Queen to d infinity check

© Ben Heine 2011. Used with permission.

While web surfing this weekend, I came across a series of mixed-media art that blew my mind. I’m not a big art fan ordinarily, but to me this isn’t art, it’s fun!  😎

The artist is named Ben Heine, he comes from Brussels, Belgium, and he has both a Flickr site here and a Facebook page here. The above picture is #37 in a series called “Pencil vs. Camera,” where he takes a regular photograph of a scene and then superimposes upon it a pencil drawing that looks exactly like a continuation of the photograph. The pencil drawing shows what might be hidden behind the paper… in some fantastical world.

Heine says that the background photo for the picture above was taken under a church in Oia, Greece. The chessboard, of course, comes from his imagination. Some natural questions occur to me:

• Who is the opponent?
• What does the knot on his ring signify?
• Should I write this move as Qd∞:d7?
• If the opponent is God, isn’t even he supposed to follow the rules? In other words, after he played Q to d∞ he should have called “check” so that we would have known that we had to move our king.

Max sez: Before moving, always consider all your options.