Claire's rant on paying homage vs. laziness

3:46 pm - Fri, Feb 10, 2012: 19,368 notes

Claire’s rant on paying homage vs. laziness

WANT! Pin-Up Calendar of the Apocalypse.

brain-food:

Pin-Up Calendar of the Apocalypse

They’re not appropriately dressed, but these ladies are managing to get by in the apocalypse all the same. Illustrator Andrew Tarusov created a doomsday calendar, with a different gal and a different apocalypse for every month of the year. (via Slice of SciFi)

Okay, I love Gil Elvgren as much as the next person, and the illustrator does mention these pieces are “based” on Elvgren’s work over on his website, but I just… I do not get this sort of thing. I don’t get what is artistically fulfilling about literally tracing another artist’s art, when 90% of the appeal of these finished pieces are the figures being directly lifted from mid century pinups. It’s not even the legality of it- it just seems disingenuous to me to sell art that, beyond the post-apocalyptic context of each piece, is adding absolutely nothing to the pinups to really mark it as new, or witty, or satire, or… Anything, really.

…And it shows how memorable the original pinups are that it took me five minutes to track down the original source images for these.

Maybe I’m a stick in the mud with this sort of thing, but pinups are effin’ hard to do well, and it just feels like cheating to stand on Elvgren’s shoulders rather than trying to pull off that sort of thing using your own artistic chops.

-C

(via atompunk)