Tom Bodett
Williwaw 2000
Tom Bodett (born February 23, 1955 in Champaign, Illinois) is an American author, voice actor and radio host. He is also the current spokesman for the hotel chain Motel 6, whose commercials end with the phrase, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland 1860
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky”, all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
Ad Reinhardt
Abstract Painting Red 1952
Adolph Frederick Reinhardt studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and then joined the abstract, avant-garde group, the American Abstract Artists. Influenced by Indian art and a desire to create a distinctive style, Reinhardt split from this group and developed his own style of geometric abstraction. After meeting Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman in the 1940’s, he began working in layers of shapes, primarily rectangles. This gradually gave rise to his Minimalist phase, which sparked the movement in the 1960’s.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Susanna and the Elders 1610
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1652/1653), daughter of well-known Roman artist, Orazio Gentileschi (1563 – 1639), was one of the first women artists to achieve recognition in the male-dominated world of post-Renaissance art. In an era when female artists were limited to portrait painting and imitative poses, she was the first woman to paint major historical and religious scenarios.
Born in Rome in 1593, she received her early training from her father, but after art academies rejected her, she continued study under a friend of her father, Agostino Tassi. In 1612, her father brought suit against Tassi for raping Artemisia. There followed a highly publicised seven-month trial. This event makes up the central theme of a controversial French film, Artemisia (1998), directed by Agnes Merlet.
The trauma of the rape and trial impacted on Artemisia’s painting. Her graphic depictions were cathartic and symbolic attempts to deal with the physical and psychic pain. The heroines of her art, especially Judith, are powerful women exacting revenge on such male evildoers as the Assyrian general Holofernes. Her style was heavily influenced by dramatic realism and marked chiaroscuro (contrasting light and dark) of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573 – 1610).
After her death, she drifted into obscurity, her works often attributed to her father or other artists. Art historian and expert on Artemisia, Mary D. Garrard notes that Artemisia “has suffered a scholarly neglect that is unthinkable for an artist of her calibre.” Renewed and overdue interest in Artemisia in recent years has recognized her as a talented seventeenth-century painter and one of the world’s greatest female artists. The first book devoted to her, Artemisia Gentileschi – The Image of The Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art. by Mary D. Garrard, was issued in 1989; her first exhibition was held in Florence in 1991. A TV documentary, a play and, more recently, a film have advanced her notoriety .
Bridget Riley
Cataract 3 1967
Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE (born April 24, 1931 in Norwood, London) is an English painter who is one of the foremost proponents of op art.
Giorgio de Chirico
The Red Tower 1913
Giorgio de Chirico (July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978) was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Greek-Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement. His surname is traditionally written De Chirico (capitalized De) when it stands alone.
Rene Magritte
Not to Be Reproduced 1937
René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His intended goal for his work was to challenge the observer’s preconditioned perceptions of reality and force the viewer to become hypersensitive to their surroundings.
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Jugglers at the Cirque Fernando 1879
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841–December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that “Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau”.
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Along with other Surrealists of his generation (Jean Anouilh and René Char for example) Cocteau grappled with the “algebra” of verbal codes old and new, mise en scène language and technologies of modernism to create a paradox: a classical avant-garde. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Édith Piaf, whom he cast in one of his one act plays entitled Le Bel Indifferent in 1940, and Raymond Radiguet.
His work was played out in the theatrical world of the Grands Theatres, the Boulevards and beyond during the Parisian epoque he both lived through and helped define and create. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim.
Artist Quote of the Day 