Museum Anatomy, Reproducing Paintings on the Human Body

Cleopatra’s Feast, after Jordeans (detail)

“Museum Anatomy” is an ongoing project by art duo Chadwick & Spector (Chadwick Gray and Laura Spector) to recreate paintings in museum collections by painting reproductions on a most unusual canvas: the human body. The elaborate process begins with a photograph of the work, after which Spector spends 5 to 18 hours reproducing the image on a body (usually Gray’s) with special effects makeup. The final artwork is a photograph of the completed body art. The duo has been working on “Museum Anatomy” since 1994. We previously posted about the project back in 2010.

Chadwick & Spector’s work will be on display at “The Big Show” at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, July 12 to August 10, 2013, and in a solo show at the Georgetown Arts and Cultural Center in Seattle, October 4 to November 3, 2013.

Guernica, after Picasso

Phramatawratneebeepmoipom, (Mother of the Land), Wat Umong

Madeline de France Queen of Scotland, after Corneille de Leon

Water after Archimboldo

Nell Gwynne as St. Catherine, after Sir Peter Lely

Cleopatra’s Feast (detail)

via Juxtapoz