Monday, July 23, 2007

Four photos by Favian Vergara

Desnudo y Tradición / Nudity and Tradition: Banquete de la Monja (Rojo) / The Nun's Feast (Red)

Desnudo y Tradición / Nudity and Tradition: Banquete de la Monja (Azul) / The Nun's Feast (Blue)

Carne / Flesh: Carne #2 / Flesh #2

Carne / Flesh: Carne #4 / Flesh #4

Favian Vergara (Mexico, 1958) is painter and photographer. He lives and works in Miami, Florida.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

"Untitled #205" (1989) by Cindy Sherman

"Untitled #205" (1989) by Cindy Sherman. Color photograph. 53 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches. Source.

Since 1977, Cindy Sherman has made photographs of herself, which are not self-portraits. "I am trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me," the artist has said. Her endeavor has yielded multiple series of photographs in which she deftly investigates issues about the construction of self-image, particularly for women. In her first works, small black-and-white photographs known as the "Untitled Film Still" series, Sherman explores stereotypes of women in films of the 1950s and 1960s. In a more recent series, Sherman made much larger color photographs restaging the settings of various European portrait paintings of the fifteenth through early nineteenth centuries. In Untitled, 1989, Sherman poses as La Forinara, just as the model might have been painted by her lover, the 16th century Italian painter Raphael, or later by Ingres, except that Sherman's Forinara exposes milk-swollen (plastic) breasts and cradles a (false) pregnant belly beneath her shawl.

See also: previous post.

"Stripper" by Charles Thomson

"Stripper" by Charles Thomson, 40 x 30", oil and acrylic on canvas. Source.

Charles Thomson instigated the Stuckist movement in 1999. He has been the driving force behind it and responsible for most of its media coverage. He has led demonstrations against the Turner Prize for seven years, stood as a Stuckist for parliament, reported Charles Saatchi to the Office of Fair Trading, and run a Stuckist gallery. Previously he was a member of the Medway Poets (1979) and a full-time poet for over a decade. He was briefly married to the artist Stella Vine. He now lives in North London.

Charles Thomson paints in flat areas of mostly high key colour with black outlines, and sees the influence for this from Japanese woodblock prints, Van Gogh and German Expressionism. Subjects are mainly people and situations in his everyday life, but transformed to show "a synthesis of the material, mental, emotional and spiritual." He has observed the paintings often have alternate readings.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

"Robert Lenkiewicz and Lucinda Nash" (1993) by Chris Summerfield

"Robert Lenkiewicz and Lucinda Nash" (1993) by Chris Summerfield (1956). Photograph. From Saatchi Online

Monday, July 16, 2007

Three photos by Rachael Dunville

"Meeting Tina, Springfield, MO" by Rachael Dunville. From the "portrait" series.

In making a photograph with another person, my aim is to nourish the complex human essence and express it through the intensity, humor, surrealism and grace of photography.

"Amo" by Rachael Dunville. From the "springtown" series.

I approach the transaction of making a photograph of and with another person as an intuitive, magical exchange; a subtle seduction between willing participants. Springtown is an extensive series of color portrait photographs that reflect the ethos of the Ozark community in which I grew up and to which I belong. These images reveal an evolving emotional rapport between photographer and subject, based on a mutual regard for looking and for being seen. This oscillating event displays the complexities of human desire and tension as fundamental to the act of making photographic portraits.

"2004" by Rachael Dunville. From the "freelance / studio" series.

The studio is a platform; a bare setting, primed to reveal inner repose -- or a filter from reality to create a masquerade of fantasy.

All photos courtesy & copyright of Rachael Dunville.

Friday, July 13, 2007

"Crepe and Black Lamps" (1986) by Don Van Vliet

"Crepe and Black Lamps" (1986) by Don Van Vliet, oil on canvas, 58 1/4 x 48". (source)

Although Don Van Vliet is better known as Captain Beefheart, his first passion was sculpture; it wasn’t until the early ’60s that he devoted himself to the avant-garde blues and rock music associated with his more ludic moniker. In the early ’80s, Van Vliet put music aside and turned to painting. Though a neo-primitivist aesthetic is evident in both the artist’s styling of figures and his recurrent imagery of rites and rejuvenation, the largest influence on Van Vliet’s work is that of the CoBrA painters. He frequently imagines frenetic barnyard scenes involving battling and copulating animals.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

"Gnu" (1973) by Mel Ramos

"Gnu" (1973) by Mel Ramos. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). From an auction. Previous posts on Mel Ramos.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

"Woman on the beach of Viareggio" by Isaac Israels

"Woman on the beach of Viareggio" by Isaac Israels (1865-1934), oil on canvas, 50,5 x 40 cm

"Dorothy" (2007) by Rebecca Campbell

"Dorothy" (2007) by Rebecca Campbell. Oil on canvas, 72 x 72 in. (183 x 183 cm). Photo courtesy of L.A. Louver. Source.

Monday, July 02, 2007

"Bathroom II" (2005-2006) by Richard Hamilton

"Bathroom II" (2005-2006) by Richard Hamilton, oil on Fuji lightjet on canvas, 100 x 100 cm. Courtesy the artist.

Richard Hamilton (born February 24, 1922) is an English painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage titled "Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?", produced for the "This is Tomorrow" exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by some critics and historians to be the first work of Pop Art.

This work is part of a series shown now at the Venice Art Biennial.