We talk alot about music. What about visual art? What do you like?

I know I yap on and on about music ('sepecially Jazz) but I am not a musician (per se - I have a home studio where I practice what Randomkoolzip calls 'sound collage') but I am trained as a painter. And visual art history is my real love.

My favorite eras of painting shift. I am hugely enamored of the Northern Renaisance and Gothic painting. I love Van Eyck, Van Der Goes, Brueghel, Bosch and Durer. I also fall apart for Carravagio and the drama of his paintings (which parralleled his life).

Then again Diego Rivera, Picasso and Kahlo move me greatly. As do Japanese prints, especially of the Edo period (my favorite is Utamaro - love his prints of women)

Sculpture I am not so well versed in but would love to study more.

So folks, what visual art moves you and why?

By that, I mean when I view things like rennaisance art or any of the classic arts it is just so overwhelming to me. There is an inaccesability to it which just prevents me from fully appreciating it. I love to view works my Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Dali, etc and just take them in. But there is always that wall there that I can't get over with a lot of these artists.

I'm big on modern stuff like Haring, Bacon, Warhol, Lichtenstein, etc. and even more so recent stuff like Mark Ryden, or Shag, or Koop, and the more found visual art of someone like Kozik and his poster art.

One of my favorite things in any artistic medium, but it music, art, movies, etc. is just a complete convergence of cultural touchstones. And the more creepy/uncomfortable a lot of it is (I'm thinking mostly Bacon and Mark Ryden's stuff) the more I like it and the more it compels me.

I love his meat series. He has this bsession with the odd ephemera of life that I become absorbed in.

Incidently - did you know he painted this:


Speaking of poster art do you know Derrick Hess? Poster art is one of my absolute loves. I have always been hugely influenced by Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau artists. The 60's however produced some of the best poster art ever. The Family Dog out in San Fran during the Acid Test days. Rick Griffin is in my top 5 favorite artists!

I've actually considered getting a tattoo of something Hess drew.

In my finished basement/recording studio/rec room I have tons of signed poster art from Koop, Kozik, Hess, etc. It's a passion of mine.

I actually didn't know that Ryden did that album. I think at one point it might have crossed my mind but then I never really bothered to look. I just absolutely love how Ryden mixes the innocent with the sinister in such a way. He's brilliant.

until he got them right - that was all he cared about.

I'm sure you're familiar with Shepard Fairey. My friend has an obsession with his work. I find it incredible. I was in NYC at art school when the Andre the Giant stuff was appearing everywhere. Now that's modern art!!!

artists are degenerates, unless they're doing something nice like that Kinkade fellow. There's a decent, Christian visual artist that's okay. But the rest of it - not only is it crap, it's hoodwinking our children to leave the church and embrace secularity and leads to homoseksual behavior and cannibalism. What's wrong with paintings of clouds and angels and other decent, wholesome things that I'm not ashamed to show to children? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Piss Christ:



Edit - image info:
Artist: Andres Serrano
Artist's Lifespan: c. 1950-
Title: Piss Christ
Date: 1989

Location of Origin: United States
Medium: Esoteric medium
Genre: Jesus Christ

Yes, all the more reason the gov't has to cease funding the NEA because ALL the art that comes from it is insulting to Christians.

:-)

we ask for so little! :)

Jack "the king" Kirby!

Carravaggio, Georgia O'Keefe, Rembrandt, and Roselli

The latter was the former's hero!

are my favorites, but I would consider other less well know works of velvet art. ;-)

velvet. I have never seen its equal.

nt

An interesting pair.

but I inherited a Matisse poster from a failed relationship, and it grew on me, so I studied more of his stuff. And Bosch's symbolism and absurdity appeals to my perverse side... which is rather my larger side.

visionary. Matisse was one of the fathers of modern painting. Bosch has never been equaled in his surreality - even by the Surrealists.

Time With no Change

Please explain

and I like Pollock because I see patterns emerging and changing in the canvas.
That and I took a lot of acid at an impressionable age.

I guess I just get upset (mostly at Pollock) Man I saw his sketchbooks at the MOMA and he was no better than me. Picasso trained as a classic artist and he could draw and paint as well or better than th old masters. He learned the rules before he broke them. I feel Pollock was a fraud - MHO. I appreciate their roles in the history of art, and as a modern artist I owe them a debt of gratitude but I don't lik etheir work. Oh well.

You take what you take from the canvas.

I saw Warhol's sketchbooks and early work at the Walker (in Mpls.). It looked like the drawing I was doing in high school. I suppose if I had seen that work at the time, I may have taken my own work a little more seriously. (Or taken Andy's less seriously...)

Maybe I don't know enough to recognize what I like as a kind of style, or maybe I'm really eclectic, I don't know. I just know I like it when I see it. I like Van Gogh, Monet, and O'Keefe.

Those are the first 3 known artists that popped into my head, anyway. On my walls right now, I have:

A Van Gogh print of Irises; an audobon print of owls; a watercolor of orange butterflies; 4 framed pastels of girls in a meadow; an oil painting of a mountain with trees and river; a sketch of a rabbit done by a student, and a sketch of that student done by his artis dad; a poster of various varieties of oak trees; a small ink drawing of a pueblo storyteller; and a variety of family photos.

The irises, owls, and butterflies are my favorites. The pastels and the mountain were gifts from my mom, who worries that my walls might be bare. So they're up, although they aren't what I would have chosen myself.

I also have a couple of medicine shields up.

Audobon society? Audobon is one of the absolute giants of art. No one compares to him as a naturalist painter

Snowy Owls.

I love his work. Such an attention to detail yet it still has that Americana feel to it!

my mom also provided the framed print; she picked it up at a garage sale for a couple of dollars. Two of them, actually. She kept one, and shared one!

Hallucinogenic Toreador

Its in the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg--it's really huge!

While I still can!

it is easy to forget how beautiful, thoughtful and wild his paintings are. He tends to get the stereotype treatment too easily.

And a bunch of others.......

I personally feel he was painting what we'd later call expressionism (not abstract but expressive none the less) though I believe he was in the Mannerist genre so it fits. My fav:

The Northern Renaissance, Caravaggio, etc., of course.

Latin American art is a large universe, including Rivera & Kahlo, the other muralistas--up to recent Cuban art & our own Chicano artists. Leonora Carrington & Remedio Varos lived in Mexico but are a link to the Surrealists. (Living in Houston, where the De Menils were sponsoring exhibits long before founding their own museum, I've been exposed to lots of Surrealism.)

I've got a sneaking fondness for the Symbolists & Pre-Raphaelites & prefer the post-Impressionists to the Impressionists. (Appreciation of the great Japanese printmakers fits in here, somewhere.) As far as more recent stuff goes, the cracked concepts of the folks you see in Juxtapoz appeal to me more than the latest minimalist installation.



(Remedio Varos, Exploración de las fuentes del río Orinoco.)

Locally, the late John Biggers found African roots in the row houses of Houston.

I could go on but time is short & some of these folks are on dial up!

Juxtapoz being my favorite mag

:toast:

OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but he does good stuff. Went to his exhibit yesterday.

And thanks for coming to the show - sorry we didn't get to talk much. I was surrounded by people all night, which never happened before at my shows. And it was people genuinely interested in the art and asking about it. I could hardly break away when I needed to go do things, and then I looked around and saw you'd gone. Sorry I didn't get to talk much more than to say howdy. The snubbing wasn't intentional. Had a couple friends I wanted to introduce you to, and I couldn't et away from people to do even do that. I found it frustrating, but also exciting!

report from rockport

iconic...

Stuart Davis! :thumbsup:

I just love his style...very fluid...colorful and alive...very american!

I loke that alot. How familiar are you with Diego Rivera?

Benton also was a Leftist & a muralist.

Diego!

has an incredible Diego Rivera mural. The subject is industry and technology, but the workers are the most prominent feature. It covers four walls from floor to ceiling. Well worth a trip to Detroit to see it.

Interesting that you like El Greco and Thomas Hart Benton. I've always had a strongly negative reaction to the much celebrated way they paint the human body. I do like Benton's landscapes, though.

they are gorgeous. Missouri has one of the nicest state capital buildings I have ever seen. In addition to the gorgeous murals inside, it sits on the Missouri river. When the sun sets it casts a vast hue of colors on the face of the building. It is breathtaking.

One has to visit Kansas City. There is a Thomas Hart Benton bar at (if my memory is correct) the downtown Hyatt hotel. I have never seen that sexual side of Benton.

until I saw Rembrandt's paintings in person. I always trended towards abstraction before that experience, but seeing a Rembrandt in person, one can not help but be moved by the power of his art.

I also developed a fondness for Dutch genre painting on that trip. The Museum in Brugges, Belgium has some awesome examples.

I love the cubist painters. Picasso and Leger are two of my favorites. Picasso was so prolific with such varied styles, it is hard not to include him among the top two or three painters ever.

As far as American Art, I like the WPA artists a lot. Stuart Davis is one of my favorite American artists.

El Greco. I also love some of Michaelangelo--his scrupture is magnificent. Singer is my favorite American artist.

Think I had my first "senior" moment.

I like so many artists from different schools and periods. It would be easier for me to come up with what I don't like. Right at this moment I'm enjoying a Dufy print. I'm also partial to black and white photography (Norman Parkinson, e.g.)

Like glass and ceramic art, too.

That must make that dirty old man Hades, eh?

Persephone is the goddess of the underworld in Greek mythology. She is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Persephone was such a beautiful young woman that everyone loved her, even Hades wanted her for himself. One day, when she was collecting flowers on the plain of Enna, the earth suddenly opened and Hades rose up from the gap and abducted her. None but Zeus, and the all-seeing sun, Helios, had noticed it.

Broken-hearted, Demeter wandered the earth, looking for her daughter until Helios revealed what had happened. Demeter was so angry that she withdrew herself in loneliness, and the earth ceased to be fertile. Knowing this could not continue much longer, Zeus sent Hermes down to Hades to make him release Persephone. Hades grudgingly agreed, but before she went back he gave Persephone a pomegranate (or the seeds of a pomegranate, according to some sources). When she later ate of it, it bound her to underworld forever and she had to stay there one-third of the year. The other months she stayed with her mother. When Persephone was in Hades, Demeter refused to let anything grow and winter began. This myth is a symbol of the budding and dying of nature. In the Eleusinian mysteries, this happening was celebrated in honor of Demeter and Persephone, who was known in this cult as Kore.

The Romans called her Proserpine.

Her names means something like "she who destroys the light."

Sorry, I know it's lowbrow, but his visual art moves me like nothing else in this world. If given a choice between looking at DaVinci or Rembrandt or whoever OR looking at Crumb's work for the rest of my life, I'd choose Crumb in a heartbeat.


After that, of course I dig Art Nouveau and the psychedelic poster art of the 60's. And Dali. And Goya's weirder shit ("Child Devouring a Rat," fer inst).

And porn, of course.


I dunno. I'm definitely an auditory kind of guy. Most "high" art doesn't do much for me....and expressionism SUCKS (the post-Warhol/Pollack shit, I mean).

Joe Coleman is pretty cool, and Robert Williams. If I have to look at art, I want a FEAST for my eyes, I don't want to have to look at some brown portrait of some contessa or some shit bathing some infant's feet or whatever. Sorry, I know a lot of skill went into it, but it just has no relevance to my life and is frankly boring as shit to look at. It's just like most classical music: yeah, I know, Beethoven/Mozart/Brahams/whoever is a genius, blah blah blah, but that shit is DULL, man. Give me a Stravinsky or a Varese or a Zappa, you know; an EVENTFUL composer.

There was a great book put out a few years ago called "Parallel Visions," about "outsider art," or art produced by the insane. THAT was some cool stuff. Henry Darger immediately comes to mind as my fdavorite of that class.

My tastes aren't very refined, I realize.

now go body floss!

sniffle.

Right now, for some reason, I'm in a period of my life where I'm not drawn to the visual arts.

I'm hoping that will change soon. I need to get down to the AIC...I walk within 2 blocks of it everyday. I have no excuse.

I do love Klee, btw!

There's a syndrome for when you are too overwhelmed by something visually, that your brain sort of shuts down. I experienced that at the AIC. I had to see it in shifts. Good thing it was free Tuesday.

I'm a really big fan of Kandinsky, but I enjoy Klee and Picasso, too.

I owe it all to my beautiful wife. She has shown me the way.

i loved his murals the best...

The gallery at my local mall has such pretty pictures. And like, it's really cool because it looks like what's it's supposed to be. In that sense it's a lot like TV, but like TV that doesn't move. You know?

Man that's deep.

Best Regards,
Matt

Which is one of the reasons I refuse to enter their house.

Hands down my favorite.

I like this scene from early German film


I like Giger's work a lot, this hangs in my room, amoung others

and I think I recognize this style from the inside cover of Tool's Lateralus

Thx!

He is quite the visionary. He is well worth researching.

http://www.alexgrey.com/

considered some posters, but I'm disappointed in his selection of prints compared to the amount of work he's done, in other words his posters aren't his best work IMHO, this is hopefully just to make his actual originals that much more value.

I love Artist's Hand, and The Gift.

That reminds me, I had an incredibly intense visual last night I have to get on paper :7

S. Clay Wilson....but I won't...

We're doing all right so far.

The Impressionists; Van Gogh, Picasso, Vermeer, Breughel, O'Keefe, Matisse; Renaissance art blows me away, the colors are astonishing. I like things from very different periods. I like some abstract stuff, more the sculptural stuff and really arcane installations.

I once saw a big blue wooden bell sculpture at the International here (in Pittsburgh) that I wanted to crawl into; and a really wild installation another year with smoking glass bowls of mist, weird chemicals, and lots of electricity. Think it was a German artist... wish I could remember the name. It was the wildest thing I have ever seen. Good question. Makes one think.

I hope this works:

Wanda Gag is a favorite artist of mine...

http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?7329+0+0

.

Here goes...

... just a personal problem I suppose. Could we talk about album-cover art?

You know, the untrained "naive" or "outsider" artists like Finster, Mose T, Eric Legge, Bernice Sims.

I have ammassed quite a Legge collection over the years.

His strip is , visually, one of the best since Leviathan

I have rarely seen sailing ships drawn as beautifully as his.

Was his father a mariner? Or his mother?

There are some interviews linked on his website. He discusses how he got into drawing, but I don't recall the nautical link.

Other favorites not already mentioned:

Rubens, Durer, Edward Hopper, Emily Carr, Charles Sheeler, Franz Marc, Egon Schiele, Paul Klee (drawings), Joan Mitchell, Tamara de Lempicka, Joseph Wright of Derby, Alice Neel, Wayne Thiebaud and I could go on and on, but have to stop somewhere...

For the rest of your question, I will just describe what I like about Gag. Her work pulsates with life and movement even while the subject matter is "mundane." It can be both joyful and a little dark.

You mentioned Schiele which reminded me of Lucien:

they are destroyed when completed.

I guess, as one trained as an architecct in that 'Texas Rangers" tradition there was a big cubist influence....Le Corbusier & Ozenfant, and Picasso & Braque, Juan Gris, Leger, folks like that. I think those early Georg Grosz paintings like "Widnung Am Oskar Panizza" are like that too,

I can sort of appreciate Dada and Constructivism (like Malevich), but its maybe too abstract and cerebral.

Lately I've been getting into North American Realism...started out w. the Mexican muralists like Siquieros, Orozco, and Rivera, the, via them, got into the American Regionalists and realists, like Hopper, Benton, Wood, and then Reginald Marsh, Cadmus, and espeically Charles Burchfield...others too.

I'm not really a fan of abstract expressionism, except for one painter, and thats Franz Kline. His black & white paintings are just hypnotic for me...I can just sit in front of them and medidate on them..they are almost mandala-like for me. Which is odd as i really dont appreciate the rest of that school much.

*****

The "art of the museums": I happened upon the Chicago Art Institutes impressionist collection by accident, and was just taken away by this paintings. Similar revelation like Franz Kline. Northern Painting, yes, good..interesting, the clarity of color and line. Durer...his four evangelists...very impressive in capturing personality...actually almost getting towards the baroque a bit.

Im sort of getting interested in looking into Poussin, David, and maybe the pre-impressionists a bit more. Poussin & David perhaps as sort of precursors to the realism I like in the 20th Century.

Im not a real fan of German Expressionism, but Kokoschka did a great series late in his career of European citys. Very expansive and colorfull..almost epic paintings.