Giant Mona Lisa Portrait from Composite Self-Portraits for Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year

Sky Arts have utilised two of the staple PR commandments to drive awareness for the launch of their new Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year series; “thou shalt make something massive and make a cool picture-story” along with “thou shalt create a national poll to create facts/controversy”. As The Mona Lisa was chosen by the public as the nation’s favourite portrait of all time, controversy wasn’t going to be the hook; but it does make a lovely picture – as such, Sky commissioned a 14m high instillation of the famous image, but to bring it up to the digital age, it is composed of 84 composite self-portraits by entrants to the competition.

The picture and easel, the brainchild of digital artist Quentin Devinetook, took a team of fabricators over two months to design and construct, and the canvas is 85 times bigger than the original portrait which hangs in the Louvre. Devinetook said “Updating Da Vinci’s masterpiece to a 21st century digital piece of art has been one of the largest scale digital art projects I’ve worked on in my 13 years of being a multimedia artist. It was a great challenge to combine the rich talents of the portrait artists competing for the accolade of Sky Arts Portrait of the Year.”

This stunt was the work of Taylor Herring and has achieved national and regional pick up with outlets including Metro Online, ITN and Daily Mirror Online all running stories. The competition, broadcast tonight (05/11/13) at 8pm, is hosted by Joan Bakewell and Frank Skinner, and searches for the best young artists with heats at art festivals in London, Glasgow, Dublin and Cardiff.

 

 

 

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