Hey, thought it would be fun to spruce the place up a bit.  Come on you know you have a favorite chess painting, sculpture, poem, set.  Do your part to beautify chess.com, track that chess art down and insert it right here for everybody to enjoy.  If you feel up to it (after the effort of tracking the work down and uploading) it would be a nice touch to tell a little about what the piece means to you or why you chose it :)

Thought this Veronica Kasatkina painting "Night" would be a good way to start it off   Plus hey, its got phish in it ;)

There was a desktop I had that was a sort of 'chess city,' but I don't remember where I got it. If someone knows what I am talking about, please post it. That was my favorite piece of chess art.

Here is a portrait of M. Tal I created- Photoshop and filters

That's pretty cool (it or not) Quix, was hoping somebody would know what he was talking about and post up :)

Anaid, wow, the idea of original art works submitted by the artists themselves had not even occurred to me, thanks so much (friend ;)

Hmm, almost be disappointed if there where not more such submissions hint hint.  Not above dropping you artists and writers a note wink wink. 

Well, what to say about "David und Goliath spielen schach"
by Siegfried Zademack.  This is IMHO one of the most interesting fine art pieces involving chess.

One more Zademack, I also find this one quite interesting....although a little spooky.

Great idea.   Thanks for the posts. 

This ones for my friend Rael #;)

La Tuffo Barcsik "Time Out"

Another Barcsik, "Aldozat (Prey)"

Part of the inspiration for starting this thread was just that, inspiration.  That which feeds our fire for the game.  Please feel free to join in the fun....painting, photography, sculpture, poetry, film, games, music ect.

phishcake5 wrote:

 This ones for my friend Rael #;)

La Tuffo Barcsik "Time Out"

 Haha that's exactly how I've felt lately about chess too, and it's weird because the pose is similar to my avatar, heh.

right click, set as background...

Escher, I believe....

It's high time we got some poetry in here.  Since this has been mainly painting so far I thought the Octavio Paz poem "A Fable of Joan Miro" would be a nice way to introduce writing to the thread.  It's not about chess but seems to fit somehow.  

                              A Fable of Joan Miro

Blue was immobilized between red and black.
The wind came and went over the page of the plains,
lighting small fires, wallowing in the ashes,
went off with its face sooty, shouting on the corners,
the wind came and went, opening, closing windows and doors,
came and went through the twilit corridors of the skull,
the wind in a scrawl, with ink-stained hands
wrote and erased what it had written on the wall of the day.
The sun was no more than an omen of the color yellow,
a hint of feathers, a cock's future crow
The snow had gone astray, the sea had lost its speech
and was a wandering murmur, a few vowels in search of a word.

Blue was immobilized, no one saw it, no one heard:
red was a blind man, black a deaf mute.
The wind came and went, asking, Where's Joan Miro gone?
He had been here from the beginning, but  the wind hadn't seen him:
immobilized between blue and red, black and yellow,
Miro was a transparent mirage, a mirage with seven hands.
Seven hands in the form of ears, to hear the seven colors,
seven hands in the form of feet, to climb the seven steps of the rainbow,
seven hands in the form of roots, to be everywhere and in Barcelona at
     the same time.

Miro was a mirage with seven hands.
With the first hand, he beat the drum of the moon,
with the second, he scattered birds in the garden of the wind,
with the third, he rattled the dice-cup of the stars,
with the fourth, he wrote The Legend of the Centuries of Snails,
with the fifth, he planted islands in the chest of green,
with the sixth, he created a woman by mixing night and water, music
     and electricity,
with the seventh, he erased everything he had made and started over
     again.

Red opened its eyes, black mumbled something incoherent, and blue
     got up.
None of them could believe what it saw:
were those eight hawks or eight umbrellas?
The eight spread their wings and flew off, disappearing through a broken
     windowpane.

Miro set fire to his canvases.
Lions and spiders burned, women and stars,
the sky filled with triangles, spheres, discs, hexahedrons in flames,
the blaze consumed the planetary farmer planted in the middle of space,
butterflies, flying fish, wheezing phonographs sprouted from the ash-
     heap,
but between the holes in the charred paintings
blue space came back, and the swallow's flash, the foliage of the clouds,
     and the flowering rod:
it was spring insisting, insisting with its green airs.
In the face of such luminous stubbornness, Miro scratched his head with
     his fifth hand,
muttering to himself, I work like a gardener.

A garden of stones of of boats?  Pulleys or ballerinas?
Blue, black and red ran through the meadows,
the stars walking naked, but the shivering hills snuggled under the
     sheets,
there were portable volcanoes and artificial fires at home.
The two ladies who guard the entrance to the doors of perception,
     Geometry and Perspective,
had taken Miro's arm and gone for a bit of air, singing Une etoile caresse
     le sein d'une negresse.

The wind turned around on the page of the plains, lifted its head and
     said, But where's Joan Miro gone?
He had been here from the biginning and the wind hadn't seen him:
Miro was a transparent mirage where hectic alphabets came and went.
These were not letters coming and going through the tunnels of his eyes:
they were living things that joined and split apart, embraced, gnawed
     on each other and scattered,
running over the page in frantic, multicolored rows, they had tails and
     horns,
some were covered with scales, others with feathers, others were stark
     naked,
and the words, they formed were palpable, audible, edible, but unpro-
     nounceable,
these were not letters but sensations these were not sensations but trans-
     figurations.

And for what?  To scratch a line in the hermit's cell,
to light the moon-head of a peasent with a sunflower,
to welcome the night that comes with its blue characters and festival
     birds,
to hail death with a round of geraniums,
to say good morning to morning when it comes without ever asking
     where it comes from or where it goes,
to remember that a waterfall is a girl coming down the stairs dying of
     laughter,
to see the sun and its planets swinging on the trapeze of the horizon,
to learn to see so that things will see us and come and go through our
     fall.

Sight is seed, to see is to sow, Miro works like gardener
and with his seven hands endlessly sketches--circle and tail, oh! and
     ah!--
that great exclamation with which the world begins each day.

                                    Octavio Paz 

(if your feeling a little adventurous its fun to sub the name Tal for Miro in places:)

"Fevrier/ February (Les Mois-Les Etats Du Moi/ The Months - The Moods Calendar) - Reflexion"

Marc D. Richier's calender series, are all symbolically rich....I'll include my three favorites here.

"Avril/April  Futilite"

"Novembre/Novermber  Agressivite"

(my month:)

Congratulations phishcake5, great posts !!!!!!!!!

I tried to put 2 images but gives error, dont know why... :-(

Aad Van Den Bosch   "Composite 3"

       Riding the Elephant

That's me up there on the elephant
smiling
with my mouth closed,
clutching the bar
that has just been fastened
across the box I'm caged in.

The ground seems farther
than it should be.  The beggars
can't reach us.

The elephant lifts one wrinkled leg
and puts it down
and I think I'll tip over.
When there's no danger I invent it
the way I invent India.

The path is steep
all the way to the palace.
I let myself be happy a little,
squinting into the sun,
even hanging on tight.  As if
I am still on my father's back,
hugging his neck,
his slippery shoulders
as he rides me to bed.

The palace is crumbling,
incandescent and pink
as the fevers of childhood,
green parrots flapping
through the trees, glittery dust
on the broken tiles.

I want to be dazzled. I want
to be lifted into the room
where mirrors tremble on every surface
when a match is struck,
to look at myself on the ceiling
tinseled with light, my body
rippling in the crazed glass.

It's the same body.  The same awful bulk
I sit on in the grainy air.
I just have to hold on steady
while the long sinews of the mind weave
leisurely, like a trunk
that scoops up everything.

Shirley Kaufman

Kurt Waite  "Intensity"

I painted this several months ago in photoshop.  No reference, just off the top of my head.

"

Very nice. You are talented. I couldn't do that in a million years.....even if I  knew how