PROMO: Recreating a Lost Art Treasure Using the Amazing Adobe Stock

When a classic goes missing, the only choice is to create it again.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But when photographer and artist Erik Almas is at the helm, that number is even harder to quantify. His pieces gravitate between the very real to the deeply surreal, with a style that is difficult to describe succinctly.

Now, Almas has tackled one of his most ambitious projects to date: recreating the 1664 Johannes Vermeer painting “The Concert” using Adobe Stock technology. Adobe Stock software allows uninterrupted creativity for artists like Almas by employing stock photo search functionality within the application itself. Users can search through a large library of stock photos in Photoshop, and once they finalize their selections, can purchase or license the photos in the app. They don’t have to go back to a website to do so. 

Almas’ new incarnation of “The Concert” is more than just a standard recreation of a classic. The original print of “The Concert” used to reside in Boston at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. But on the morning of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers stole 13 pieces (including “The Concert”) of art. The works were estimated to be worth $500 million, making it the largest private property theft in American history.

Despite efforts by the FBI and other agencies across the world to locate “The Concert,” it has never been recovered. All that’s left are empty frames that still hang in the museum to pay homage to the lost artwork and serve as placeholders for the day when they are (hopefully) returned. So Almas’ project has much more significance than just being a new take on an old classic.

You can see Erik Almas’ technique for recreating the famous “Concert” print using cutting edge Adobe technology in the video above. 

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