愛惠旗艦店

畫家Piven為BMG最近推出的一系列15張精選碟繪製封面。Piven以人像畫(尤以面部)見長，過去12年來得獎無數，他的畫作從Madonna到教宗都有，且屢被刊登於Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, New York Times等主流媒體。

然而畫風一向幽默且略帶諷刺意味的他，這次卻遇到了難題─這次他得正經些，卻同時不失他自己的風格。

15個封面裡，貓王、Iggy Pop、凱莉米諾對他來說都不成問題，最令他感到棘手的卻是惠妮。Why? 「她的臉部線條非常精緻，幾條線畫得不對，整個感覺就變了。」Piven說。「其他的封面幾天就可完成，惠妮的卻花了我兩個月。」

Piven筆下的惠妮是短髮的，他自有一番見解：「我畫畫時尋找的是一種獨特性，一種極端性，一種視覺上的相徵特色。惠妮很漂亮，我認為她以前的短髮造型讓她非常具有特色，但當她走black panther風時，她看起來跟其他女人沒什麼不同。」

雖然Piven不怎麼愛聽流行音樂，他下一個畫畫的目標很可能還是個流行音樂的偶像 - Britney Spears。

Elvis, Iggy, no problem. But Whitney...
Source: Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co., the Electronic New Paper
By Jeanmarie Tan

WHITNEY Houston, we have a problem.

It figures that art would imitate life when it comes to the R&B diva. Just ask Israeli caricaturist Hanoch Piven, who was asked to design the album covers for the recently-released BMG Artist Collection 14-CD compilation a year ago.

It features artistes like Santana, Kenny G, Kylie Minogue, Iggy Pop, TLC and Elvis Presley among others.

Piven uses everyday objects to make his colourful, minimal and witty 3-D portraits come alive. And even though it looks the most simple, Houston's proved to be the most difficult to draw, according to Piven, 41.

Where Iggy Pop or Kylie Minogue took him only days to complete, Houston took him two months.

He told The New Paper over the phone from Barcelona: 'It's harder to do women than men. Whitney does have some gestures that are very sweet and nice and delicate, like when she opens her mouth or her semi-closed-eye gaze.

 
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'But there's a fine line between cuteness and grotesqueness, so it was a question of capturing her joy and laughter without making it look grotesque.

'Her facial gestures are so delicate that a couple of lines could bring it here or there.'

According to Piven, the more extreme-looking the artistes and the more they lend themselves to humour, the easier it was to connect with them.

Which is why he also had a hard time with R&B diva Toni Braxton's 'generic look'.

Piven explained: 'I look for the difference, the extreme, the visually iconic. She's beautiful, and she used to look special when she had short hair. But once she went for the black panther look, she looks like so many other women.'

In the last 12 years, Piven's award-winning work - the most famous being Faces: 78 Portraits From Madonna To The Pope - has been published in Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times and many more.

But the BMG Artist Collection was a different project for him.

'Usually my job is to create humorous satirical portraits, but the challenge is to find something respectful and glamorise the image yet keep it honest and comfortable for me,' he explained.

Even though he's not a great fan of pop music, Britney Spears may be next on his to-do list. 'I am interested in celebrities from an anthropological point of view, so I would like to explore her image.'