Over and Over Again

August 3, 2011 5:45 AM

Who and what are some examples of artists who painted or created the exact same thing every day?

I know there's a few, but Google is showing me much too broad of results. Thanks!

posted by Unred to Media & Arts (17 answers total)

Not exactly the same thing, but Giorgio Morandi spent much of his career painting studies of the same few household objects in slightly different constellations.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 5:55 AM on August 3, 2011

Monet did a whole series of the Rouen Cathedral.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:02 AM on August 3, 2011

This might be a short twist on the answer, but Steve Keene paints the same thing on multiple canvases at once.
posted by deezil at 6:04 AM on August 3, 2011

I'm reminded of the individually-painted but mass-produced copies of masterpieces or over-sized "hotel room" art done in China.
posted by tyllwin at 6:18 AM on August 3, 2011

Monet did went through a haystack period, too.
posted by jquinby at 6:24 AM on August 3, 2011

'did went'? Sheesh.
posted by jquinby at 6:31 AM on August 3, 2011

Kevin Day and Stefan Janssen are two examples of photographers who return to the same tree in all kinds of weather, every season, different times of day.
posted by aimedwander at 6:41 AM on August 3, 2011

Ragnar Kjartansson had a piece at the 2009 Venice Biennale where he painted a new picture of his friend every day for six months. Here's a New York Times article about it.

This is not a real artist, but Inspector Wallander's father in Henning Mankell's Wallander series is a commercial painter who paints the same nature scene over and over again, the only alteration being that sometimes he paints a grouse, and sometimes he doesn't.
posted by Kattullus at 7:01 AM on August 3, 2011

I recall, many ages ago, reading a story about a photographer who bought an women's swimsuit when his daughter was born and proceeded to take a photo of his daughter with the swimsuit once a year, every year, until his daughter had grown up and into the swimsuit.

My Google-fu fails me in finding this, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:02 AM on August 3, 2011

Have a look at On Kawara
posted by Chairboy at 7:07 AM on August 3, 2011

Cezanne painted Sainte Victoire mountain over and over again.
posted by Paquda at 7:37 AM on August 3, 2011

They might be a little more different than what you had in mind, but Metafilter's own dpcoffin paints the sky every day. He also paints other things.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:15 AM on August 3, 2011

I saw an Art:21 episode which featured an artist who paints star fields (think of the night sky) over and over and over and over and over again.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 9:16 AM on August 3, 2011

Bryan Lewis Saunders drew pictures of himself everyday for a few weeks whilst under the influence of different drugs, with the changes in how he viewed himself being quite clearly dramatic.
posted by blaisedell at 9:24 AM on August 3, 2011

Not only does Jonathan Borofsky return to the same few iconic images over and over again, but he's done projects where he filled entire spiral-bound notebooks with a single world, or numbers, if I recall right.

Similarly, Keith Haring often drew the same iconic images over and over -- a crawling baby that radiated lines, a television set, a wolf-headed man.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:25 AM on August 3, 2011

Oh, and Chuck Close has been painting variations of his own face for decades now.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:27 AM on August 3, 2011

One of my professors from college did this. Harold Pearse drew his dog in a sketchbook every day for years (when he went on a trip during a sabbatical he took a stencil of his dog with him and did variations on colouring it in and stuff every day even). He had his drawings in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta and they were displayed as a stack of moleskins almost up to my shoulder stacked against a wall. He's not quite as famous as Chuck Close or anything, but he is a working artist who does exactly what you're talking about.
posted by Sweetchrysanthemum at 4:03 PM on August 3, 2011