Museum Asks Art Lovers to Reinvent a Classic Painting, With Wild Results

Girl With a Pearl Earring? More like Guy With an Apple AirPod. 

The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague put out an open name for artistic takes on Johannes Vermeer’s traditional seventeenth century portray — with some weird and pleasant outcomes. 

‘Scroll by posts tagged #mygirlwithapearl on Instagram and you will find greater than 4,500 interpretations of the well-known oil portray of a younger lady in a turban, a big earring dangling from her left ear. The homages vary from stunning to whimsical to surreal, from classical to summary to steampunk. You’ll see the Girl in photographs, digital drawings and oil work, and re-created in sculptures produced from embroidery thread, toys, college provides and multicolored beads and buttons. 

She seems as a child, an older bearded man, a duck, a canine, a bunny and a blue Na’vi from Avatar.  In a couple of picture, she’s decidedly twenty first century, carrying a face masks or earbuds or holding a cellphone. One artist overlayed Vermeer’s portray on a Tinder display screen, calling the creation “Swipe Right.”

Were a few of the digital variations created with an AI artwork creation instrument like Dall-E? You can guess on it. 

The Mauritshuis normally homes the well-known portray, however for eight weeks beginning in February, the work will probably be out on mortgage for a Vermeer exhibit at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Rather than go away the Girl’s wall empty, the Mauritshuis plans to rotate a few of the crowdsourced interpretations by a digital show.   

“The room the place the Girl hangs will briefly turn into a spot of inspiration with as many Girls collectively as doable, from residence and overseas,” the museum says. 

As the submissions attest, the museum did not place any restrictions on creativity right here. “A self-portrait with a shower towel as a turban, a painted iron or perhaps a pile of crockery,” it says. “Little is just too loopy for us.” Registration for the competition closed on Jan. 15. 

Vermeer, one of the crucial famend Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, is thought for his intimate home scenes and gorgeous use of sunshine.

His iconic Girl With a Pearl Earring has made a quantity literary and cinematic appearances, together with in a 1999 historic novel of the identical identify that instructed a fictional story of the portray’s creation. That ebook led to a 2003 movie adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson as a younger servant within the residence of Vermeer, performed by Colin Firth. 

If you need to discover the unique portray in additional element to raised respect the reimaginings, an augmented-reality characteristic referred to as Pocket Gallery in Google’s free Google Arts & Culture app affords a digital exhibition area the place you’ll be able to see and study all 36 of Vermeer’s work. None of which characteristic bots.