GE Recreates Van Gogh Painting with Plants for London's National Gallery

above digital composite by Laura Sweet

GE (General Electric) and London’s National Gallery just unveiled an ecomaginative collaboration – an installation of Van Gogh’s famous A Wheatfield with Cypresses, made from over 8,000 living plants and on display on the western side of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.


above: 'A Wheatfield, with Cypresses' was painted in September 1889, while Van Gogh was a patient at the St-Rémy mental asylum.

above: More than 25 varieties of plant have been used to mimic the strong bands of color in the original picture.

The living painting has been constructed by specialist horticulture and design company ANS using over 8,000 plants of more than 26 different varieties. To create the artwork, each plant was selected for its unique colour to match the tones of the original painting.


image courtesy of GE

image courtesy of GE

image courtesy of GE

image courtesy of GE

image courtesy of GE

image courtesy of GE

image courtesy of GE

The living painting is a creative manifestation of GE’s commitment to the environment through its ‘ecomagination’ business strategy, which is concerned with meeting customers’ demands for more energy-efficient products.

The green doesn’t stop there: GE also contributed environmentally-friendly Jenbacher cogeneration heat and power engines that will help reduce the Gallery’s carbon footprint.

People can see the living wall in Trafalgar Square until the end of October.

Thanks to GE Reports and London's National Gallery for the info

Diesel's Art Competition: A Wall Is Your Canvas

Diesel Wall is an international art contest that aims to bring intriguing/ inspiring/ insightful/ inciting contemporary ideas to giant urban canvases in city centres around the world.

A competition dedicated to young artists and designers, Diesel Wall offers them the opportunity to showcase their work on an extraordinary scale: monumental, freestanding vertical walls in the centres of world’s most important cities. The ultimate goal being to salvage what prominent precious public space is left.

This year the Diesel Wall art contest continues its tour around the world and reaches 4 new corners of the planet: Manchester (UK), Barcelona (Spain), Zurich (Switzerland) and NY (US).




See the flikr gallery photos of the walls here.

Diesel Wall will take your art, your power of dissuasion, your ability to disrupt, incite and intrigue, mystify and comment. Artworks - conceived for a specific Wall or for all four Walls - can use painting, photography, video, and performance, light, sound, text, experimental concepts including 3D, performance and show elements are also welcome.

From mid-April to June 2008 local juries will get together in order to select the Diesel Wall winners for each city and the winner will be announced June 10th, 2008.

The jury members for this year will include among others Bigas Luna, Peter Saville, Terry Jones, and Wilbert Das, Diesel's Creative Director, joining each judging panel in all four different countries. From May to July 2008, depending on each city's Diesel Wall timeline, winners will be announced both through the website and local events to then proceed with the setting-up of the winning installations on each Wall.


Any creative, inspired person from any country in the world can submit their designs for the chance to feature in this new edition of the project…and conquer a Wall! The artists will have total freedom in sending concepts: art is above all a means of unconstrained self-expression.

Learn more about it, see past winners and submit your art here.