There is no doubt that technology can benefit art too. In an interesting turn of events, Artificial Intelligence(AI) has helped to recreate an artwork that had been lying hidden under a Pablo Picasso painting for nearly 120 years. The mysterious landscape slinked beneath the visible surface of Picasso’s La Misereuse Accroupie (The Crouching Beggar), a depiction of a poverty-stricken woman.
- In 2018, researchers used X-ray fluorescence imaging device to exhibit a faint image of the covered scene. Art historians had speculated it was a painting of a park near Barcelona by Santiago Rusinol, who was a companion of Picasso and the pioneer of the Catalan modernism movement that held its foot in Spain during Picasso’s blue period. They assumed Picasso outlined the hills on the landscape to shape the contours of the crouching woman’s back.
- Oxia Palus, an art collective famed for tapping lost masterpieces had initiated the recreation of this art. The team used an aggregate of spectroscopic imaging, AI, and 3D orienting to achieve the visible trace of the landscape. They then used a 3D height map to layer paint onto the canvas in a way Rusinol has styled. The approach combined the depth, solidity, estimated length of the Artist’s brushstrokes into the recreation.
- The x-ray imaging had unveiled a murky shadow of the painting and AI had been used to recreate the image in detail and color. “As we use more AI to expedite the identification and reconstruction of a critically important lost art, we will have a highly significant impact on enabling a better understanding of the interwoven history of art and society”, said Oxia Palus’ Co-Founder George Cann.
- Although it is not known how closely the recreated model actually resembles Rusinol’s original, but the procedure could be an impressive tool for art historians. Presently Oxia Palus is auctioning 100 of the canvasses with a necessary accompaniment of an NFT.
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