Smokin'

One trick that is currently being over-used by art writers when ideas have dried up (we’re looking at you Jonathan Jones of the Guardian) is cobbling together groups of themed art works. Think of it as curation-lite. You know, ‘paintings with clocks’, ‘great sunsets’ that sort of thing. In New Zealand some enterprising writer could use Rita Angus’s well-known self portrait as the touch stone. Start with a fantastic quote (say Garbo's “I smoke all the time, one after another”) and pull together a bunch of other paintings of women with cigarettes. 

Pulling an idea like this together is actually quite simple - a quick crawl through Google with a couple of key words followed by a touch of Photo shopping and an ambiguous title - Smokin' for instance. Cheap and cheesy. Bound to happen.

Images: Top to bottom, left to right, Rita Angus's Self portrait and Pablo Picasso’s Woman with cigarette, After the thrill is gone by Jack Vettriano, The plum and Portrait of an Indian woman by Édouard Manet, The guitar player by David Rijckaert III, Australian painter Agnes Goodsir's Girl with cigarette and Smoker #3 (Mouth #17) by Tom Wesselmann.