I have the benefit of living in DC, so I have quite a few fantastic art galleries and museums, and for those of you who haven't been before, there is serious respect for modern, postmodern, and contemporary art in these exhibits.
Recently I went to the Hirshhorn museum which has some of my absolute favorite works, and among them is a room full of Clyfford Still paintings. Something about his work really gets to me every time I see it. My absolute favorite is Number 21, 1948:
There's also a room full of Francis Bacon paintings, which is just... a whole different kind of experience in understanding the human figure, spirit, and sexuality:
And just a few miles away I have The Philips Collection, which has a temporary exhibit on El Lissitzy, the Russian Futurist, who was incredibly fascinating, and I especially love his lithographs, a blend of typography, graphic design, and abstract composed geometry:
(Translates to "All is well that begins well and has no end")
So, Hubski, who are some of your favorite artists? Painters, sculptors, machinists, graphic designers, typographers, etc., etc.
I absolutely love El Lissitsky, oh man. I think Rothko will always be one of my all-time favourites. He only got better for me after reading an essay on the Rothko chapel entitled (wait for it): The Existential Allegory of the Rothko Chapel. It sounds ridiculous and the lack of punctuation is... interesting, but once you get through it, oh boy does it blow my mind. I'm rather fond of colour field Abstract Expressionists in general, actually. Barnett Newman influences some of the work I'm doing now. Frankenthaler will always inspire me, too. Joyce Campbell's daguerreotypes are stunning, too. Being taught by her is a treasure. http://www.joycecampbell.com/img/thumbnail.php?img=gallery/l... I have an essay on her I'll post soon, too, once it's marked and stuff. I've been pinged for "stealing" my own writing before (I write under a pen name).
Yeah, aside from all the contextual and technical stuff, Rothko is just so damn aesthetically pleasing. There's something magnificently beautiful about his work.
I love so many things, it's hard to choose. For today, I will stick to a small selection of paintings. Warning, some of these paintings are NSFW! I really like Gustav Klimt, even though The Kiss has been copied, homaged and parodied to death, nearly beyond the realm of cliché, I think that his style is fascinating. I have never seen The Beethoven Frieze, 1902, but I would love the opportunity to. In particular because I want to see the panel depicting Lasciviousness in person, to get a real sense of the piece. There's something about it that's so weird and physical to me. This is the panel I'm talking about: And this is (I think) the entirety of the piece. In general, I'm not a fan of Gustave Courbet, but I do like L'Origine du monde, 1866 not simply because my thinking is so often genitally oriented, but because I think it marked a real shift toward what would become the ideas of Modernist painting. Also, here is a smaller version. My favorite van Gogh is this one titled, A crab on its back, 1889, because it's quite literally a "still life". Plus, most of his other paintings have to do with the quality of the sky (he was Dutch) and the outdoors and this one is very much not those things: Henri-Edmond Cross's Les Iles d'Or, îles d'Hyères 1891-1892 is my favorite example of pointillism. Most people think of Seurat when they think of pointillism, but I think Cross's contributions are also very important: My favorite impressionist painting is this one, by Claude Monet, called Impression, soleil levant, 1872:
I went a long time not knowing about George Inness, and I love his work. He was considered a Tonalist, and a father of American landscape painting. His early work is somewhat pastoral and detailed, but his later work is vivid and full of energy. 1860: Clearing Up 1887: Sunrise
I have to thank my wife for turning me onto Robert Rauschenberg. Her doctoral thesis is a catalog raisonné of his Combines, but it was his lithographic prowess that grabbed me after the introduction. A simple GIS of "Rauschenberg lithographs" will turn up enough juxtaposition and color to last an afternoon. Now imagine them eight feet tall, as they really are. I moved to Los Angeles almost two years ago. One of the great pleasures of being stuck in traffic in mid-city (from about Century City to Koreatown) is the constant supply of new works by Retna, the occasional Banksy, and lots of other gorgeous works along Melrose and Beverly. There is a massive artist community here because warehouses and food are cheap. Put this with the brewery prowess of the west coast and I may never return to upstate New York.
