About Dauernd Dürer

Dauernd Dürer refers to the great German medieval artist Albrecht Dürer. Dauernd means always because, well, we can digest his work 24/7 right? I found this sketch by Dürer which is pretty hilarious. It depicts - I hope I get this right - emperor Charles the Great/Charlemagne. I believe it is a sketch for his only commissioned panel painting for the Nuremberg's city council and shows a pair of portraits of the Emperors Charlemagne and Sigismund.

The drawing shows a cross eyed fat boy looking really silly. It’s quite a stretch to compare this youngster to the emperor on the painting. And where is the beard?

Albrecht Dürer, study

Emperor Charlemagne and Emperor Sigismund, c. 1512

I made this Photoshop collage in 2011 even before I found my medieval subject, although it is clear to see in what direction I was heading. Back then I really made an effort to richly decorate in the smallest details where one would’t expect it. I felt and still feel, you will sense the effort that’s been made even without consciously seeing it.

The silliness of the character can be forced into something else, I like to do that sometimes and it would really help, because for me the overall collage is important. A silly face draws too much attention, one could easily look at it for two seconds and then carry on. To prevent that I had to disrupt the image so that the spectator - you - will become curious about what you see.

I copied the hand holding the royal orb and stuck it up his face, BECOMING his face. To make it even more dominant, distinguish it from the original hand and just for the fun of it, I tweaked the contrast of the pixels quite a bit and scaled it up.

I love to use the lasso tool in Photoshop to cut out forms, because I cannot control it and it cuts razor sharp. I sliced the figure in half, then started playing with the surroundings taking the subject to a night sky and adding shades to make the weird body parts and cloths more convincing. Then I started painting in the existing image with all sorts of brushed, you can zoom in to see it more clearly.

The picture has a nice pixel of its own, which has a witty resemblance to paper fiber. I wanted to keep that. As a tribute to the master himself I lowered his signature and placed it in a nice spot.

That’s about all I want to share on this work. Please take a long hard look at Dauernd Dürer and discover even more. And feel free to share in the comments below what you have found!

Dauernd Dürer at HIC ET NUNC: 126480