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"The Second Storm" is a loose parody of "The Storm" by Pierre Auguste Cot (1880). Cot's work was inspired by much earlier works. This piece is part of a series of robot parodies.
"The Second Storm" is a loose parody of "The Storm" by Pierre Auguste Cot (1880). Cot's work was inspired by much earlier works. This piece is part of a series of robot parodies.
I first became interested in "The Storm" in 2018. I had recently completed my Vermeer parody, "Robot with a Pearl Earring" and I was considering other classic works to satirize. There were plenty of obvious options- "The Last Supper" is still a contender. But "The Storm" struck a chord with me- it felt instantly recognizable, familiar, and weirdly kitschy, yet I'd never heard of Pierre-Auguste Cot. I came to learn that the piece has a contentious history, the decided loser in a turn-of-the-century battle to determine "what is good art and what is bad art". Completed in 1880, "The Storm" was initially well-received by critics and the public at large. It remained hugely popular to the public for decades, spawning numerous copies, postcards, calendars, prints, and truly cheap, poorly-reproduced posters. Gradually the critics turned against it, seeing it as everything wrong with the Old Art World. Passé. Technically slick, yet shallow. Trite. The French Academy got it wrong, dismissing Cézanne, Manet, Monet, and Renoir while embracing Cot; eventually Cot would be downgraded, nearly forgotten, branded as kitch. Early Lowbrow. Cot didn't do anything wrong. He was at the top of his game in 1880, coming off the heels of "Springtime", a happier sister-piece to "The Storm". (Both pieces are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) Cot had mastered the style that had been the definitive taste for fifty years. But he wasn't avant-garde, so he got ridiculed. (Cot died tragically in 1883 at the age of 46, still wildly popular and well-respected.) I probably saw "The Storm" at the Met around 2015; that might account for my initial sense of familiarity. I was sure that it was based on a sculpture, but I couldn't place it. A few years later (after I had painted "The Second Storm") I stumbled across Giovanni Maria Benzoni's "Flight from Pompeii", from 1873. Pompeii was fresh on the minds of artists in the 1870's. But first, a little refresher. In 79 AD, on August 24, at about 1 p.m. Mt. Vesuvius erupted. It blanketed the thriving Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in a thick, fast-rolling cloud of burning ash and toxic vapor, killing at least 2,000 people in roughly fifteen minutes. The citizens were entombed in ash; the forms of their tortured bodies frozen in time at the moment of death. Over decades their bodies decayed into dust, leaving just ash shells. The ruins of Pompeii were discovered in 1777, but in 1864 one Giuseppe Fiorelli, director of excavations, had a terrific idea; he and his team poured plaster into some of the ash shells, in essence creating 3D casts of the victims. The ash did an impressive job of preserving details, even facial details. This morbid discovery had a tremendous impact on the art community throughout Europe. Benzoni's "Flight from Pompeii" precedes "The Storm" by seven years. The poses are nearly identical, but the billowing cloth held overhead is undeniable. Cot is a thief. He's taken a moment of horrific tragedy, ditched the baby, and crafted a playful springtime teenage romp through a forest. It's a hilarious twist. The pair appear to be nearly weightless, on their toes. Maybe it was this sense of levity that inspired me to re-interpret "The Storm". At any rate, I was unaware of the Benzoni connection when I started my painting. With "The Second Storm" I went back to the tragic, envisioning a possible future battle between man and machine. But I wanted to retain some humor; maybe the robots are the oppressed, just trying to find a place to crash for the night. What "The Storm" teaches us is that taste in the art world can change- what was popular in one century might seem tacky in the next. With "The Second Storm" I'm anticipating a shift in taste, and I do hope our Robot Overlords will be pleased. 
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The Second Storm Painting

Julian De Puma

United States

Painting, Oil on Canvas

Size: 48 W x 60 H x 2 D in

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About The Artwork

"The Second Storm" is a loose parody of "The Storm" by Pierre Auguste Cot (1880). Cot's work was inspired by much earlier works. This piece is part of a series of robot parodies.

Details & Dimensions

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:48 W x 60 H x 2 D in

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Julian is a multi-media artist working with paint, ink, resin, metal, cameras, and computers. Themes explored are often sci-fi in nature, sometimes called 'sci-fi surrealism', although his most recent work has been primarily Geometric/Abstract. Julian started drawing when he was three. He painted off-and-on through his teens and twenties, then fell in love with photography and computer animation. This led to a career in video games which he eventually left in 2012. Since then he's been painting, honing his style and showing work in the Seattle area. Outside of art, Julian enjoys cooking and traveling and playing his guitar now and then. He lives in Des Moines, WA.

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