Hidden in Plain Sight?

The Arlington Artists Alliance recently announced they will be having a "Where's Waldo"-esque juried show at Gallery Underground this August titled "Hiding in Plain Sight." This is an intriguing call to artists, who will be required to hide a symbol somewhere in their piece.

The iconic "search" symbol

Familiar to everyone who has ever looked for anything on the Internet (that would be...all of us), the iconic symbol for "search," a magnifying glass, is the symbol that will be required to show up big, small, in the folds of clothing, the trunk of a tree...it will be up to the artist to hide it and the viewer to find it.

Katharine Hepburn by Al Hirschfeld

Famous caricature artist Al Hirschfeld was known for hiding his daughter Nina's name in his work, and would indicate after his signature how many times the name appeared. Many a child and adult alike have been fascinated with trying to spot all the names. In this rendering of Katharine Hepburn, you can spot one in the far left leaf on her collar...depending on how much time you have, you may be able to find the rest in the crazy hair.

Dan Brown's book "The Da Vinci Code" comes to mind when thinking about hidden codes, but theories on hidden objects and messages in famous works of art abound. There is an entire website, www.vangoghcontroversy.com, devoted to the notion that Van Gogh's works were full of hidden messages and pictures, many related to religion. The site puts forth that a donkey, representing the biblical depiction of Christ entering Jerusalem on a donkey, can clearly be seen in the shape of the beard in one of the many portraits Van Gogh painted of postman Joseph Roulin. Of course, like those optical illusion puzzles, once you see it, it will drive you crazy because that's all you'll see.

Van Gogh's Postman Roulin

Another version of things "Hidden in Plain Sight" in paintings (actually, not so plain sight; in this case just hidden) is the new scientific technology that has evolved, which has enabled museums and art conservators to discover earlier versions of paintings underneath famous works of art. One example is Picasso's "The Blue Room," which was recently discovered, through infrared scanning, to have been painted over an earlier work, a portrait of an unknown man in a bow tie.

In another recent fascinating discovery, scientists at the Winterthur Museum's Scientific Research and Analysis Laboratory found that beneath a study for a family portrait by N.C. Wyeth lay another painting. The painting was a full color illustration Wyeth did for a magazine short story. In the magazine, the illustration appeared only in black and white; so until this painting was revealed using x-ray imaging, it had not been known that it had been done in color. Many artists who provided illustrations for magazines did them in shades of gray if they knew they would be reproduced without color.

We look forward to seeing how artists will meet the challenge of hiding the search symbol within their works for the juried show; possibly years later these works will be the subject of much debate among art historians.

--Sandi Parker, Co-Director, Gallery Underground