the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!
I discovered this unique American artist only recently through a book by Alexandra Kolossa, from Taschen's artists series. A very well written and wonderfully illustrated book, here's what the author says about Keith Haring's style in the book's introduction:By expressing universal concepts of birth, death, love, sex and war, using a primacy of line and directness of message, Haring was able to attract a wide audience and assure the accessibility and staying power of his imagery, which has become a universally recognised visual language of the 20th century.
Like almost no other artist, he understood how to combine his personality and his art into a single entity. His artistic trademark is the line, formally reduced to its essentials, which spreads out in many ways within the restricted area of the picture and takes proper account of its proportions. And it is always a continuous line, guided by the principle of chance, becoming an outline, then a figure and finally a symbol. Mostly the beholder needs just a brief glance in order to register what is to be seen and understood in his works. The particular fascination or Haring's art, however, lies in his ability to combine this strongly graphic style with a great deal of imagination...Spontaneity and assurance are the outstanding attributes of his work. Thousands wear his T-shirts; millions recognise his style. This was true when he dies, and it is still true today...He copied and integrated what he saw around him. Equipped with a sure instinct for the sensitive issues of his time, Haring became a voyeur of American society and acted as a medium that every day absorbed and processed inspirations before disseminating them via artistic statements that he quite consciously geared to the spirit of his age.
May he rest in peace
Figure painting is currently experiencing a major revival...Following modernism's demise after its long search for the perfect self-referential painting, in the form of the ultimate abstract canvas, Douglas Crimp asserted - in his inflammatory 1981 essay "The End of Painting" - that painting had martyred itself. In achieving its nihilistic aim, it had painted itself into a corner from which there could be no escape...But as Sabine Folie, one of the curators of the seminal 2002 figurative painting show 'Cher Pientre, Lieber Maler, Dear Painter' at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, has commented, artists did continue to paint.. In fact, painting an was just biding its time until critical attention returned to find it in rude health.'
'Painting may have been for a short time somehow denied by an overexposure of video computer-art or photography' says Folie, 'but in the end, its methods of representation and transformation were enriched by all those media and not diminished.'..
There's no longer the sensibility that one genre should dominate contemporary art in its entirety, as was claimed for abstract expressionism in post war America. And there's no longer a sense of having to choose which style of work you exhibit... With the advent of postmodernism, which embraced diversity and multiple viewpoints, and represented a fracturing of stylistic hierarchies and a knowing sense of historical irony...As a result young artists rarely pin themselves down to one specific area of expertise...
Artists who paint are aware of the history of the medium, and references to paintings from all ages can be found in the work of many of the artists in this book. With the prevalence of cheap colour printing, scanners and the internet, painting's history is laid out like a web in front of each artist...All artists, to some extent operate with the knowledge that these vast stores of images are available at the click of a mouse.
"They are literally an image of Christ or a Saint. They are stylised and tend to look similar, the reason being, that the artist making them was thought to be expressing God's vision rather than a worldly one.The icon was seen not as a man-made image but rather as a divine one.Therefore, any trace of artistic personality was though to be bad"
I chose this name because I found some compositional similarities between the image I produced and actual icons. Neon is something associated with the superficial in modern life. It is a type of light invented by man. Which reminds me of the Atheist statement "God did not create man - man created God" So this image may be viewed as a statement on Religion today.
(Art Theory for Beginners, Zidane Press, London,2006,p24).
"Rielly's paintings have always had an uncanny ability to unsettle the viewer...Rielly uses photographs from tabloids, magazines and forensic books as the starting point for his disturbing paintings, removing the context of the image so that what may once seemed acceptable now becomes bizarre, surreal. His style heightens each work's strange effect - faces bleached of colour, like over-exposed photographs, except for the eyes which pierce the viewer with their intensity, unnervingly holding you gaze even as you turn to walk away."
Corbijn favours the texture and grain black-and-white stock for most of his videos, and when shooting in colour, often depends on an overprocessed, supersaturated stock that makes individual colours pop off the screen...Corbijn is expert at emphasizing the mythic qualities of his clients, with videos like Red Hot Chili Peppers' "My Friends" (1995), U2's "Electrical Storm" (2002) and Echo & The Bunnymen's "Lips Like Sugar" (1987) accentuating on the larger-than-life mystiques of his clients.(Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes, Continiuum, 2007, p113-114)
In Austria in the years between the world wars, Rudolf Koppitz was one of the primary movers in the photographic art scene, and "Movement Study" produced in 1926, is his finest work. The composition is immaculate, and has led to the picture being declared one of the greatest images of the 20th century. The gentle tilt of the heads of the models in the background contrast strikingly with the graceful sweep of the nude in front. Her body is framed entirely by their costumes, and the flow of the picture , created by the dynamic shapes moving at odds within it, ensures that the image is brimming with astonishing vitality and life. When one looks at the degree of control the models have of their bodies here, and the grace with which they're posing, it's perhaps little surprise to learn that all four were Russian dancers.
The picture resulted from Koppitz's determination to push back the boundaries of what was acceptable in terms of perspective and the use of symbolism, and his contemporaries often saw the naked figure in the picture as representing death, although Koppitz himself never added any subtitle. Whatever the interpretation, the picture certainly succeeded in changing the perception photographers had until that time of the ability to show movement in a still picture and, as such, it freed up ideas about composition and posing and still has much to teach the photographer today.
(Portraits: Developing Style in Creative Photography,Black and White Photography,Rotovision SA, 2000, p25)
