For balance, who are the superior contemporary painters?
Having read a lot of Kinkade threads, they lack for context. Granting that Kinkade was not the best painter of the 21st century, what contemporary work is better? (Works done since, say, 1990 and limited to painting)
This is not a contentious question. This is a curious question... offered to learn something. There has been an uncommon lot of discussion of artistic merit here of late, but it is hard to talk about merit without comparison.
Please include pictures!
I'll start. I like Wayne Thiebaud, landscape painter and America's foremost expressionist painter of cakes. He was born in 1920 but is still working in the 21st century. He even did a New Yorker cover in the last few years.
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Unconditional Love
A Sense of Wonder... a Delving Curiosity...
by G. Jurek Polanski
EXCERPT...
"Desecration" (1999) is exemplary; and a particularly arresting piece. At center left a chimera -- bird-winged, animal and man -- urinates, -- whizzes-- onto what strongly recalls the Tree of Life so central to centuries of Christian emblemata. Popular legend has it that hedgehogs use their back spines as a larder, for storing and carrying food. In "Desecration" the hedgehog retreats from beneath the tree, a captured apple on its back, and offers rebellious protest. The composition allows at least two distinct readings: either the desecration is malice toward the benefit the tree affords the hedgehog, or the hedgehog, with a parting hiss, bears away a token rescued in the course of the act. The work offers a universal, a primal impulse, but 'universal' does not imply an absence of ambiguity. Palubinskas herself, in an April 1, 1999 article of the Grosse Point News, stated "I want to show how unstable and multilayered this dualistic world is."
"Desecration" plays with insight and delight upon shared and traditional imagery: the desecrator resonnates with chords from medieval carvings and illuminations, Hieronymous Bosch, perhaps even TV commercials. It takes remembrances from folklore and old wives' tales and gives them rebirth through the overtones of the philosophic and the psycholgical. Renata Palubinskas noted at the opening for this show that she believes "Desecration" will be the first in a series of related oil paintings.
CONTINUED...
http://www.artscope.net/VAREVIEWS/Palubinskas0799.shtml
PS: I don't know the artist, personally, but I knew of her work when I could almost afford a hedgehog painting -- miniatures starring the wonderful creature. Personally, I think Ms. Palubinskas is the greatest thing since Hieronymus Bosch. Our world needs more vision of worlds most cannot see.
Playground III (Hedgehog with Apple)
Here's a good combo, one that helps me keep hope alive and my dukes up:
Rising of a New Man
(Dunno why, but the glass hat appears to be filled with pickles.)
Last edited Tue Apr 10, 2012, 01:22 PM - Edit history (1)
I don't believe good artists are superior to other good artists. They are just different. 
From the 1930s and 40s I like the work of women surrealists. I've collected some works by better Haitian painters including Fritzner Alphonse and Jn Albert Bernard. Mark Andresen, formerly of New Orleans, is an artist/illustrator whose works are imaginative and original. He published a book about NOLA before Hurricane Katrina. 
Back in the early 1990s I came across paintings by a then South Carolina artist named Jonathan Green. I think he lives and works in FL now.
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1405&bih=631&q=jonathan+green+paintings&gbv=2&oq=jonathan+green&aq=2&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_l=img.1.2.0l10.1992l5940l0l7853l14l14l0l3l3l0l99l943l11l11l0.llsin.
I have to spend some time with him. 
Gurney went to art school with Kinkade. Both men wanted to make money. Both men thought of something people would like, and operated outside the (aesthetically absurd) contemporary fine art establishment.
Gurney invented DINOTOPIA which spawned several books, prints and a short-lived TV show. Gurney's work is essentially Alma-Tadema paintings with dinosaurs strewn about--trading on two popular things.
The thing is, Gurney is an excellent artist. I am not in love with him, but his work has apparent quality. He is an able extrapolation of the 19th academic tradition. His work is richer and more graceful and more ambitious than that of most of his (fantasy illustrator) contemporaries.
It's not about what some real or imagined critical establishment thinks. Gurney is a better artist than Kinkade even by the most traditional standard.
http://www.delart.org/exhibitions/dinotopia.html
as I'm stuck in the later 20th with the Bay Area Figuralists like Davd Park and Richard Diebenkorn, and more generally, in that moment when people working in Abstract Expressionism broke out on their own in some other direction.
David Park
Diebenkorn
I learned how to draw figures by copying R.C. Gorman's huge women with big feet.
He became a brand as did Veloy Vigil but there was a moment before that that was interestng.
Vigil
I think he qualifies as contemporary, 
Very disappointing, but how does one evaluate his work knowing this? 
I will pick some artist who also do landscapes, largely based on plein air work.
Richard Schmid, who I think is one of our finest living artists:
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Clyde Aspevig
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And Scott Christianson
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There is also John Stobart who recreates seaports of the past. But paints with a strong reality based on his field work. It is also where Kinkade copied the lighted window stuff he forces into his paintings.
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This is even deeper. Leonora Carrington died last year. Her paintings make Frida Kahlo's look demure. They are smooth, strange, haunting and occult. Each painting is very different but her work is cohesive.
http://malhouette.blogspot.com/2012/02/leonora-carrington.html
Michael Deas is a classicist. He lived in New Orleans for a while. His paintings look stunning when viewed in person. Though you all have seen many of his images on postage stamps, the original paintings are quite large!
http://www.michaeldeas.com/TeddyRoosevelt.htm
This is breathtaking 'in person':
Not all his work was brilliant but there are a few I've seen (like above)
that take your breath away. I knew David briefly in Provincetown shortly
before his death in March 2010. He had been homeless, poor, depressed,
and had AIDS for many years (but died of apparent drowning.)
The first night we met, he said "every day when I wake up, I make the
decision to live." R.I.P
http://www.google.com/url?source=imglanding&ct=img&q=
&sa=X&ei=bGmET7zPPMO-2gXcxdnxCA&ved=0CAsQ8wc&usg=AFQjCNEeb47eZ7KYEhrVJr69AHSQtWf-hg
knock-off schmaltz, greeting card stuff, which he did to be commercial. I wonder if there are any of his works, hidden in a closet. that will come to light after his death, to prove that he might have been a great artist. To be a good artist, you have to be original. I think most people, if they took just one elementary art appreciation or art history course in a community college night school class, would get the difference.
I like that cake painting, but I wouldn't hang it on my living room wall because I would be 300 pounds easily within the year. 
There are many paintings I consider quality art though that I wouldn't hang on my living room wall for various reasons like that. So perhaps I can see why Kincade's fantasy landscapes would be appealing to many people. There is something comforting about them.
Jos Sances
I own a print of this signed by the artist.
He also has a "Kinkade" series, which I'd not known before.
Arthur Gonzalez (a teacher of mine)
William T Wiley
Steve Rude
Adam Hughes
Alex Ross
Mike Kaluta
(Pssst, it's actually my work.)
Now don't go getting all commercial on us, ok?
Not surprised though. 
Takahiro Hara
Daniel Sprick
Charles Dwyer
Maya Kulenovic
Steven Assael
Mark Dempsteader
Lucong
Steven Mackey
Richard Schmid
David Leffel
Odd Nerdrum
Michael Hussar
Shepard Fairey
John Asaro
of Shepard Fairey's work...
Google Shpehard Fairey and plagiarism.
His stuff is not 'art'.
In 2006 Fairey printed a near exact copy of an already existing skull and crossbones artwork he found, altering the original design only by adding the words "OBEY: Defiant Since '89" along with a small star bearing the face of Andre the Giant. The image was reproduced as a T-shirt and added to Fairey’s OBEY fashion line.
As luck would have it, Wal-Mart plagiarized the master plagiarist, copying and printing Fairey’s rip-off and adding it to the superstore’s own fashion line. A shopper at Wal-Mart recognized the skull motif’s origin and angrily protested - as it was an exact duplication of the infamous logo belonging to the Gestapo, the Nazi "secret state police" that served as personal bodyguards to Adolf Hitler and administered the concentration camps where the genocide of the Jewish people was put into practice.
Unsurprisingly Wal-Mart’s T-shirts became a nationwide controversy, with legions of infuriated citizens insisting the superstore apologize and pull the offensive items from their shelves - a demand that was ultimately met. Eventually it came to light that Shepard Fairey was first responsible for manufacturing and selling the T-shirt, and when confronted by the website, consumerist.com, Fairey offered the following excuse: "When I made that graphic I was referencing a biker logo and it was only brought up to me later that it was the SS skull." First, Fairey openly admits to directly copying an image created by someone else (he calls this "referencing" , and then feigns innocence when faced with the odious background of the original Nazi designers. In the same set of remarks made to consumerist.com, Fairey insists that he is "anti-fascist and pro-peace", but what kind of anti-fascist does not recognize the symbols used by the Nazi regime? Fairey’s only defense here is full-blown ignorance - hardly an attribute expected in artists supposedly dedicated to social commentary.
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
A poster by the great artist Fairey:
A poster by Solomon Moser 1901:
"Needless to say, there was no credit given to the original artist, Koloman Moser."
"a tracing so precise that when the two versions are put together and held up to the light - all lines match perfectly."
If you think Shephard is just a "rule-breaker" then you shouldn't have any problems with Kinkade either. Two peas in a pod.
Except that Kinkade actually had drawing and painting skills.
And warhol, much as i despise him, didn't "steal" anything. He painted a picture of a well-known consumer product. It was because the can's design was so well-known that there was no question of "stealing" any design.
And again, Warhol could actually draw and paint.
Shephard literally TRACES obscure artwork by other artists and passes it off as his own.
A thief, a hack, a money-grubber.
He steals art, particularly leftist art, attaches his (stolen) giant logo & some stupid saying, and sells it as part of his clothing line. Radical.
Not content with stealing original artworks from Rene Mederos, Fairey also filched art from another celebrated Cuban poster maker, Félix Beltrán. A well-known street poster by Fairey depicting the celebrated 1960’s radical, Angela Davis, is in fact a near-exact copy of a famous silkscreen print by Beltrán.
Lincoln Cushing identified Fairey’s poster as a copy of Libertad para Angela Davis (Freedom for Angela Davis), created by Beltrán in 1971. Fairey gave no credit or recognition to the Cuban artist, who is very much alive and residing in Mexico. In addition, this particular theft of an existing artwork of Angela Davis begs the question, does Fairey mean to mock or praise leftist icons?
"One important thing to acknowledge is that Fairey is not just appropriating, but also copyrighting images that exist in our common history.... Fairey is attempting to personally capitalize on the generosity of others and privatize and enclose the visual commons (as seen by the prominent copyright symbols on his website and products)."
"I think that the art experience is to raise someone's consciousness, and at the end of the day the Shepard Fairey experience is to promote the brand of Shepard Fairey as a corporate entity, so I don't consider it art. He is about the furthest thing from art there is."
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
Kent Bellows. Sadly, he died a few years ago unexpectedly. He was a great guy.
http://kentbellows.org/kent-bellows/
These don't do justice to the detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Bellows
Throughout Chuck Close's career he has blurred the lines between abstraction and hyper realism
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Here's a picture of me at the easel with a painting I did this year. It now has a frame made of wooden yardsticks.
I'm kind of new to Pinterest, and I hope more art lovers jump onboard. It's great for art bookmarking. Not just wedding ideas.
Edit: This is not to promote myself. Just where I bookmark other artists I enjoy.
http://www.sierranevadachronicles.org/pictures/pics/Norton%20Bush.htm
but seriously, i'm going to make the argument that all such elevations of one "artist" above another are class-bound and that the very category of "artist," along with all the notions attached to it (e.g. real artists break new ground; "suffering artist," real artists don't do "trite," etc) is a creation of capital (v. the category of "craftperson"
.
Art collectors – let’s face it – they are art investors. People who are interested in making art they purchase and invest in appreciate in value – and then the museums, of course, help that. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize it’s a pretty corrupt system. It would not be tolerated in any other form of commerce. The idea that art collectors (mostly white males) are deciding what museums collect, and what becomes part of our art history, is not populist at all. It’s really letting power determine what our history is.
http://artinfo.com/news/story/797387/guerrilla-girl-talk-the-masked-art-radicals-on-their-new-research-the-art-market-and-occupy-wall-street
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He is the only American that has had a ceiling commissioned by the Louvre.
So, I'd recommend Mahmoud Farschian (he's Persian)
Kagaya (Japanese)
Alex Grey
Olivia de Berardinis
He made a lot of the art for the Final Fantasy games, among other things.
and gets it right, as opposed to Kinkade.
Brad Marshall
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but I think a large part of that is that the artist is painting the light as it is, everything consistent with the time of day and direction of the light.
This is a good example where Kinkade's work is bad art. He throws everything into the painting.
Look at this painting:
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Is it sunset, midday, evening, morning? The sun is behind the trees, off to the right and it is also dark enough for the glow in the widows from lamps. No truth in this painting.
Anselm Kiefer
Julian Schnabel
Jean-Michel Basquiat
