The world-wide Corona-crisis stopped many plans and projects, unfortunately also for me. It is impossible to safely work with a model, when there are so many restrictions on it. Let’s hope that this situation will be over soon.

Oftentimes, my followers and fans ask where I get my ideas for creating body-paintings. My inspiration mostly comes from visual stimulation. I might see something on my way, or read about a certain subject, and here it comes. In the following example, I will show how one source inspired one of my projects, after having already inspired another artist before.

Let’s take the similarity of the torso of the woman to the form of the violin. I used a ‘multi-image’ photo in 1992 to demonstrate this, but without the use of body-painting. See the picture below.

Multiplied violins: Nude model with a violin in my studio

Seven years later I saw the work of the American artist Man Ray (1890-1976), who added the sound/f-holes to the back of his model, and I liked this idea. I then decided to add another development: painting not only the f-holes, but the whole violin. This idea leans on more art-works. How?

The French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) painted the same figure twice: His own The Bather was painted in 1808, and it was his first masterpiece. Fifty years later he used this figure for his masterpiece The Turkish Bath (1859). Both women been painted by Ingres are shown naked, from behind and wearing a turban.

Man Ray was inspired by Ingres’s figures. He painted the f-holes of a violin on the photo print, and then photographed the print, calling it Le Violon d’Ingres.

I saw the work of Man Ray and decided to complete the f-holes to be a whole violin. Thanks to the cooperation of the German body-painter Barbara Ingenhaag, it became the third in this cross-centuries line of art works, now encompassing a full body-painting.

Ingres, Man Ray, Amit Bar

You see all three works side by side on photo 2. To distort and exaggerate the humoristic side of the creation I asked the model to curve her torso, bending the violin and making it surrealistic.

Violin III: Body-painted model as a violin

See my art projects: Multiplied violins and Violins.