2011-05-30

Featured photo of hyperrealistic painting of photo... self-nom with virus?

The most fascinating candidate for the Wikimedia Commons Picture Of The Year, if not the best image, is this photograph of a painting of a photograph of sliced honeydew melon on crystal and silver:

Fruttiera di cristallo con meloni (1999), by Mauro David
David died in January 2007.[0]  In February, someone claiming the rights to the work created a Commons account named Mauro David and uploaded the image there, tweaking its description in Italian.  45 minutes later – perhaps time spent browsing Commons and learning how it works – the uploader tried twice to nominated it as a featured picture, but did not understand how to create the nominating page and was reverted.[1]

It is a high-resolution version of one of the thumbnails in the the Mauro David catalog.  Last March Xhienne finally nominated it properly, and it was soon featured and used as an illustration of hyperreaslism.

I am a great fan of hyperrealism, and admire David's work.  I find it tremendously uplifting that we have a high-quality image of his donated to Commons.  To his estate: thank you.  To Commons: may you attract many more gems of contemporary art.


[0] For an English summary, see the Humanities Reference Desk discussion about this story from en:wp.

[1] Reverted twice by two different editors for being listed improperly; neither had time to leave the uploader a personal message.

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