Alfred Bocklin (1827-1901) was a swiss symbolist painter. The photo on top is one I took of his painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, so it's a crappy pic...I agree. The ones underneath are his works, googled of course. I like his work, didn't know why before until the class when Professor Hullot-Kentor spoke of being able to see the dynamic movement of the gesture in a painting, I didn't really understand until I looked at Bocklin's paintings again and realized that what drew me to them was that I created a narrative for each one according to the gestures. And even though his paintings are largely static, he has a lot of violence in his work.

Edward Burne-Jones (1817-1898) was a part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John William Waterhouse (one of my earlier posts). He was loving the drapery and chiaroscuro, but I like that his work is more stylized than classical.

Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was an Austrian Expressionist, illustrator, and writer. He was considered insane until he found art and was supposedly "cured". I don't really know...I don't think he did anything bad when they let him out of the asylum...but he did a lot of good art. He only did a few oil paintings, most of his work consists of pen and ink drawings, lithos, and watercolors. He is insane...and insanely talented.

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was a symbolist painter. He started working in pastels and oils later in life but his extensive background in drawing carried through regardless of media.

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood along with Edward Burne Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and many others. Apparently, there was a motif of three part names within the group. The reason why you see this artist here along with the two below is because they take their references directly from mythology and literature and (once again, I'm biased) they do it so beautifully.

I figured since I did one of my earliest influences below...I might as well let the flood gates open and fill you in on some others. I promise to go back in and enter their histories but everyone knows that, if they are so inclined, they can always find the information lurking on the web somewhere.

The artist you see above is Jean Delville (1867-1953). He was an occultist and Belgian symbolist painter.
The two top pieces are done in charcoal, the bottom ones in oil. I would explain what I like and why I like it, but I'm totally biased. So you're free to make your own judgement.

Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957) is a huge influence on me, I didn't actually do any research on him til later but I knew about him as a teenager when my art first began to flourish. I didn't know then that he was a painter/graphic artist in the early time of the abstract art movement and orphic cubism. He started out in realism and the works I was familiar with were the two on top. It all makes sense now :).

We saw Thomas Hirschhorn at the trip to the New Museum on Tuesday. The bottom image is the work from a show similar to it to jog your memory (just in case) but there weren't any images up of the work from the New Museum...eh...next time. All the images that come before are all his work as well.

I decided to do a search on Hirschhorn since I'd never heard of him before (but I had seen his work before) and found that he is a prolific and eccentric artist, in the sense that he doesn't seem to stick with any one media.
He's described as a political artist and I do see the message in his work, but most importantly, his work struck something in me. The images at the new museum were filled with images of war and porn. Like "Faces of Death", morbid images of corpses in various stages of mutilation and decay were splayed between images of porn and pop culture.
In a sense, all those images combined to give me a lens into our current situation, and I was exhilarated at the epiphany and terrified by it all at the same time.

"I'm late! I'm late!" (like the Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland)

It's not that I haven't been inspired, or that I haven't seen new art, I've been overwhelmed.
And now, I'm not sure where to begin so I'll go with what is closest to my heart.

I love Alex Grey. I think his work is amazing. The detail, concepts, anatomical consistencies, and otherworldly auras all combine to create a force.

I met Alex about 7 or 8 years ago, in his Brooklyn loft he held a get-together/fundraiser for the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, his gallery in the city. I originally saw his work in person there, hung across his walls, some still in the process of being worked on, resting on easels, against walls.
I was absolutely inebriated by the complexity of his piece, "the Cosmic Christ", there are so many different intricate and beautifully painted cells that make up the entire piece. I also love that the frames are made specifically for his pieces.

Alex has done artwork for many bands, the two most famous being Nirvana and Tool.

I'm drawn to his work, I think, because I wish I could paint canvases like his. Science and biology have always interested me and bright colors make me feel the dynamism of his concepts. Maybe I feel comfortable because he uses symbols I grew up seeing. I'm not sure, I just know I'm drawn to his art like a Chappaquan housewife to Nordstrom.

I suck...at deadlines without an internet connection...but I promise, I'm getting my own internet setup this week, no more walking a few blocks in the cold to pay for a coffee and a danish I didn't even want just to get work done.

Anyhow, I figured I'd fill this blog in with some information about the images I chose for the top and sides. On the top is Clayton Patterson, who I promise to blog about soon. And on the side is Ryan McGinness, who I chose to blog about this time around.

He is awesome! I say this because I am one of those weirdos that likes Baroque art and graffiti. I love his use of cultural imagery and ideas to form his installations and the fact that it's not just works on paper, or works on the wall, or works on buttons (and in buttons), it's skate decks and sculptures and entire rooms of vibrant explosions.

I saw him this past summer at Pace Prints in the Chelsea gallery district. The images you see are from that show.

His work connects to me because of his use of vibrant colors, how intricate his designs and pattern work can be, and how wry his humor is. I love that he made buttons, hundreds of them, all different kinds, with all different sayings. I remember taking down some of the phrases he used but I couldn't find my notes in time. I'll edit this as soon as I do and include some of his hysterical and clever button phrases.

I loved his use of the skate decks to create the circular rainbow wall installation but I was most blown away by the fact that the rooms themselves were pieces of art, and then his pieces were put into them and on the walls so that in effect, you were walking into an installation that looked like an intelligent acid trip.

I would keep fawning over him but I know what about my past connects me to his art and I know that being objective is difficult in situations like these. But maybe you can see how I see if I explain where I'm coming from. I used to skateboard in high school, for a while, the only chick who'd risk getting arrested with the guys and willing to break bones for some air. I loved it, but my mom thought it was crazy and she threw my deck away. I didn't have the money to replace it so I lost touch with skating, but never with the lifestyle. Because it was illegal to skateboard in White Plains, we'd always run all over the town so as not to leave a scent, finding new places to do flip tricks and running like crazy when we saw the cops. Then, later on, when I dabbled in graf art, I realized it wasn't much different than skateboarding. I consider both of them to be art forms of a kind and they're both illegal so you always have to run around finding safe places to express yourself, and in both situations, the higher you get (with flip tricks or with tags/throw ups), the more street cred you receive. I, for one, don't have any street cred...I'm scared of heights...

but I loved San Francisco, in big part for the reason that they consider graffiti to be an actual art form and graf artists travel from all over to tag up in San Francisco, knowing their memory won't be covered over for a while.

But I did some cool art in my time (before they painted over it...damn anti-vandalism act...)

and I did some cool tricks in my time (before I literally busted my ass trying to do an ollie over a admittedly large set of stairs), so looking at his work made me nostalgic for the adrenaline rush of the illegal, and I don't know if that's what he meant to do...

But in another light entirely, his scrollwork and intensely colored patterning and symbolism reminded me of the Indian art and architecture I grew up around, highly decorative and very vivid.

The more art I see, the further I define myself.

It's odd, but I love it.