John William Waterhouse, the English Pre-Raphaelite painter, was famous for his depictions of beautiful women. Much of these women come from mythology, as in “Hylas and the Nymphs,” seen above, where the son a god falls is seduced by the nymphs. Another famous painting is the Lady of the Shallot, where Elaine of Astolot dies of grief for the lack of Lancelot’s love. Both of these paintings have the recurring settings of the subjects in or around water (see also Echo and Narcissus and Odysseus and the Sirens).
Often Waterhouse painted scenes of women from literature. The weekly magazine Graphic frequently commissioned his portrayals of “ideal beauty” to capture the essence of feminine beauty. One such article was the “Heroines of Shakespeare” which included, among many others, Cleopatra from the play Antony and Cleopatra. Prints were offered from the magazine and were very successful.
The Pre-Raphaelites formed in 1848, with a later wave in the 1860s, with the intention of bringing back the simplicity and moral content of painting before the Renaissance painter Raphael. One of their aims was to paint from nature in high detail, as you can see in some of the above paintings. The water looks so real you feel as if you can jump right in.
Posted on 2008 under Modern Art | Comments are off
I wasn’t sure exactly what to categorize this post as but decided on calling it “modern art” as in art made in a recent time. The funny thing is it actually involves “time,” or at least a fantastic way of displaying it.
Inventor Dr. John Taylor woke up one morning and realized his days were numbered. At 70 he has lived a lifetime of achievement but has so much more to offer. So much, as his epiphany taught him, which will never occur thanks to time eating away his life minute by minute. Precious time is gone and irretrievable; he is mortal like everyone else. This gave him the idea for clock which he calls Corpus Clock and Chronophage.
The chronphage, or “time eater,” sits on top with ghastly arms and legs marching time on the outer wheel. With each second the horrible mouth with needle-sharp teeth opens ever more until the end of the minute when it comes crashing down, devouring that minute forever. Every hour, a chain sounds the hour and a lid slams down on a coffin. There are no hands to tell the time, but rather lights around the face. Each second, a light races around to reach its next reading.
This work of art doesn’t cease to amaze. The time is actually a little off, except for about once every five minutes. Time, the same way it appears in life, fluctuates erratically in speed at random. The pendulum at some points will stop, the lights will sometimes go back a few spots, then speed up. As Einstein says of relativity: “an hour with a pretty girl seems like a minute, a minute on a hot stove seems like an hour.”
The clock was unveiled at Corpus Cristi College in Cambridge by renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, author of “A Brief History of Time.” Hawking once theorized that if the universe stops expanding and begins retracting, then time can be reversed and events will work in rewind.
The clock is meant to remind observers of their own mortality.
I mentioned that Takato Yamamoto’s style reminded me of Alphonse Mucha with the fantastical moons and sweeping contours. You tend to get the same impression looking at Kawasaki’s works, but much more so. Not surprisingly her website lists the Mucha-era Art Nouveau of the early 20th century as one of her influences. She puts it as a blend between Art Nouveau and Japanese manga comics. Her subjects are portrayed as sensual yet innocent, and eerily erotic.
One interesting thing about this artist is her choice of medium. She paints with oils on wood panels, leaving the grain to complement and influence the composition. The wood grains act in many ways to contribute to the painting: grains can look like hair, or the wind blowing through it. Stems of flowers can rise straight out of the wood to meet some emotional adolescent girl.
Kawasaki, born in 1982, is consider a young rising star in Los Angeles, where she resides. She studies at the Pratt Institute of New York before leaving, siting the lack of academic interest in figurative, and illustrative work in favor of conceptual art that she wants nothing to do with. Kudos to her for leaving modern art academia to give us something truly beautiful.
Audrey keeps a journal at http://i-seldom-do.livejournal.com/ where she updates fairly regularly (don’t let her title fool you). There you can see a wonderful sample of her output.
Every now and then you see art that’s so good it just knocks your socks off. When I wandered aimlessly through some random Google image search my eyes scanned one of Will Wilson’s oil paintings. Only I didn’t know it at the time. At first glance it looks like a photograph. But then there’s that nagging feeling that what you’re looking at can’t be a photo: this is too good to be a photo.
After clicking on the thumbnail you are directed to Wilson’s studios and find that your gut instinct was in fact right. You find a gallery of beautiful paintings of photo-realism. The paintings are so real, you almost expect to see your own reflection if looking at a shiny silver pot painted on one of his canvases.
Too many times you see photo-realists, so gifted in the art of representing something perfectly, who use their art to portray boring banality. Sometimes you see a street corner, others a pile of dishes in the sink, or maybe a bunch of paper on a desk. If I wanted to see scattered, unorganized note paper I look right in front of me. If I wanted to see the procrastinated pile of dishes piling up I know where to look.
The true painter has much more to give than a mere photograph. A photograph is limited in so many ways such as technical ones like focusing, and deeper ones like the lack of penetration into the sitter’s personality, who, like everyone else, is conditioned to hide the inner self. When you look at Will Wilson’s masterful portraits, you are not only looking at minute detail of the flesh, but are looking into the person’s eyes and deep into their souls.
Posted on 2008 under Illustration | Comments are off
This post is really just an extension of the previous post Alice’s Adventures In Art, which shows some of the many illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. There are so many styles of illustrators of this classic book which span over a century. Those illustrators have the power to bring fantastical stories to life, giving children images which last a lifetime. Seeing the pictures can bring back so many memories.
I made the video after I made the obviously unrelated Yamamoto erotica montage (though if you look closely in that video, Alice makes a not quite G-rated cameo appearance).
I think I have a new favorite Japanese artist. His art is fantastical, erotic, grotesque and not for the squeamish puritan.
Takato Yamamoto’s style impresses a cross between traditional Japanese woodcuts and early 20th century Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha. They both portray graceful contours and swirling compositions with subjects of fantasy. Mucha’s Moon also comes to mind as you notice the lunar body appearing in many of Yamamoto’s prints. However, I doubt if Mucha ever got into bondage much.
There’s something wonderfully dark in these pictures, ranging from the subtly sexual to the downright macabre. Vanitas such as skulls, severed heads, bound young girls, flowing streams of arterial blood, and vampirism seem to be common occurrences. In fact I first came across this artist when I stumbled on a vampire painting (above) serendipitously; immediately came to mind my own vampire painting which is almost the same.
Biblical themes are seen in Yamamoto’s work as well including Salome who, in the New Testament, is described as the embodiment of female seductiveness and treachery, leading to the death of the Baptist. Above we see her holding the head of the saint against a blood red moon. Then there’s Saint Sebastian, the “penetrated saint,” who appears several times in several morbidly provocative ways.
Takato Yamamoto began his career experimenting with the Ukiyo-e Pop style of woodcut prints, and eventually started his own style called Heisei Esthiticism. His first exhibition was in Tokyo in 1998 and has enjoyed several since. I’m certainly going to keep a look out for more of this intriguing artist.
I know what you’re thinking. I must be jealous of these young prodigies because they are better at art in youth than I am after a quarter century of practice. Some of these artists are infants for crying out loud, and look what they can do!
You may be right in some respects; I am only human. After several years of putting brush on canvas without coming up with the next Mona Lisa, any artist soon realizes he is not the next Leonardo. This doesn’t discourage the aspiring artist because everyone knows we cannot all be super-genius renaissance men. However, painters (usually for the worse) compare themselves to the next guy or gal and size up their competition.
What happens when your competition still needs their mommy to cut their hot dog in twenty little pieces and gets sent to bed without supper when they spill their milk? Take a look at some of these really young artists.
“The Youngest Artist Ever”
Does anybody really think this isn’t a hoax? This is like one of those UFO or Bigfoot videos where the video is shaking and it’s way too zoomed in. Notice every time the actual painting is done, the camera is so zoomed in you only see the poor kid’s tense hand. Nobody paints like that, especially not kids. They told him to tighten up his hand and let the parents hold his arm and paint the picture.
Every time the camera zooms out the kid just whacks away at the paper. Then at the end they let him “touch up” the finished drawing because he can’t do any harm. If this is just a funny video made for fun then I don’t have a problem with it. However, if these parents are actually going to exploit this kid and use him for a scam “youngest artist ever” hoax for personal gain- then shame on them.
I’ve seen a lot of comments on this video where people say “awww that’s amazing I can’t even paint a Ninja Turtle.” Are people this stupid? Cute kid, fake video.
Akiane Kramarik
This girl is just amazing. In this video the artist is twelve, much older than Turtle boy, but she started painting at six! Her sole inspiration is God and started having visions at the age of four- visits to heaven, images of Jesus, and so on. Her paintings revolve around faith and portray Jesus and other figures as well as landscapes and abstractions. She’s kind of like Wassily Kandinsky, who also painted spiritually. Only, Kandinsky started about four decades later into his life than Ariane did in hers.
This young prodigy is not without controversy herself. When asked if the family would allow a video of her at work, they claimed it would not be a true representation of her work and wouldn’t agree to it. So of course people speculate that the young girl may not be the sole creator of the paintings, and claim she may only complete part of them.
Whoever paints the pictures is very talented, obviously more so if it is indeed the work of this young girl. If her story is true, she is indeed a modern day renaissance girl- she is also a poet, pianist and composer.
Babies With Paint Brushes
There are also many extrememely young artists out there in the spotlight, eager to make their parents fame and fortune. It’s a sad truth that parents sometimes use their own flesh and blood to make money, but that’s neither here nor there and I just hope it isn’t the case with these kids. Either way, they are young and they are exhibiting.
There’s also the question: sure the baby is painting, but is it really any good? Well, that might be just a matter of taste. I can think of many modern abstract painters whose art looks a lot worse than Leonardo (the Ninja Turtle), no matter who was responsible for it.
According to Guinness, the youngest professional artist was Arushi Bhatnagar at a mere 11 months old. There’s also Onarietta Issabella Remet, who gained notoriety by painting at 18 months. People are buying their paintings, so there definitely is a market for these little Michelangelos.
If these artists are not legitimate then shame on their parents or anybody else preying on people’s gullibility. If these young artists are real, then kudos to them. I only wish them long fame and fortune.
In the meantime I putt along and listen to the adage: “the flame that burns twice as hot, burns half as long,” and know that someday I’ll paint something amazing- I just keep putting it off.
Vince' s ear: your art blog about art, art history, painting, sculpture, drawing, illustration, animation, artists, galleries, museums, and plenty more. Dan Kretschmer is the author of Vince' s ear, and also the author of a book called "Masters of the Renaissance," which takes a look at 18 of the most important artists of the Renaissance in Europe.
The purpose of this art blog is to raise general awareness of art and to share knowledge and interests. The author's goal is to spark interest in as many people as possible, and to inspire them to pursue art to enrich their lives.
