America’s queen of opera

Morley, Malcolm (1931-2018)

Meola, Eric (born 1946) (after a work of)


Item type:
painting
Date of creation:
1971
Height:
152.4 cm  (60 in.)
Width:
122.6 cm  (48 1/4 in.)
Technique / Medium:
oil on canvas

Description

This painting is based on the cover of Time magazine's issue vol.98, no.21, of November 22, 1971, with photo credit to Eric Meola. Commentary on museum website:
Malcolm Morley is often considered the first artist to have worked in a Photorealist style. As early as 1965, he made an unexpectedly realistic painting of a postcard, and throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s his paintings were based on printed photographic images. He rendered some of these with illusionistic detail, creating works that could trick the viewer’s eye. In others, such as America’s Queen of Opera, based on a Time magazine cover story about the opera singer Beverly Sills, Morley lets viewers see how he made photographic images into paintings: by overlaying the photograph with a grid and then transferring the image to the canvas, square by square. This work both illustrates the transformation of a popular image into a painting and breaks down photographic illusion.

People as subjects

Sills, Beverly (1929-2007) (Musician portrait)

Iconclass

48C514(+431)
picture, painting ( + copy, copying ~ work of art)
52A41
Idea, Concept; 'Idea' (Ripa)
61BB2(BEVERLY SILLS)11
historical person (BEVERLY SILLS) - BB - woman - historical person (BEVERLY SILLS) portrayed alone
48C8313
portrait of opera-singer
46D4
weekly, monthly, magazine, etc.

RIdIM images


Image URLs

image link 1

Bibliographic references

Storr, Robert. Malcolm Morley in a nutshell: The fine art of painting 1954–2012, exhibition catalogue (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University School of Art, 2012) 47, fig. 3.

RIdIM record id

6124