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Hidden under a 1903 canvas, a Picasso nude "restored" using artificial intelligence

2021-10-24T04:23:57.685Z


Identified in 2010 in The Meal of the Blind Man, a study was reconstructed and 3D printed by British researchers, in order to reproduce this unfinished canvas.


The blue Picasso was hiding another. Preserved at the Metropolitan Museum in New York since 1950,

The Meal of the Blind Man

hides its game well. Bent over her pittance, a stump of bread in her palm, a small pitcher brushed with her fingertips, a male figure in the periwinkle scarf appears elsewhere. Perhaps he thinks of the woman, squatting and naked, who lives in him? This is not a chimera; Out of sight, under the surface of the pigments of this canvas painted in 1903 by Pablo Picasso, a feminine silhouette unfolds. Identified in 2010, thanks to an X-ray analysis of the painting, it comes back to life today with a life-size reproduction produced by two researchers from University College London.

Read alsoIn Lens, the story of love and hate between Picasso and the Louvre revealed

Anthony Bourached and George Cann are not, however, late painters of the Picassian school, or virtuoso imitators of the Spanish artist.

They are, however, specialists in neurology and physics.

As part of their artistic project Oxia Palus, the two researchers are working to revive a selection of lost canvases, using artificial intelligence and 3D printing;

a system already used on a canvas by Amedeo Modigliani and on a landscape by Picasso discovered in the pigmented cuts of the

Squatting Miséreuse

.

Picasso's lost painting reconstructed and printed in 3D.

Oxia Palus

For

The Meal of the Blind Man,

the scientists thus worked from a refined statement of the painting obtained by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The process allows them to find the outline of the first drawing captured by Picasso on the canvas, that they subjected to an artificial neural network. Sharpened to the different paints and to the artist's style, artificial intelligence embroidered to reconstruct with plausibility the entirety of the original work, unfinished and covered by the scene of the man seated at the table.

The reconstruction of the crouching woman proposed by the artificial intelligence was then printed in 3D, with a relief reproduction of the texture of the canvas and the brushstrokes of the Spaniard.

Completed by a machine, more than a century after being repainted by Picasso, this hybrid work was presented from October 13 to 17 at the Morf Gallery, in London, on the occasion of the AI ​​Art fair dedicated to the works of art made using artificial intelligences.

On the left, the trace of Picasso's original canvas discovered in 2010, thanks to X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, under

The Meal of the Blind Man.

On the right, the reconstruction proposed using artificial intelligence.

University College London / Oxia Palus

The woman of

La Vie

"I hope Picasso would be happy to know that the treasure he had hidden for future generations is finally unveiled,"

George Cann said in a statement from University College London.

“We suspect Picasso probably reluctantly painted over this work,

” commented Anthony Bourached.

His works from the Blue Period often ended like this, because he was still at the beginning of his career and the materials were expensive. "

To read also "Picasso abused women, like Harvey Weinstein", according to the artist Olafur Eliasson

The crouching nude hidden behind

The Meal of the Blind Man

is not entirely foreign to Picasso's body of work. As the two researchers indicate, the general silhouette of the anonymous woman can be found in a few other works by the artist, such as

La Vie

, kept at the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as in various sketches. A possible clue of the “affinities” that the painter may have had for the model, suggest Anthony Bourached and George Cann. Unless it is, in a more prosaic way, one of the many re-uses of the painter then in financial difficulties.

Despite the technical feat, the crouching woman reconstructed from the original drawing

of The Blind Man's Meal

did not thrill American curator Gary Tinterow, who oversaw the 2010 discovery of the pictorial vestige hidden in Picasso's painting. .

"I prefer to look at the spectroscopy, because I know at least every line there is from Picasso

," he said according to the

Sunday Telegraph

.

Much of the information provided by the visual reconstruction produced by artificial intelligence, on the other hand, does not seem to correspond to Picasso's paw. "

Whether it's Picasso or an artificial intelligence, the naked chimera of the blind man won't light up his days anytime soon.

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2021-10-24

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