that infamous picture of dogs playing poker.

You’ve seen knock-offs of those before. So what’s the big deal about Scott Wade’s art? It’s his canvas.

The San Marcos, Texas graphics interface designer paints his masterpieces in a place where they’re guaranteed not to last for posterity - the dirty windows on his Mini Cooper.

Like many of us, Wade has seen those cars badly in need of some water and has been tempted to scrawl the hackneyed ‘wash me’ on a dust obscured back window.

But one day four years ago, inspiration struck, and the artist-in-waiting decided to attempt something far more ambitious than just a message about dirt. At first, he used his finger to sketch cartoon-like figures on his own car.

Then he discovered a new trick - you could use a frayed Popsicle stick to get all kinds of gray hues in that ash. So he began experimenting and before he knew it his artistic bent - with an accent on the bent - began coming out.

Wade can often be seen zooming his car over dusty hill and trail, trying to accumulate a layer of dirt on the back windshield so he can draw his newest creation.

In addition to his classics, the 48-year-old has also done replicas of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, Boticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”, a picture of his late dog, various funny faces, a tribute to a magazine writer who wrote an article about him, and even a likeness of “The Last Supper.”

He’s also received requests to use the ashes of cremated people to draw their likenesses as they roll to their final resting place, a decidedly creepy idea.

“I’ve always drawn pictures on dirty windows,” the artist explains. “It wasn’t a conscious decision to develop a new art form. It was just looking for art in everything.”

Each one takes only about half an hour to create and the results can be astonishing.

He’s made about 50 of them so far, and never washes them off, allowing time, nature and the occasional rain storm to do that for him. He takes pictures of every one of them and claims he’s never upset when they’re gone, calling that the transitory nature of his muse.

Besides, like an Etch-a-Sketch, it simply clears the way for his next creation.

“Since it’s temporary it doesn’t have to be perfect,” Wade points out. “You don’t have to belabour it.”

Naturally, there are academics who hail his work as a bold new step in the world of art.

“They’re really transient art which, again, artists have done,” explains Texas State University art and design professor Brian Row, who taught Wade in college. “You experience it once and it’s gone. … It certainly falls within the range of the way artists work.”

Among Wade’s worst enemies in his creative endeavours: too much sun (which can make the dust difficult to manipulate), a downpour (which happens frequently in Texas), and a rear windshield wiper (which can act as a giant eraser.)

To see this amazing artwork, click here.

In a stealthy overnight heist, burglars slipped into the Paris apartment of Picasso’s granddaughter and spirited away two portraits of women the artist loved, slicing one of the paintings out of its frame.
The thieves were so quiet that the two people in Diana Widmaier-Picasso’s apartment didn’t hear them, police said. The burglars left few clues, and police said they weren’t sure how the intruders gained entry.

The two paintings — one of Pablo Picasso’s daughter Maya, the other of his second wife, Jacqueline — together are worth an estimated $66 million.

The paintings join 549 other missing or stolen works by the prolific Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist and ceramist, considered by many the leading artist of the 20th Century. Picasso produced more than 20,000 works of art during his long career.

Art experts say that if the burglars hope to sell the paintings, they may be in for a surprise.

Any work by Picasso is “very hard to fence because it’s so well-known — stealing a Picasso is like stealing a sign that says, `I’m a thief,”‘ said Jonathan Sazonoff, who runs a leading Web site on stolen art.

Katie Dugdale of the Art Loss Register, which maintains the world’s largest private database on stolen, missing and looted art, said that although it is difficult, famous artworks can be sold on the black market.

“Even though they can’t get full value, there’s still some value, unfortunately,” she said, particularly if the artworks are used to fund other illegal activities, such as arms trading.

In high-profile cases like the theft of the Picassos in Paris, recovery is considered likely because of intense media attention and ramped-up police efforts.

“Usually with things like this, they’re recovered right away,” Dugdale said, noting that the paintings, already recognizable, will become nearly universally so after their images appear in the media. For most works, she said the average recovery time is seven years.

Investigators said Wednesday that they were struggling to piece together what happened.

Burglars entered the apartment in a chic corner of the Left Bank late Monday or early Tuesday, according to police and the prosecutor’s office. Police said they were examining a door lock to see whether it was broken and didn’t know whether the alarm system had been activated. Once inside the apartment, the thieves cut the edges of one painting, “Maya and the Doll,” to take it out of its frame, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The painting has sentimental value for Widmaier-Picasso: It shows her mother, Maya, as a girl in pigtails, eyes askew in an off-kilter Cubist perspective. Another version hangs in the Picasso Museum in Paris.

Maya was Picasso’s daughter. Her mother was Marie-Therese Walter, whom Picasso met when she was a teenager. Their affair didn’t last. Four years after Picasso died in 1973, she hanged herself.

Maya Picasso married Pierre Widmaier and had three children, including art historian Diana Widmaier-Picasso, author of a book called “Picasso: Art Can Only be Erotic.”

The other missing painting is “Portrait of Jacqueline,” and the burglars took the frame with it, police said. The painting was one of many that depict Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline Roque, whom he married in 1961 when he was 79 and she was in her mid-30s.

A Norwegian painting featuring 12,400 euros worth of cash glued to a canvas proved too tempting to thieves, who made off with it at the weekend.

Some 100,000 bills of 1,000 kroner each were glued to Norwegian artist Jan Christensen’s two-by-four-metre canvas, entitled Relative Value, the MGM Gallery in Oslo said.

The robbers broke into the gallery on Saturday night by smashing a window.

Then, proceeding methodically, they cut each bill off the canvas individually and left the cumbersome frame behind.

“Apparently they are nice because they took the canvas out of the frame,” gallery owner Marina Gerner-Mathisen told AFP.

The thieves then left the building.

“When the security people arrived a couple of minutes later they were gone,” she said.

She says a police investigation is under way.