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Architectural Archetypes, Side-by-Side
Well, "archetypes" might be putting it a bit strongly, but blog titles do require brevity. Here are two buildings, one characteristic of the 1930s, the other an example of a 1950s-60s fad.I took the...
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Doris Zinkeisen: Even More Elegant than Her Art
Doris Clare Zinkeisen (1898-1991) was born in Scotland, but like many others, made her career in England. Her sister Anna was also an artist, perhaps a better one. Doris' Wikipedia entry is here.From...
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Jean-Louis Forain: Painting as Commentary
Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931) forged a successful career as a painter and illustrator, though he is not very well known today. His Wikipedia entry mentions that he was a friend of Degas (not always an...
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Disaster and Chaos as Depicted by John Martin
"If it bleeds, it leads" is an old newspaper saying, a comment on the taste of the general public when it comes to news. That's just human nature: how much might daily circulation increase if the top...
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Ernst Kirchner: Messy Life, Messy Art
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) threw himself into modernist painting styles and the related bohemian lifestyle, making a name for himself as an Expressionist, Fauvist and (organizationally) Die...
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In the Beginning: Chuck Close
Self-Portrait II - 2011Chuck Close (1940 - ) is noted for his monster-size portraits. But during the years around 1960, he followed the Abstract Expressionist path that was more or less expected of...
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William L'Engle, Well-Connected Interwar Modernist
William L'Engle (1884-1957) graduated from Yale University in the field of naval architecture, but became a painter instead. A detailed biography of L'Engle and his wife Lucy is here, and a chronology...
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Norman Wilkinson's Travel Posters
Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) was an illustration all-rounder. As his Wikipedia entry indicates, besides the travel posters treated in this post, he was a noted painter of naval scenes as well as a...
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In the Beginnig: Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) is best known for being one of the first of the 1960s Pop Art practitioners. His reputation was built on paintings that were based on comic book images he found here and...
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Fascist Remnants
I took the photo above in 2006 when visiting the Deutsches Museum in Munich and posted it on the 2Blowhards blog. The aircraft is a World War 2 Me109 fighter, and something is missing. The missing item...
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Giacomo Favretto: Next-To-Last Really Good Painter from Venice?
A while ago I wondered if Ettore Tito (1859-1941) was "The Last Really Good Painter from Venice."Since then, I discovered another Venetian artist who, in his way, was Tito's equal. His name is Giacomo...
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Up Close: Giacomo Favretto's "Dopo il bagno"
As I mentioned in the previous post, a late-19th century Venetian painter whose brushwork I like is Giacomo Favretto (1849-1887), who died aged 38 of typhoid fever. A brief Wikipedia entry is here and...
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John Harris: Sci-Fi Artist in Oils
A large percentage of book cover art for the science-fiction and fantasy genres is now done using digital media. The resulting images can be quite striking at times, especially when complex shapes...
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Jules-Alexandre Grün as Painter
Jules-Alexandre Grün (1868-1938) is perhaps best known as a poster artist, having worked for the great Jules Chéret. But he also painted, which is the focus of this post.Grün's English language...
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George Morland, Dissipated Genre Painter
Yes, he was dissipated, throwing away an otherwise successful career through lack of financial and personal self-control. That was George Morland (1763-1804). What I find interesting is that he was a...
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H.R. Giger: A Note Regarding Taste in Art
Swiss fantasy artist Hans Rudolf "Ruedi""H.R." Giger (born 1940) died 12 May 2014 as a result of injuries from a fall. The event was met with many expressions of sadness and regret on the Internet. A...
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Frank Frazetta's "Famous Funnies" Covers
Frank Frazetta (1928-2010) is famous amongst those who pay attention to science fiction and fantasy art, this largely having to do with book and magazine cover illustrations that he painted from the...
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Fascist-Era Paintings on Display in Rome
In other posts I've noted that Italy, unlike Germany, has not consigned its totalitarian past to oblivion. I suppose this is due in part to the fact that Benito Mussolini during the first dozen years...
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B. Fleetwood-Walker of Birmingham
Hard-edge or else soft and more impressionistic. These largely sum up the portrait painting approaches of Bernard Fleetwood-Walker (1893-1965), who proudly spent most of his career in the industrial...
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Christian Schad's portraits
According to his Wikipedia entry, Christian Schad (1894-1982) was never very successful financially as an artist. Nor was he very famous until late in life when he was rediscovered. Moreover, even...
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