How we chose the winners of Become a Fauvist and more about the process of the competition on Flickr.

It’s now three months since 30 July when we threw ourselves into this photo initiative in parallel with the Kees van Dongen exhibition of the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, and last week the short-listed pictures in the Become a Fauvist competition were posted up on Facebook and Flickr. Now, on the blog, we’d like to let you share the sensations of those three months of competition and, above all, show you the winning photos and some of the runners-up.

Become a Fauvist was exciting for us: this was the first interactive experience that we have organized with your help and your contributions. Using Flickr we were able to enjoy this participation to the full, and thanks to your enthusiastic response to the initiative - and taking advantage of the city festivities - extended the competition an extra week to give those of you who still hadn’t snapped the photo you were looking for a little more time.

The jury responsible for selecting the finalists and the winners was made up of the Director of the Museum and the heads of the following departments: Publications, Press and Communication, Photographic Archive and Internet.

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The Digital Image in the Museu Picasso: a Project in Collaboration with the University

On the 7th and 8th of October I attended as a representative of the Museu Picasso at the two lectures by Carles Mitjà, a professor at the UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), spoke at the Working Sessions on the control of image quality at the Sonimag photo & multimedia fair. I am still asking myself how I, with my very limited knowledge of the digital image, came to be taking part in a speech full of algorithms on digital image quality… This is, then, a story of collaboration and mutual enrichment.

When I joined at the Museu Picasso just over a year ago the Director expressed his very real concern about the issue of ‘photography’ in the Museum. Despite my background of 14 years working in the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona, I remember insisting that I could introduce some degree of order and establish organizational and conceptual criteria, but that what was needed in the twenty-first century was digital images, about which I knew very little. I realized that the Director and I saw eye to eye on this, both of us aware of the importance of the issue for the proper functioning of the Museum, but we were also aware of the magnitude of the tragedy. So with this in mind I set to work.

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‘Become a Fauvist’: The Voting Has Started

The big day is here! Are you ready to vote for your favourite photo? A little more than two months after the announcement of the Museum’s ‘Become a Fauvist’ competition, organized by our official Flickr community group to coincide with the Kees van Dongen exhibition, the time has come to start the vote.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support and participation, because we’re delighted to say that your response to the competition was extraordinary - so extraordinary that we had to extend it by an extra week! You sent in almost 300 photos to our first-ever competition on Flickr, with the theme of ‘Become a Fauvist’. The basic idea was that the colours should be the dominant element in the photograph, and that you should experiment, using your imagination and creativity to pay a small personal tribute to Fauve art.

In the first place, we want to congratulate all of you who took part - the quality of your pictures deserves the highest praise, as you can see below:

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Only a few weeks left to Become a Fauvist in the Museu Picasso competition on Flickr

October 4 is the new closing date for sending in your photos to the competition we are organizing on Flickr, the photography social network that lets you share pictures with other internet users. Specifically, we are looking for images in which the emphasis is on colour, and inviting you to send in up to a maximum of 5 photos, inspired by the art of the Fauves, to coincide with the current exhibition of work by the Dutch artist Kees van Dongen at the Museu Picasso.

So far quite a number of ‘Fauvist’ artists have been inspired to take part in this latest initiative launched by the Museum. To date the group boasts more than 70 participants from around the world, ranging from Catalonia to Germany to Japan and the USA, who together have submitted over 200 snapshots: colours, colours and more colours, in dazzling contrast, embracing the most original and diverse moments and motifs, in the form of landscapes, travel photos, abstract art… there are no limits! These are just a taster.

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