Photo Realism by Monica Blake

Right: Temptation

Left: Sole Mates

These are two examples of how Monica Blake is very skilled in photo realistic painting. I feel like eating chocolate.

You have to visit her site and check that she is very creative.

"Sole Mates" is a very interesting tittle for the left painting. Both paintings are so sensual...

Shoes at the metro

These are two photos by Annie Mole that I took from Flickr. Putting them side by side gives the illusion that we are looking at a train. Not only painters care about shoes as we can see at the shoes' label.

Joan Miró's Guernica

click to enlarge

Still Life with Old Shoe was painted during the Spanish civil war and was consider by Joan Miró himself as one of his most important works. His biographer Jacques Dupin called the painting "Mirós's Guernica" thou there is no influence whatsoever of Picasso's work that is also dated 1937. This is a good comparison of the two that I found at this site:

"The Spanish Civil War broke out in July, 1936, and by November of that year, Miro was in France, where he would live in exile with his family until 1940. Initially without a studio, he stopped planning large groups of paintings in advance, as though reluctant to pursue any projects requiring long-term stability. (However, he had left a large number of unfinished works behind in Barcelona.) In January, 1937, he decided to move in a completely new direction and began work on a painting, "Still Life with Old Shoe, " often called his " Guernica" (in reference to Pablo Picasso's famous painting protesting the bombing of that Basque town). Although "Still Life with Old Shoe" manifests Miro's new need to grapple with material reality--for the first time in years, he worked from a model, a still life set up on a table before him--it is far from the historical and political reality of Picasso's painting. Where Picasso was concerned with a specific time and place, Miro's "Still Life with Old Shoe," and indeed all of his work, is pointedly ahistorical. Through the psychedelic colors and ominous forms of this painting, Miro found the universal aspect of the particular, creating a haunting landscape of devastation from the humble components of a still-life arrangement." (emphasis mine)

Andy Warhol's shoes

Yes, Andy Warhol also used shoes as a theme like we saw two post below Van Gogh's shoes and boots. This is the series "A la recherche du shoe perdu", title inspired by Marcel Proust's oeuvre "In Search of Lost Time - A la Recherche du temps perdu", Andy Warhol did in 1955 with captions by Ralph Pomeroy. Prior to this he had already used shoes as theme passing around his friends to promote himself and at this series he depicts shoes in a very glamorous and magical way. In 1980-1 he publishes the series "Diamond Dust Shoes" using diamond dusts in his printings. Today is Saturday. Put on your red shoes and dance! Dancing is very Warhol since he said that he did nothing but going to parties. “I am a deeply superficial person.” "An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have." "During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered."

Van Gogh's boots and shoes

Shoes and boots were often painted by Van Gogh and generated many studies by philosophers and other scholars. Martin Heidegger was the first to present his thoughts when he saw the "Boots with laces" at a museum. Mayer Schapiro has answered him and there has been other authors trying to explain the phenomenon. I like looking and feeling. I just wish they were all at the same museum and I could go there... now!