Happy Birthday, Rembrandt

[filkertom]

Four hundred years ago today.

Who's your favorite classical artist (mine would be Da Vinci, with a strong love of Mucha and Parrish), and your favorite contemporary artist (Matt Wagner, Olivia de Bernadinis, and hbruton [hi, Heather!])? SF/Fantasy and comic book artists do count.

Update: Mr. Brain is misfiring this week. As I was reminded in comments, I absolutely should name Phil Foglio and Will Eisner. Which also reminds me of Jack Kirby.

Comments

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's a tough one. I go through phases of interest in various artists as I uncover them in my studies (that was one of the joys of being in the MFA program). For reasons I don't really understand, I tend to be drawn to angsty German painters - Egon Schiele, the Brucke painters: Kirchner, Max Pechstein, Oskar Kolkoschka. And later on the artists associated with Die Neue Sachlichkeit, especially Christian Schad. There's some terrible beauty in the work brought out in the angsty period after WWI and before WWII.

'Course then my interest bobbles back over to the lighter side and I love the French...the Fauves, Matisse, Georges Braque, Kees van Dongen, Vlamink and Derain. I think because I spent so many of my formative years in Mexico or on the border, I have a deep love for Mexican artists like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, David Alfredo Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco.

As far as contemporary artists go...well my two abiding favorites are Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. Both, I feel, are extremely misunderstood by the general public and had a lot more to offer than their time on earth allowed for...although admittedly Andy's artistic work had begun to fall off once he became obsessed with his magazine. I tend to also love photographers like Cindy Sherman and Mapplethorpe. The interest in Latino artists brough me to love the work of George Yepes, Roberto Marquez, Jorge Santos, Sam Flores and Alberto Gironella.

Generally speaking though, lately, I've been drawn more towards so called "Outsider" or "Lowbrow" artists (mostly because I feel like the art establishment has calcified to the point where it's functioning as the French and British Art Academies in trying to hold art to the standard of what it was while ignoring and disdaining the movement, growth and vitality of new artists with new visions more closely tied to the actual people who are alive at this time and in this place).
That being said, I love the work of Shag, Sage Vaughn, H.R. Giger, Kris Lewis, Shepard Fairey, Eric White, Brom, Michael Parkes, Wancheti Mutu, Gail Potocki, folks like that.