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Pigeon Post

I meant to write about this soon after it happened, but got sidetracked:

On 20 May 2010, the museum reported the overnight theft of five paintings from its collection. The paintings taken were Le pigeon aux petits pois (The Pigeon with the Peas) by Pablo Picasso, La Pastorale by Henri Matisse, L’Olivier Près de l’Estaque (Olive Tree near Estaque) by Georges Braque, La Femme à l’Éventail (Woman with a Fan) by Amedeo Modigliani and Nature Morte aux Chandeliers (Still Life with Chandeliers) by Fernand Léger and were valued at €100 million ( US$123 million).

— From the Wikipedia entry on the Paris Museum of Modern Art

So naturally I looked up the paintings mentioned. Here’s what the aforementioned Picasso looks like.

Picasso: Le pigeon aux petit pois (1911)
Picasso: Le pigeon aux petit pois (1911)

While the authorities are busy searching for the painting, I suggest you get busy searching for the pigeon and the peas.

So I asked my friend Angshu how one goes about drawing something like this. His answer went something like:

Imagine a normal picture drawn on a two dimensional plane. Cut it up into little squares and shuffle them around while also moving them randomly up and down in the third dimension. Now take the resulting 3D image of little squares at various heights and project it back to the 2D plane.

I guess the reason why Picasso is famous is that he manages to do all of this in his mind and just paint the result on canvas.

Ramsu

7 responses to “Pigeon Post”

  1. PV Avatar
    PV

    Other than an inverted claw, don’t see any sign of pigeons ! The peas I can see !

    Not half-bad, right ?

    Reply
  2. Too Demented Avatar
    Too Demented

    Oh no! Look what they stole while I was busy staring at The Potato Eaters. Dammit.

    Yes, you inferred correctly. I have yet to “advance” to the Modernists. At the moment, my attention is locked up in post-impressionism la la land.

    And besides, I’ve had one too many headaches from trying to project 3-D “pigeons” to the 2-D page (we had a lot of ’em pigeons too, back in college, din’t we?) during Engineering Graphics class (Perspective Drawings, they were called). That I got a “D” in the course should tell you just how good I am at this whole “projecting” thing. 😀

    BTW, your friend Ang’s advice is a perfect parallel for what “Einstein” says, Ing-ey (“Pardon My Planet”).

    Reply
  3. Banno Avatar
    Banno

    I’d rather just shoo away the pigeons 🙂 It’s all too much for my pea-sized brain.

    Reply
  4. Ranya Avatar
    Ranya

    where are the peas?? i spy a pigeon.. or I *think* that’s a pigeon.. :S :S

    how on earth did he get so famous for these?? :$

    Reply
  5. Ramsu Avatar
    Ramsu

    PV>> Now that you mention it, I see the inverted claw. There’s the word “Cafe” on top, so maybe it’s not a live pigeon any more. But why would anyone eat at a Cafe that serves the pigeon like that, claws and all?

    TD>> Well, whaddya know, I got a D as well on that course as well. The pre-com status was that I could really work hard and get a B, or sack out and get a C. I decided to settle for a C and ended up sacking out a bit too much 😀

    Banno>> If PV and I are right, it’s rather late to shoo them away. This pigeon in no more! He has ceased to be! He’s expired and gone to meet his maker! If Picasso hadn’t put him on that plate, he’d be pushing up the daisies! This is an ex-pigeon!… I sincerely hope John Cleese is reading this blog 🙂

    Ranya>> It’s all a scam, I tell you. What you do is, you pay a heck of a lot of money to buy these paintings, then somehow create enough hype so that the general populace, who can’t tell the difference between La Guernica and a house painting exercise gone horribly wrong, begins to believe that this is art. Then you sell out and buy yourself a nice little Vermeer with the money.

    Reply
  6. PV Avatar
    PV

    Ewwww – I thought the “inverted claw” was artistic license

    Now this “Pigeon with the Peas” sounds more like Hannibal Lecter’s “I’m having an old friend for dinner”

    Reply
  7. S Avatar
    S

    This talk of museums, paintings, Picasso…reminds me of something lovely I read about Matisse recently, where he attributes the limber lines in his paintings to the geometry of his emotions. He supposedly said in an interview: “I do not literally paint that table, but rather the emotion it produces upon me,” [When I don’t have the emotion] “then I do not paint. This morning, when I came to work, I had no emotion. So I took a horseback ride. When I returned, I felt like painting, and had all the emotion I wanted.” Small wonder he’s hard to pigeon hole. He’s like what Shahid says of Kareena in Jab We Met… an “original piece.”

    Reply

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