Inspirational Artists

[Artyczar]

Dana Schutz

 

[Artyczar]

Rita Ackermann

 

[snoball]

I quite like those too. Speaking here of the Weisenfeld's. The next ones are a bit gruesome for my taste.

 

[Artyczar]

Allison Schulnik--thicker than you can imagine. All oils, and huge.

 

[Artyczar]

I quite like those too. Speaking here of the Weisenfeld's. The next ones are a bit gruesome for my taste.

That's part of their appeal.

 

[stlukesguild]

Carol; I can certainly see how you would like Sanditz. I especially like the Thanksgiving meal painting.

 

[stlukesguild]

I've always had mixed feelings about Dana Schutz. I knew her in passing where she was a freshman while I was in my final year at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She was a bit of a ditz. I got a first-hand view of how "art stars" are made by watching her career take off. She was recognized as having an innate love of paint and handled it quite well for her age... but she wasn't seen as anything truly special within the painting department. However, she was taken under the wing of one of the academic professors... an art historian who just happened to be the granddaughter of a US president. She introduced her to the wife of a Cleveland billionaire and together they wrote letters to Columbia helping to get her accepted there for grad school as well as a number of galleries in New York. While still in her first semester in grad school she was showing in group exhibitions with Jasper Johns, Eric Fischl, etc... When word got around who was behind her... including the ex-wife of a major donor to several museums and a member of the board at the Guggenheim, her career just skyrocketed. It's not so much anything that she did that irritates me, but rather, the way in which the super-wealthy manipulate the market in order to inflate the value of their own collections. But that's not anything new, is it?

 

[Artyczar]

I hear this story more often about young male undergrads than I do about women, and when the rumors start up about the women, people always seem to think there's a sexual relationship going on with her professor. Not as much in recent times, because people "can't" say that stuff so much anymore, but I've heard it for 20 years.

I also try not to care about a person's personality and try to look at the art as it is. I don't particularly like Sting, but loved the Police. I saw interviews with him acting arrogant, many in fact, and it turned me off about him. I still loved the music though.

 

[snoball]

I like the ones by Allison Schulnik, certainly no economy of paint there!

 

[stlukesguild]

There was no hint of any sexual impropriety with Dana. The professor in question was an older... even elderly woman.

Ignoring the history, I've always had mixed feelings about Schutz' paintings. As a huge lover of German Expressionism with its almost comic distortions, I should like her works as well... but I always felt they had a certain clunky dorkiness, whereas Beckmann, Nolde, Kirchner, and Käthe Kollwitz most certainly do not. Their expressive distortions have a fierceness rooted in their responses to the horrors of the time, where Schutz' strike me more as rooted in Ren & Stimpy and the Powerpuff Girls.

 

[Artyczar]

Don't worry, I didn't think you were referring to Dana's relationship with her professor especially. I meant that I hear that a lot in general.

 

[brianvds]

There was no hint of any sexual impropriety with Dana. The professor in question was an older... even elderly woman.

Ignoring the history, I've always had mixed feelings about Schutz' paintings. As a huge lover of German Expressionism with its almost comic distortions, I should like her works as well... but I always felt they had a certain clunky dorkiness, whereas Beckmann, Nolde, Kirchner, and Käthe Kollwitz most certainly do not. Their expressive distortions have a fierceness rooted in their responses to the horrors of the time, where Schutz' strike me more as rooted in Ren & Stimpy and the Powerpuff Girls.

It could be because, unlike the German expressionists, she has never actually experienced or witnessed any horrors. Perhaps she's the Greta Thunberg of art.

 

[Roni]

that's not anything new, is it?

No it isn't, but still very interesting to hear those stories as they appeared. Thanks for sharing.

Schutz' strike me more as rooted in Ren & Stimpy and the Powerpuff Girls

That's what appeals me with her. There's Darger-touch to it.

 

[brianvds]

This was posted on Gandalf's Gallery today:

Stanhope Alexander Forbes - An Old Cornish Manor [1935] oil on canvas 62 x 77 cm

Perhaps not the most profound of work. But solid and chunky, and yet also airy and atmospheric. It speaks to me.

 

[stlukesguild]

It speaks to me.

That's all that matters, right.

 

[xie-kitchin]

I've also been into Mickalene Thomas Lately too:

View attachment 182

I saw this artist's work in the "30 Americans" touring exhibition last year. Seeing her work on a screen doesn't give you a sense of the scale or the textures she creates with the rhinestone.

Probably one of my favorite artists in that exhibition is Mark Bradford. Not sure if he's really inspiring anything I'm doing now, but they bring to mind decaying city walls covered in layers of graffiti, which is a subject I've always enjoyed photographing. There is more going on, obviously. They're very painterly and detailed and images give you no sense of the immense scale. This one, for instance, is about 8ft by 12ft.

 

[WFMartin]

You might remember that I once told you that I actually had that FIRST painting (The Rubens....Judgement of Paris) in my hands at one time, when I had it locked in the copyboard of my process camera, as I shot color separation negatives of it, for the lithographic process. I still have "my" reproduction of it framed, and hanging in my spare bedroom. I met the man who owned it, and was intending to sell it. He was selling it for just shy of 2 million dollars.

 

[Artyczar]

James Kerry Mashall

 

[stlukesguild]

Over time, I've come to really like James Kerry Mashall's paintings. I really love ❤ the first painting you posted above. It could be the color. You know how much I love red. ❤

 

[Artyczar]

Yes. I can see with my eyes!