David Datuna was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in the year 1974. He is best known for his series titled “Viewpoints of Millions.” This series is very pop like and includes current culture phenoms such as celebrities, world leaders, and fashion icons. The artist makes these works by first placing the image, then placing a glass lens over the image. So you its a big image, seen through someone’s eyes. Much like the world. A big picture, as seen billions of people.
The artist has done flag images of United States, Russia, and Israel. In this clip see more of his works and some brief comments about his Israeli flag project.
I couldn’t find a consistent price range for the artist but his portrait of Steve Jobs sold for $210,000 at a Miami Art Show. It was made from miniature Amy Rynd images. Rynd was a Russian philosopher screen writer. Datuna also made a portrait of Vladimir Putin made up of miniature Mona Lisa images. The image of Putin sold for $269,000.
Its fascinating how much the artist can weave different ideas into his works. A recently finished work of an Israeli flag brought in three different periods of history of the jewish state. It was a work with three panels. One represented the Holocaust, another represented their War of Independence, and the Six Day War. Another flag was dedicated to modern Israel. The last was a white on white flag, done in various gray and white tones. The idea of the last flag was that Israel could become anything it wanted to do. Its present state is many shades of gray with many unknowns yet to be determined. In these flags many texts were used including exerpts from Anne Frank and Never Again which was written by a famous Rabbi.
The artist also does performance art. Here is a clip from a performance art piece given by the artist.
Datuna currently lives and works out of New York city.
Another famous work was done with the famous fashion model Natalia Vodianova, a model who earned nearly 9 million dollars last year. The artist used Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE and made a picture of Vodianova with them. This work brought in nearly $800,000.
In may he also set up an application with the I-Tunes store that allows users to create art in Datuna’s style, called Viewpoints.
I really enjoy this artist’s way of looking at the world. He makes us aware that everything in the world has many viewpoints. Its also great how the artist is able to incorporate history and text in his works, adding an extra layer of depth and meaning to them. Also impressive that he found a way to incorporate the Itunes store into his art business!
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