Our eyes have a special place for the human face and figure. In almost any image we see, that’s where our eyes go first. But what if those eye-catching humans were removed? Spanish artist José Manuel Ballester did that with his series “Hidden spaces” (Espacios occultos), removing all the people from classic paintings to reveal the scene left behind. You’ve never noticed the background like this before.
Ballester’s work encourages us to look at these classics anew, and perhaps walk away with a different story behind their significance. In paintings like Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of Medusa” we are no longer witness to the a drama of shipwrecked passengers fighting for survival, but instead something far more desolate and bleak – an empty raft alone at sea. Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica has an entirely different result. Here, instead of the horrors of war, we are treated to a calm still life, an empty room.
Find more on the series as josemanuelballester.com or at Guggenheim Bilbao.
Above: Las Meninas – Diego Velázquez, 1656
The Raft of Medusa – Théodore Géricault, 1819
The Birth of Venus – Sandro Botticelli, c.1486
Guernica – Pablo Picasso, 1937
The Allegory of Painting – Jan Vermeer, 1668
The Last Supper – Leonardo da Vinci, 1498
Christ Crucified – Diego Velázquez, 1632
The Third of May 1808 – Francisco Goya, 1814
(via BoredPanda)