The Black Forest is a large forested mountain range, located in southwestern Germany. It is the setting for many Grimm Brothers fairy tales due to the mythological landscape of the forest.
This bronze sculpture, named Poppy, is situated near the Ascot racecourse. It depicts an emaciated horse with its head bowed and a string of barbed wire around its hooves. It stands as a memorial to the one million British, Allied and Commonwealth horses, donkeys and pack mules who were forced to participate in World War One. Out of that one million, only 62,000 returned home from the battlefield. Most died in the mud of the battlefield from bullet injuries, disease, starvation, exhaustion and pneumonia.
Miyu Kojima works for a company that cleans up after kodokushi: a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining uncovered for a period of time. “Lonely death” is an increasingly common phenomenon in a county with an ageing population. Once the bodies are removed, Miyu and her colleagues enter the homes to scrub them down and sort through their belongings. To preserve and document the scene, Miyu creates miniature replicas and the outcome depicts a lonely and bleak existence.
Before the computing era, ILM was the master of oil matte painting, making audiences believe that some of the sets in the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogy were real when they weren’t. They were the work of geniuses like Chris Evans,Michael Pangrazio,Frank Ordaz, Harrison Ellenshaw and Ralph McQuarrie! Forever thank you, to their handmade art and the work of their colleagues, that made us dream of impossible worlds and fantastic places across Earth and the Universe.
There are more background paintings on this article, featuring comments by the masters/artists themselves !
Some of the following pieces were made by other artists 2:
exCUSE ME?!?!!??!??! TheYRE PAINTINGS?!??!!?!
SHUT UP I thought they were miniatures!!!!
It’s too beautiful. I could cry.
I love this because I’ll be watching a movie and think “how did they do that? Is that a building they built for this movie? Was it there beforehand? Is it cardboard or CGI? Is that actually some place on Earth that they’re filming?” And the answer to all of these now is “nope, that’s a painting”. I can’t believe some of the most iconic, familiar shots were paintings!
