Smile Now — Contest Over

Posted by Jon, onehumanbeing on November 1, 2009

Smile Now Con­test — Over…

And we have NO win­ners, but the runner-up prizes of Red­bot Loves You! but­ton sets will be sent out to the clos­est guesses.

Answers to The Smile Now Contest …

Artist Name: Willem de Kooning

Painting’s Name: Woman 1

About the paint­ing (from the MOMA web­site)

De Koon­ing took an unusu­ally long time to cre­ate Woman, I, mak­ing numer­ous pre­lim­i­nary stud­ies and repaint­ing the work repeat­edly. The hulk­ing, wild–eyed sub­ject draws upon an amal­gam of female arche­types, from Pale­olithic fer­til­ity god­desses to con­tem­po­rary pin–up girls. Her threat­en­ing stare and fero­cious grin are height­ened by de Kooning’s aggres­sive brush­work and fran­tic paint appli­ca­tion. Com­bin­ing volup­tuous­ness and men­ace, Woman, I reflects the age–old cul­tural ambiva­lence between rev­er­ence for and fear of the power of the feminine.

The Clues…

• Tues­day — Octo­ber 13, 2009 - The artist is NOT Andy Warhol…
• Wednes­day — Octo­ber 14, 2009 — The weld­ing mask and the artist’s name have a pho­netic con­nec­tion… try stretch­ing the sound and play­ing with the word “weld­ing” :) (try sound­ing that out now that you know the answer is Willem de Koon­ing — I know, it’s a really stretch)
• Thurs­day — Octo­ber 15, 2009 — This artist was mar­ried and their spouse was also an artist. (mar­ried to Elaine de Kooning)
• Fri­day — Octo­ber 16, 2009 — This artist came from Europe and did their major work in the United States.
• Sun­day — Octo­ber 18, 2009 — This artist was an Abstract Expres­sion­ist painter.
• Mon­day — Octo­ber 19, 2009 — The cut-out and attached smile is a big clue. (the big goofy smile on Woman I came from a cut-out mag­a­zine smile, I was think­ing about that when I first made the weld­ing mask smile the attach…)

Thanks for participating!

In reflec­tion, this might have been pretty obscure, it seemed obvi­ous to me at the time…