Beautiful Women (in Portraits)

Here's an unbeatable combination: "500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art" accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma playing the sarabande from Bach's first cello suite in G Major. Simply breathtaking. (The creator is eggman913: click on the link for his other works.)

Watch it once for the pure enjoyment. (After my first viewing, I felt like I had had a glimpse of the archetypal woman.)  Watch it again to study it more closely, and select your favorites.

I counted approximately 85 women, with each morphing into the next about every two seconds or so. In this case, the morphing effect gives the portraits a 3-D feel (to me, at least). Also, because each woman is morphing into another woman, I felt that many of the "in-between" faces were also quite intriguing.  Notice that the basic proportions of the mouth-eyes-nose vary so little from one portrait to the next. I cared less for the portraits selected to represent the 20th century, and liked those from the 18th and 19th centuries best. My favorites were 2:22, 2:00,1:32,1:20,1:03, and :52 (time remaining).

Any thoughts?

Comments

[Becky McCray]

It occurred to me during the video, that these are all "Western" style portraits, then I went back and saw that was part of the title! It would be interesting to compare this with a compilation of portraits from around the globe.

Did you catch the PBS series with John Cleese about the human face? He interviewed an expert who had developed a set of geometric relationships that described our sense of beauty. That gets close to the proportions you are talking about and the idea of an achetype, I think.

And I also noticed the 3-d feeling as the images shifted. Very neat!

[Roger Anderson]

Roger,
Than you for pointing out this fantastic video. For me the interesting thing was that at first I wanted to know "How long is this going to take?" You find interesting things but I am pretty busy. Once I started watching I thought, "I wish it would pause just a little longer at each face." If the video had been listed as longer than 3 minutes I would not have watched it. I would have thought that I will try to watch it later, but I would have forgotten.

So, my favorite woman is still my wife, but for today, because she must have taught you so well, your mother is a close second. As for those gals in the paintings, well I don't know. They went by too fast.

[Roger von Oech]

Becky: Thanks for stopping by. I saw a version of this same video in which someone had substituting the Bach with some rap music. It had a very different feel.

Roger: You're a lucky man!

[Shakespeare's Fool]

Roger,
Beautiful indeed. Thank you.
Great music too.
John

[Leigh]

What an interesting video! It was interesting to watch how all of the features of the women, seemed to share the same features for awhile. (example eyes, nose shape)

[Roy Jacobsen]

I've only watched it once, but the thing that captured my attention through the whole thing was the eyes. I could not stop looking at the eyes.

Thanks for sharing this link, Roger.

[leiselb]

I'd say it creates an image of the archetypal white woman....
Because of that I find it lacking but still beautiful.

[Roger von Oech]

Leislb: Thanks for your comment. I should point out that the video's creator titled the work: "500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art." So the pool he's drawing from are essentially European women.

Now imagine if he had done a video titled "500 Years of Female Portraits in Japanese Art." And suppose someone said, "It creates an image of the archetypal Japanese women. Because of that I find it lacking but still beautiful." What would you say or think?

[raj]

Roger: You are definitely right. The music was beautiful, and the faces in between were just as fascinating as the originals.

I thought to myself that you can see a hugely different choice of models in the 20th century. My fave period is Art Nouveau, but in general I agree that the 20th century was not well-represented. There was also more fluidity in the transitions between earlier century paintings.

[Stephen Denny]

Fabulous video. I watched the eyes, too.

I was watching for my personal favorite but didn't see it -- Caravaggio's St. Catherine of Alexandria:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Catherine_(Caravaggio)

Thanks --