Young Girl Reading 1

Young Girl Reading 1 (and Young Girl Reading 2) are obviously based on the painting, Young Girl Reading by French artist Jean Honore Fragonard. Instead of making something up about this, I found this paragraph on the piece that had some interesting information...

In about 1769, Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted a group of works known today as his fantasy figures: vibrant canvases showing individual models garbed in fancy dress and rendered in notably loose brushwork and bright colours. Among the most beloved works in his oeuvre, these pictures are also the most mysterious and have therefore prompted the most debate—produced for unknown reasons, perhaps representing real individuals, perhaps not.

What grabbed me out of that grouping of words was the last sentence than implies the young girl in this incredibly popular and visually recognizable oil painting may have never existed, and this is where my brain starts to warp (possibly under the hot sun of which I am typing this).

In all my experiences (so far!) as a human on this planet, I have been accustomed to the idea that before photography or a "print/press" could replicate an image, to paint something, that "thing" had to be posed in front of you.  It must have been put in my head early from media I consumed. How many "life drawing" scenes in films have a naked person posing in front of a class of awkward students, or the trope of a bowl of fruit being used to study shadow and shape. This realisation, as humbling and embarrassing as it may be to admit, is just one of many ways I find myself "second guessing" what I know.

A large part of my admiration for these pieces was based around seeing AI start to replace common wall art in media. I believe it was initially the last season of True Detective (the one that took place in Alaska) that made me pause the show and inspect the shot, noticing that the posters on the wall were not real, rather, AI generated slop meant to look like a generic "metal band" poster.

Now, there are logical reasons you would want to use some anonymous piece of visual media in a television show. Licensing maybe? The idea that using a real life artist (especially musical) is a bit of a risk, who knows what allegations could come to light on Dave Mustaine, the lead signer/guitarist of MEGADETH. 

(I am not implying there is anything sus or devious about Mr. Mustaine but rather using a band of that stature as an example).

Maybe it's to benefit the idea of world building. That season of True Detective is exceptionally desolate feeling and there is actually very little "real world" media, in terms of music or visuals or content that the characters are assuming. So wouldn't it make sense to just throw something in the shot that has no real world association? 

Maybe.

But it was a giant red flag that my eyes immediately drew towards. Could you not have sourced a real poster? Could something made by an actual person be featured instead?  I mean, I supposed some living and breathing person prompted some sort of program to "create a poster for an upcoming concert of metal bands".  For now.

When I look at pieces like Young Girl Reading (1 or 2) I initially see "work". I see "lived experience" in embroidering these pieces. Somebody spent an awful lot of time hand making this gorgeous and detailed piece. When I think about the original piece that these needlepoint's are based on, I ASSUMED a young girl sat, reading while the artist worked on replicating her image in front of him, until I started writing this copy.

Have you ever looked at a light in the sky and not been able to make sense of it? It's happened a few times in my life where it NEVER made sense, but usually I find the simple explanation of what happens is a plane or helicopter is flying at the perfect angle towards you to make it seem like a light is hovering back and forth, and then, after minutes of scratching your head and telling yourself "there's something weird about that light", it makes a sharp turn and you see the blinking lights on the wing and realise it was a plane all along, just at a weird angle.

I tracked a strange light doing this for a good five or six minutes, coming over Woodchute Mountain south west of Sedona, Arizona. I had convinced my wife, and myself, something was up there. I tried taking video with my phone, it looked like garbage. 

Eventually after working myself up, it became the thing it always was, a plane. I had that same feeling in my stomach of second guessing what I thought was real. Or authentic. Second guessing whether I could be "Wrong" about something I was "sure" about.

The idea planted in my head that "Young Girl Reading" may have never existed does something funny to my mind. I start scanning some of the other pieces I love. Like the Horse piece that hangs on our bedroom wall. We refer to it as "Our Boy". I've built a world around imagining this horse being painted, then replicated in needlepoint. I think about it with buildings like "Orange Cottage". Does that place that appears to be set in a slice of heaven actually exist?  Is thinking so foolish? Does it even matter?

I believe that's where I leave this piece. If "Young Girl Reading" was a young girl, she definitely isn't now and is likely somewhere around 275 years old. So I don't think any amount of internet sleuthing is going to track down her whereabouts. Maybe for the better? Maybe Fragonard was working on the same plane of thinking as the set designers for True Detective.