Today, art is everywhere: in museums, of course, but also on city walls, in our smartphones, sometimes on our clothes… and why not on our wrists?
With its new “Swatch Art Journey” collection, the famous watch brand is transforming masterpieces from MoMA, the Magritte Museum, the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Gallerie Degli Uffizi into mini paintings. Watches that are halfway between fashion accessories and art objects to reflect your personal preferences and personality. A look at this 100% Arty collection!
Article produced in partnership with Swatch
Lichtenstein and the Pop Art
This year we celebrate the 100th birthday of Roy Lichtenstein, one of the kings of American Pop Art. You are probably familiar with some of his paintings whose graphic universe is inspired by advertisements but also by comics: simple shapes surrounded by a black line, presence of text bubbles, bright colors… Lichtenstein’s style has accompanied us throughout the last decades and still seems particularly modern today.
In partnership with MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York), which owns several of the artist’s works, Swatch has designed two brightly colored watches inspired by the paintings “Girl” and “Reverie“. On the latter, the sense of detail is pushed to the point of transforming the buckle of the bracelet into a bubble copying the text of the painting “The melody haunts my reverie…”
Magritte or the betrayal of images
“This is not a pipe”, the painting of Magritte is particularly famous. Its title: “The betrayal of images” because with this pipe which is not one, the Belgian artist wants to make us understand that a painted pipe, even in a very realistic way, will never be a pipe but only its image.
Swatch transforms this work into a watch, pushing the facetiousness by writing on the strap “This is a Swatch”. Because a Swatch watch, even with the representation of a fake pipe, remains a Swatch watch!
Another variation: a nod to the painting “The Son of Man“, a self-portrait by Magritte with a green apple floating in front of his face, transformed into a watch with the words “This is a Swatch with an apple”.
Hokusai and the wave that became an emoji
I always wondered if Hokusai, when he created “The Great Wave of Kanagawa“, had any idea that his work would be so successful. One thing is for sure: he could never have imagined that it would become an emoji 🌊!
In front of Mount Fuji, this work shows a sea raging from a storm about to crash into a boat. The moral of this print: to make us understand that nature is all powerful.
In partnership with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Swatch has turned Hokusai’s wave into a watch with a backside that reproduces another of the museum’s masterpieces: an astrolabe by Muhammad ibn Ahmad Al-Battuti.
Botticelli’s Ode to Spring
If there is one museum where Renaissance art can be admired, it is the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence. In the collection of this institution are two masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli: the Birth of Venus and the Allegory of Spring.
In the latter painting, Botticelli depicted more than 500 species of plants, an ode to Spring celebrated by “Flora”, the goddess of flowers that appears on the strap of the Swatch watch created from this painting.
Keep an eye on the Swatch collection, more watches from the Swatch Art Journey collection will be revealed in a few weeks!
Article produced in partnership with Swatch
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