#50 Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett was born in Long Beach California in 1941. In 1963 she received her BA from Mills College in Oakland, California. While studying at Mills College in Oakland she met mixed media sculptor Elizabeth Murray. In 1965 Bartlett received her MFA from the Yale School of Art and Architecture. During this time minimalism was at a high point. Jennifer is considered to be a conceptual artist.

Bartlett is best known for her paintings and prints that contain subjects that are considered be me mundane such as houses. They are treated both as realistic and also abstract. In 1981 Jennifer created a 200 foot mural for the Federal Building in Atlanta Georgia. Bartlett has work in many collections such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, The Contemporary Museum, The Tate Gallery, and the Whitney Museum of American Art just to name a few.

http://www.artinfo.com/galleryguide/19630/6176/16195/james-goodman-gallery-new-york/artist/jennifer-bartlett/biography/

#49 Alexander Ney

Alexander Ney was born in 1939 in Leningrad, Russia. He is an American sculptor and painter. He immigrated to the United States in 1974 and has lived and worked in New York ever since. Alexander developed many individualistic styles of modern art but he is most famous for his unique work in Terra cotta sculpture that are heavily perforated surfaces and intriguing forms.

Ney's childhood was not an easy one. He was born into the time of World War II when the Siege of Leningrad was launched, this is marked by historians as the second most lethal battle in the wars tragic history. The cities rail connections were severed cutting off all access to and food and power supplies. That following winter between two and three million civilians were killed during the Leningrad Blockade, including 400,000 children. Alexander was given private art lessons from Russian sculptor V.V. Lishev. After receiving these private lessons Ney decided to study at the Art School of the Leningrad Academy of Arts from 1954-1957. Next he attended the Art School at the Surikov Moscow Art Institute from 1957-1959. Ney befriended many progressive-minded art students who are now stars of the contemporary Russian art scene such as Leonid Sokov and Lev Nussberg. Ney was relentless at trying to create striking and new interpretations of art, this is what quickly made him legendary amongst his peers.

From 1965 to 1967 Ney taught sculpture to children at the house of Young Pioneers in Leningrad. In 1967 to 1969 he went back to school to study art history and theory courses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Ney

http://www.alexanderney.com/flash/alexanderney.html

#48 Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili was born on October 10, 1968 in Manchester. Chris is a British painter who is best known for his works of art that reference his Nigerian heritage and his incorporation of elephant dung. Ofili attended a catholic school which was a school for boys. After that he attended Xaverian College in Victoria Park Manchester. He also studied in London at the Chelsea School of Art from 1988 to 1991 and then at the Royal College of Art from 1991 to 1993. Ofili was established because of exhibits by Charles Saatchi at his art gallery in north London and also because of the traveling exhibition called "Sensation" in 1997. Because of this he became recognized as one of the few British artists of African/Caribbean descent to break through as a member of the "Young British Artists" group. Chris Ofili has had many solo exhibits since the early 1990s including the Serpentine Gallery. In 1992 Chris received a scholarship that allowed him to travel to Zimbabwe where he studied cave paintings that ended up having an effect on his style. With this new style he began to work with elephant dung that people though he splatter on his paintings but in reality he applies it to his painting in the form of round spheres, and he sometimes uses it as foot stands on his paintings. Not only do Ofili's painting reference his Nigerian Heritage they also reference gangster rap seeking to question racial and sexual stereotypes in humorous ways. His work is often build up in layers of different materials to create a collage. In 1998 Chris Ofili won the Turner Prize.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ofili

#47 Judy Chicago

"The Dinner Party"

I picked Judy Chicago for this post because when I took ceramics with professor Hayes we actually did a version of her "Dinner Party" to help support the food bank of Virginia. We had a No Dinner Dinner Party where everyone made "plates" that somehow represented hunger. For mine I made a set of hands holding up a piece cardboard that has written on it "will work for food".

Judy Chicago was born on July 20th 1939 in Chicago IL. She received her Bachelor Degree and Masters degree both at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1962 and 1964. Judy is another one of those artists that isn't just an artist she is an author, educator, feminist, and an intellectual whose career has now spanned over five decades. Just Chicago has been a huge influence both within and beyond the art community which can be shown by the numerous inclusions in publications throughout the world. Chicago's work has been on exhibit frequently in the United States and Canada as well as in Asia, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In addition to her art exhibits many of the books she has written have also been published in foreign editions, which enables her to bring her art and philosophy to many readers around the world. After taking time off from teaching for 25 years in 1999 she returned to teaching at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. Although Judy has been an influential teacher and a prolific author her primary focus throughout her career has been her studio work. In 1974 Chicago turned her attention to the subject of women's history as she created her most well know work "The Dinner Party" which was executed from 1974 to 1979 with the participation of hundreds of volunteers. This was an extremely monumental multimedia project with was symbolic history of women in the western civilization. The Dinner Party has been seen by more than one million viewers during its sixteen exhibitions held at venues spanning six countries.

http://www.judychicago.com/about-judy-chicago/biography

#46 Ashley Bickerton

I absolutely love Ashley Bickertons work. I especially love the use of bright colors. This one is my favorite of his because of the interesting look on the persons face. It almost looks like the person is pieced together from different features of other people. The eyes are the main part of this that really draw me into his work. The eyes are very intense and I think that is what makes this piece of work so wonderful.

Ashely Bickerton was born in Barbados in 1959. He studied at the California Institute of Arts where he graduated in 1982. Next he went on to study at the Whitney Museum Independent Studies program in New York. He continued to live and work in New York until 1993. Since living in New York Bickerton has moved to Bali where he currently lives and works. Bickerton has had exhibits worldwide and many of his works are included in many museums and public collections. Bickerton is considered to be a mixed media artist because he often mixes photographic and painterly elements with industrial and found objects. Ashley Bickerton has been associated with the 1980s art movement called Neo-Geo, which also includes artists Jeff Koons and Peter Halley. Bickertons work has explored the issues of contemporary art related to the commidification of the art object itself. The objects in Bickertons work are often grotesque in a self aware manner and are often a critique of capitalism.



http://www.whitecube.com/artists/bickerton/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Bickerton

#45 Jasper Johns

"Flag"

Encaustic,oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood

Jasper Johns was born on May 15, 1960 in Augusta Georgia. He spent the majority of his life living in South Carolina. Jasper started drawing at the age of three and has been creating art ever since. Jasper began his studies at the University of South Carolina where he studies for a total of three semester in 1947-1948. After that he moved to New York City where be studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. He had a brief stint in the military where he was stationed in Sendai Japan from 1952-1953 during the Korean War. In 1954 Jasper returned to New York City where he met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long term lovers. Together they began to explore the contemporary art scene and began developing their ideas on art. In 1958 John's was discovered by gallery owner Leo Castelli while he was visiting Rauschenbergs studio. Castelli was the one who gave John's his first solo show and it was at this show that Alfred Barr the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art purchased four of his works of art. In 1963 Johns and Cage founded Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts, which is now know and Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City. Jasper is best know for his painting Flag (1954-55) which he painted after he had a dream about the American flag. Johns work is often described and Neo-Dadaist as opposed to pop art, even though his work often included subject matter, images, and objects from popular culture. Jaspers early works were normally composed of simple things such as flags, maps, targets, letters, and numbers. Johns treats the surface of his work and it is often lush and painterly. He is famous for incorporating media such as encaustic, and plaster relief in his paintings. Not only does he create paintings but he also creates intaglio prints, sculptures, and lithographs with similar motifs that he creates with his paintings. Johns breakthrough move which was to inform much later work by others, was to appropriate popular iconography for painting thus allowing a set of familiar associations to answer the need for the subject.







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Johns

#44 Joan Snyder

Joan Snyder was born on April 16, 1940 in Highland Park, New Jersey. Joan received her A.B from Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1962 and then her M.F.A. from Rutgers University also in New Brunswick, NJ, in 1966. Joan's introduction to the New York art scene began with a series of her "stroke" paintings that were completed in the 1970s. These paintings were the basis for her first solo shows in New York and San Francisco. Joan's painters are often placed under various art movement categories such as Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism, and Feminist Art but the changing nature of her work combined with her use of personal iconography, female imagery, and aggressive brush stokes have kept her steadily untagged. Throughout her career Joan has received many fellowships, the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1983, and in 2007 she received a MacArthur Fellowship. Joan has work in many different collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Guggenheim just to name a few.

http://joansnyder.net/bio.php

#43 Kiki Smith

"untitled (hanging woman)" 1992

Kiki Smith is an American who was born in Germany in 1954. She is the daughter of American Sculptor Tony Smith. Kiki grew up in New Jersey. One of her first memories of experimenting with art was helping her father make cardboard models for his geometric shapes. Kiki is among the most significant artists of her generation. She is primarily know as a sculptor but she finds her printmaking as equally important. A reoccurring subject in Smith's work is the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief and storytelling. In the 1980s Smith started to turn the figurative tradition in sculpture inside out, she did this by creating objects and drawings based on organs, cellular forms and the human nervous system. This body of work later developed into involving animals, domestic objects and narrative tropes from classical mythology and folktales. Life, death, and resurrection are thematic elements that are presented in Smith's installations and sculptures. In several of Kiki's recent works she included the life of St. Genevieve, patron saint of Paris. In her works such as "Rapture, Wearing the Skin, and Lying with the Wolf", she portrays St. Genevieve communing with the wolf, taking shelter in it's pelt, and being born from it's womb. With her portrayal of St. Genevieve in this way Smith wanted to represent the symbolic relationships between human and animals. In 2001 Smith received the Skowhegan Medal for sculpture. In 2005 she received the Athena Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. Kiki was awarded the 50th Edward MacDowell Medal from the MacDowell Colony in 2009. Smith also has work in many prominent Museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Com temporary Art in Los Angeles. Kiki makes her home in New York where she currently lives and works on her art.


http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/smith/index.html

http://www.blogger.com/www.moma.org/exhibitions/2003/kikismith

#42 Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly was born on May 31, 1923. He is an American painter and sculptor associated with hard edged painting, color field painting, and Minimalist school. Kelly often uses bright colors to enhance his work. Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York. When Ellsworth Kelly was eight or nine years old his paternal grandmother introduced him to bird watching. This introduction to bird watching was essential to his career as an artist because it enabled him to train his eyes and developed his appreciation for the physical reality of the world by focusing on natures shapes. Through the act of bird watching is what helped him develop his passion for form and color. Kelly's schooling from elementary school to high school was typical of the public school curriculum which included art classes that stressed materials and sought to develop the artist imagination. After high school Ellsworth wanted to attend college but his parents were reluctant to support his training in the arts. His parents would only fund his technical education so he first studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1941 until 1943. After attending Pratt he joined the army and served until he was discharged at the end of World War II. He then used his GI bill to attend school at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston from 1946 to 1947. He then studied at a school in Paris, this is where he developed his aesthetic. In 1954 Ellsworth desided to come back to the United States after being abroad for six years. He came back after he read a review of an Ad Reinhardt exhibit because he felt that his work related to the exhibit. Upon his return to New York he found the art world to be very tough. The acceptance of his work was anything but rapid. In 1956 Kelly had his first New York exhibition at Betty Parsons' Gallery. The overall review of his work in this exhibit was that it had more of a European flair. Ellsworth Kelly is not only known for his paintings but he is also known for his Lithographs, drawings, and sculptures. Many of Ellsworth's paintings consist of a single, usually bright, color with some canvases being of irregular shape, sometimes called "Shaped canvases." The quality of line seen in his paintings and in the form of his shaped canvases is very subtle, and implies perfection. This is demonstrated in his piece Block Island Study 1959.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsworth_Kelly

#41 Gerry Judah

Gerry was born in 1951 in Calcutta and grew up in West Bengal before his family moved to London when he was ten years old. As a young child Gerry was extremely moved and influenced by the landscapes of India, there theatrical rituals, and the ornate architecture. The theatrical aspects of this influence would become apparent in his later work. When his family moved to Austere London, it was still in its post war state and it was a major shock to Gerry. Because of this he spent most of his time in his bedroom drawing imaginary landscapes, architectural fantasies and futuristic cars. It was because of this that Gerry became an artist. He left Whitefield Secondary Modern School in London in 1969 and worked in a number of odd jobs from kitchen porter to architectural draughtsman. In 1970-1972 he went on to study Foundation Art and Design at Barnet College of Art. Afterwards in 1972-1975 he obtained a Double First-Class Honours Degree in Fine Art at Goldsmith College, University of London. He then went on to study sculpture as a postgraduate at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London from 1975-1977. After college Gerry set up his studio on Shaftesbury Avenue which is the theatre center in the west end of London. This is where he began to work on his sculptures. Since Gerry Judah was not yet a accomplished artist and he still needed to earn his keep and finance his work so he took up jobs around the corner in many theatres as a stage hand and scenic artist. Judah began to like the public nature of the work he did in the theatres and wanted to incorporate his artwork into the public in some way so he began to find settings for is own artwork in more public places than the rarefied spaces of conventional galleries. He began to build a reputation for innovative design, working in film, television, theatres, museums and public places. Amongst his many commissions from public museums and institutions, Judah was asked by the Imperial War Museum in London to create a large model of the selection ramp in Auschwitz Birkenau for the Holocaust Museum opened by the Queen. The extensive research and numerous visits to Auschwitz led Judah to produce a highly acclaimed work that encouraged him to take his art is yet a new direction. Gerry decided to return to his fine art beginnings and he decided to make art born of his reflections on historical events. He created a body of large three dimensional paintings that explored the devastation's of the war and ravages man has made upon the environment caused by recent conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. These works have had many solo exhibits in many galleries such as Timber Yard, Flowers East Gallery, and a solo Exhibit in New York and many more.

http://www.judah.co.uk/

#40 Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire, England in 1956. He was raised in Yorkshire, England. In 1974 he started college at Bradford Art College. In 1975 through 1978 Andy attended Lancaster Art College. Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist who collaborates with nature to create uniquely personal and intense works of art. Andy likes to work with raw materials such as ice, snow, leaves, bark, clay, rocks, stones, petals, feathers, and twigs. The works of art are created outdoors and they manifest, however fleeting, a sympathetic contact with the natural world. Before or as they disappear Goldsworthy records his work with superb color photographs. Andy likes to explore the tension of working in the area in which he found his materials. He is undeterred by the change in the weather which may melt, move, or washing away his work. His intention when creating these works of art out of nature is not to leave his mark on the landscape but rather to work with it instinctively so that a delicate scene of bamboo or massive snow rings, or a circle of floating leaves on a pool create a new perception and an ever growing understanding of the land.

Goldsworthy has an interesting philosophy to explain his work and why he does it and how he does it. He says for his looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from his resulting work. To Goldsworthy it is difficult to determine where one stops and the other one begins. He finds the places that he decides to work with by going for walks. He determines his medium by the season or the weather. He likes to take the opportunity that the weather and day provide for him, if it is winter and it is snowing he works with snow, if it is fall he works with the leaves. When he works with a rock, a leaf or a stick it's not just about the material, its an opening into the process of life within it and around it.

http://www.rwc.uc.edu/artcomm/web/w2005_2006/maria_Goldsworthy/TEST/index.html

#39 Susan Fereday

"Sally (I Am Lost to Myself)"

Susan Fereday was born in Adelaide, South Austrailia in 1959. She is an Austrailian artist, writer, curator, and educator who lives and works in Austrailia and Germany. Susan Fereday uses a mixed of medias including digital and analogue photography, installation, video, light and shadow. The work that she is best know for is her "post-photographic" installations in which simple materials such as paper mache spheres, glass bowls and goblets along with light and shadow are used to invoke the logic of photography without the use of traditional photographic means. Susan Fereday also exhibits found photographs such as her series entitled "under a steel sky", which include her amatuer photos from the 1950s. It is said that this series resembles Robert Frank's series called "The Americans". Originally Susan went to school to study as a photographic technician in Adelaide before deciding to change directions and study photographic art at Prahran College of Advanced Education in Melbourne where she completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1986. In 1992 she completed her Masters of Arts by research also at Prahran College of Advanced Education. In 1995 after having completed her Masters degree Susan won a Samstag scholarship with which she used to undertake research in Paris in 1996 and then again in 1997. In 2010 she completed a doctorate at Monash University. Susan Fereday has had many solo exhibitions all across Austrailia during the past two decades, some of them being Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; Artspace, Sydney; Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane just to name a few. Fereday has been a teacher in art theory and studio practice at Victoria College of the Arts, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and Monash University.


Susan Fereday is not only known as an artist she is also a writer. She has written catalogue essays, reviews and articles for Australian art magazines such as "Agenda, Photofile, and Eyeline". Susan Fereday also does research which is mostly focused on the theories of photography. Her doctoral thesis was called "Light Out of the Darkness: the origin of photography in mystery and melancholy" which explored meanings in the early photographs of Nicephore Niepce and William Henry Fox Talbot.

http://susanfereday.net/index.html

#38 Guy Denning

"Dreyfus"

Guy Denning was born in 1965. Denning is an English contemporary artist and painter who is based in France. He is the founder of the Neomodern group, a member of Stuckism International, and part of the urban art scene in Bristol. Denning's early work included an interest in Franz Kline. His work was characterized by powerful and expressive brushstrokes but his work was mainly abstract. More recently his work has combined early influences with an increasingly more figurative style of painting. The human figure is prominent in his latest work. Denning uses the human figure to convey powerful emotions that often have political overtones. His series entitled "Icarus" is an example of this approach. Structurally Denning's work is very dynamic, it shows concern for draughtsmanship with a spontaneous application of color. Denning makes his painting and drawings from observation and photographic references. Guy Denning not only uses powerful brush strokes to express emotions in his painting but also scratches the paint to show his audience the intensity of the emotions he is trying to portray in his artwork. In his work Denning also employs the technique of blacking out the eyes and mouth of some of his paintings in order to emphasize his theme of darkness, horror, and even despair. Also sometimes with his work Guy Denning uses stencils and collaged text. Guy stated that his paintings are significantly influenced by the subject of war. This is because when he was a young child his parents took him to France to a cemetery at Verdun, which he says is the most significant thing that has ever happened to him. Since 1992 Guy Denning has had exhibits across Britain. Since 2007 he has exhibited work in the United States, Italy, and France. In 1997 Denning founded the neomodern group. In 2004 he founded the Bristol Stuckist Group. In 2011 Guy Denning claims to no longer be a Neomodernist, a Stuckist, or even an Urban Artist, he now says that he is just an artist. Guy Denning artist statement says "The visual arts are the focus of culture; they are the most important road leading humanity away from its old home of "nature". From the earliest finger scratched image in the dirt, to the cave paintings of Lascaux to the iron "angel of the north" they represent our fundamental desire and drive to replace the nature chaos with a cultural order. The visual arts so often served spiritual ends because of this representation. At its basest level artists take dirt, model and make significance. It is not coincidence that the state funded galleries of the world have taken on the presence that only religious buildings once had. Art isn't about communication. It's about the search for significance and control in a world of anonymity and chaos."







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Denning



http://guydenning.org/

#37 Chuck Close

Chuck Close was born on July 5, 1940 in Monroe Wisconsin. Chuck close is considered to be an American photo realist or super realist who specializes in close up portraits and self portraits. In this style, artists in the early 1970s created a link between representational systems of painting and photography. Photo realists often used a grid technique to enlarge a photograph and reduce each square to formal elements of design. Each grid is it's own little piece of artwork and many photo realists use the airbrush technique. Chuck Close has been a leading figure in contemporary art since the 1970's. In 1962-1964 Chuck Close attended Yale University for graduate school where he was an assistant to master printer Gabor Peterdi, this is when he received his MFA. In 1995 Close received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 1996 Close also received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Art from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Finally in 1997 Chuck received an Honorary Doctorate from the Rhode Island school of design, Province. Close is best known for the monumental heads that he paints using thousands of tiny brush bursts, thumbprints, or by looping multi colored brushstrokes. Chuck Close has developed a formal analysis and methodical reconfiguration of the human face that have dramatically changed the definition of human portraiture. Over the years Chuck's work has gone from harsh black and white images to colorful and brightly patterned canvases of an almost abstract painterliness. The Big Self-Portrait in black in white was the first of Close's mural-sized work painted from photographs. This painting took four months to complete and was on a large canvas which was 107 1/2x 83 1/2 inches. He used acrylic paint and an airbrush to include every detail. For this painting Close took many picture of himself of his face and neck from different directions. Then he selected one of the images and made two copies of it 11x14 inches, on one copy he drew a grid and lettered and numbered it. Then he used both copies to transfer the photographic image square by square onto a large canvas. When making his painting Close was interested in the visual elements-shapes, textures, volume, shadows, and highlights, of the photograph itself. Close was also interested in how a photograph shows some things in focus and sharp and also some things are out of focus or blurry. In his photograph the tip of his cigarette and the hair on the back of his neck are out of focus so he also made them out of focus in is Big Self-Portrait. Like most artists Close changed his style of work but his was not by choice. In 1988 Close experienced a tragedy, he had a spinal blood clot, which left him a quadriplegic so he is unable to move his arms or his legs. This did not deter him from painting, it just caused him to adapt a new painting style in which he painted using his teeth to hold the paintbrush. He had assistants tape off the grid, he then used the techniques of grisaille and pointillism within the grids. The result was still a canvas of mini paintings, which viewed from a distance are seen as a single or unified image.

The sitters for Chuck Close's work are posed in a manner that allows only the subtlest of individual inflections. At first glance the Polaroids that Chuck works from resemble drivers licenses or passport photos, but in truth they are not because they are imposing in a way that ID photos can never be.

http://www.chuckclose.com/biography.php

http://www.metroartwork.com/popup_all-artists_info.php?manufacturers_id=59

#36 Banksy

"Girl and Balloon (Limited Edition)"

Finding information for this artist Banksy is kind of hard because the true identity of Banksy is a mystery. Banksy was born is Bristol. He is considered to be one of Britain's most celebrated graffiti artists. Stencils of his work have become very popular throughout the UK and his subversive images can be seen on walls throughout the world. Many of Banksy's images have been moved off of public walls and into private collections in the form of limited edition prints. These limited edition prints help to generate revenue for auction houses such as Bonhams and Christies. Even Banksy's works that still remain on walls have been sold in auctions, with some of them being dismantled. A house in Bristol Banksy's artwork on the outside was also sold as "a work of art with a house attached" through an estate agent. Banksy designed the cover for Blur's "Think Tank". Banksy has managed to attract great media attention through various stunts aimed at the establishment. These stunts have included hanging Banksy prints in establishments such as London's Tate Museum and the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 2005 Banksy's version of a primitive cave painting that showed a human figure who is hunting wildlife with pushing a shopping cart was found hanging in the British Museum. Other stunts that have been done by Banksy include painting images on the Palestinian side of the Israeli West Bank Barrier. Another stunt pulled by Banksy is when he substituted amended versions of Paris Hilton's CD at several record stores. As a result, these CDs have become highly collectible. Despite all of Banksy's media attention, the true identity of Banksy still remains the cause of much debate.







http://www.artrepublic.com/biographies/8-banksy.html

#35 Ken Done

BMW Artcar

Ken was born on June 29, 1940 in Sydney Australia. At the age of 14 Ken left school to attend The National Art School of East Sydney. After studying art for five years he started a highly successful career as an art director and designer in New York, London and Sydney. In 1980 Ken Done has his first solo exhibit in Sydney. Since his first solo exhibit he has had over 50 one man shows including major exhibits in Australia, Europe, Japan, and the USA. Ken's work has been described as the most original style to come out of Australia and his paintings are in collections all throughout the world. Ken has had a very diverse career so far. He has done many paintings throughout his career such as the BMW Artcar, and the total decorative scheme for the Garden Restaurant at the Powerhouse Museum, in Sydney Australia. In 1994 a major retrospective "Ken Done: The Art of Design" was mounted by the Powerhouse. In 1996 Ken Done's first European exhibition was held in Paris with great acclaim. In 2000 and 2001 collections of Ken's original work were successfully debuted in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and two sold out shows were also held in London. Ken Done has had original work featured on the cover of a Japanese magazine called Hanako for over 10 years. In recent times Done has also been involved in the movement to create a new Australian Flag. In 1999 Done was asked to create a series of work for the Opening and Closing ceremonies at the 2000 Sydney Olympic games. Ken's paintings have been the creative source of a very unique and successful business called "Done Art and Design". There are many "Done" stores throughout Australia which continue to help develop, expand and promote Australian art and design to world wide audiences. Throughout the years Ken has worked extensively for many charitable organizations but the welfare of underprivileged children has always been a special concern for Ken. After being named father of the year in 1989, Ken now holds an honorary position of Australian Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. In 1992 Ken received the Order of Australia for services to Art, Design and Tourism. In many parts of the world Ken Done has come to symbolize Australia and Australians: creative, optimistic, and bold.







http://www.kendone.com.au/about/

#34 Martin Kippenberger

Martin Kippenberger was born on February 25, 1953 in Dortmund and he died March 7, 1997 in Vienna. Martin was born the only boy in a family of five children with 2 older sisters and 2 younger sisters. His mother was a dermatologist and his father was the director of Katharina-Elisabeth colliery. As a child Martin spent six years at a strict school where even as a child he showed great artistic talent but he skipped his art classes because the teacher only gave him the second highest grade in the class. In 1967 Martin was determined to maintain the control over his freedom of movement by going to a dance hall where his dance teacher told him "don't waggle your behind like that". This exaggeration from his dance instructor made him determined to dance and he went on to become the third best dancer in Europe. In 1968 after attempting to pass his fourth year exam for the third time Martin decided to leave school and pursue a practical career. He was rejected as a trainee at a shoe store because he was considered to have to much talent so he become a window dresser at a clothing store. After getting fired from his job for taking drugs he takes and trip to Scandinavia and then spends some time at a farm getting therapy where he was soon considered to be cured. In 1972 he begins studying art at the Hamburg Art Academy but he quit his studies there after sixteen semesters. After he didn't finish art school he decided to head to Florence to become an actor. This is when he painted his first canvases in his series Uno di vio, un tedesco in Firenze. All of these works were of the same medium and the same size, and they were based on postcards of photos that Martin took himself. This work remains incomplete though because his intention was to have the frames stacked and when they were stacked they were to reach his height but it was short by 10cm. Martin was never happy with what he was doing. At one point in his life he was determined that he was also going to become a writer.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kippenberger/biography.shtm

#33 Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis. Lucian was born December 8, 1922 in Berlin and died July 20, 2011 in London. In 1933 Freud and his parents moved to Britain after Hitler came into power in Germany. Lucian's father was an architect and his mother was a grain merchant. Freud became a British national in 1939. After being invalided out of the merchant navy in 1942 after serving only three months Lucian began working as a full time artist. Freud's impasto Portraits and nudes make many people regard him as one of the greatest figurative painters of our time. Rather than paying people to pose for him portraits, Freud preferred to use family and friends as models, people who actually wanted to be there, rather than painting people who only wanted to be there for the money. Freud stated, "I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness." In 1938/39 Freud studied at the Central School of Art in London. From 1939 to 1942 he studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Debham, and in 1942-1943 he studied at Goldsmith's College in London on a part time basis. In 1946/47 Freud painted in Paris and Greece. Lucian had work published in Horizon magazine in 1939 and again in 1943, and in 1944 he had work hung in the Lefevre Gallery. Freud had a studio that he worked out of for 30 years in Paddington London before he moved to one in Holland Park. He had a gallery exhibit at the Tate Gallery in 2002 that was a sell out.

Early in his career Lucian Freud experimented with surrealism, and he was said to have a brief "fling" with neo-Romanticism. Since the 1950's his work has typically been labeled as Realism. The bulk of is work are female nudes, along with some cityscape's, plant studies, and interiors. His work is distinguished by his muted palette and visible brushstrokes.

http://painting.about.com/od/famouspainters/p/bio_LucianFreud.htm

Artist #32 Cindy Sherman

"Untitled Film Still #58"

Cindy's untitled film stills are my favorite ones from all of her collections. I love that she portrayed different people and scenarios. It also amazes me that she was able to get such wonderful shots of herself all by herself. Professor A. Skees showed us some of her work in our class and I just fell in love with it.

Cindy was born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Unlike some budding artists Sherman wasn't involved in arts as a child and neither were her parents. Her father was an engineer and her mother worked as a reading teacher. It wasn't until college that Sherman began to gain any concept of the art world. Despite her parents lack of artistic interest they were supportive of her when she told them that she wanted to attend art school after college, although her mother did caution her to take a few teaching courses just in case. Sherman's exploration of art began at State University College at Buffalo. When starting college Sherman primarily focused on painting until one day she had had enough of it. Sherman stated that she could never have been a painter anyway because she was never able to react to a painting in anything more than a visceral way. She felt that she had done all that she could do with painting so she gave it up and instead focused her time on photography which is what she studied for the remainder of college. During this time is when she met someone who would become a very important person in her life, a fellow artist named Robert Longo. Sherman, Longo, and a fellow student named Charles Clough formed "Hallways", which was an independent artists' space where she and fellow artists could exhibit their work. Sherman graduated college in 1976 and soon moved to New York City to start her career in art. This is when Cindy Sherman began to take photographs of herself. These photographs would come to be known as "the Untitled Film Stills", perhaps the most well known and recognizable work of Shermans Career so far. These photographs were begun in 1977, and Sherman placed herself in B-movie actress roles, showing her dressing up in wigs, hats, dresses, and clothes unlike her own, where she was playing the role of characters. Many people mistake these photographs as self portraits but really they only play with the elements of self portraiture. In these photographs Sherman is playing a "type" not an actual person, but a fictional one. Sherman completed this project three years later because she ran out of cliches with which to work with. This series gave her much publicity and critical acclaim and landed her her first solo exhibit at the nonprofit space The Kitchen, in New York City. In 1981 Sherman was commissioned by the respected magazine ArtForum to do a centerfold piece. The work that she submitted was ultimately rejected by ArtForum's editor Ingrid Sischy who claimed that her photographs "might be misunderstood". After that Sherman went on to change her artistic style almost entirely in what is often referred to as the "Disaster and Fairy Tales series. This was the first time in Cindy's public career that she was not the model in all of the images. This series was shot from 1985 to 1989 and the images were considered to be more grotesque than her earlier work. For these works Cindy dresses to look scary and deformed, and she places herself in strange, undefinable settings which often featured oddly colored lighting. Cindy used doll parts or prosthetic body parts to substitute her own, and the scenes are normally strewn with vomit, blood, and any other disgusting substance. Shermans second best known work came sometime after the Film Stills were well received. This time she again is the model in her work but she casts herself in the roles of famous paintings. She didn't specifically reference any certain paintings but you could still feel the relationship between the great masters works and her own. She lived abroad during this time. In 1992 Cindy Sherman embarked on a new series which is now referred to as "Sex Pictures". This is the first time that Cindy is entirely absent from the photos. Instead she again uses doll parts and human prosthetic body parts which are all posed in highly sexual poses. These photographs were all done in color and they were meant to shock. In 1997 Sherman added film to her busy work career directing " Office Killer" In 1998 she also appeared in front of the camera making a cameo playing herself in John Water's comedy "Pecker".







http://www.cindysherman.com/biography.shtml

Artist #31 Damien Hirst

"Beautiful C Painting"

I like this painting of his because I like all the colors in it. It is a series of painting that was created on a spinning wheel. I think it is a very bold piece of work and that is what I like the most about it. I love paintings by artists who are not afraid to use bold bright colors. I like that he experimented with a spinning machine to create some of his paintings. Hirst's work is based on life and death and to me this on represents life because the bright and bold design make it come to life on the canvas.

Damien was born on June 7, 1965 in Bristol England. He now lives in Devon, UK. He studied at Goldsmith's College in London. In 1988 Damien curated an exhibition of his work and that of his contemporaries with still attending college. This exhibition is believed to have been the starting point of Damien's artistic career, and a defining moment in kick starting cutting edge British contemporary art. Damien's work confronts the scientific, philosophical, and religious aspects of human existence and it included sculpture, painting, and printmaking. In 1995 he was awarded the Turner Prize for "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Something living". In 2004 he collaborated with Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst to exhibit recent works at Tate Britain under the title In-a-Gadda-da-Vida. In 2006 works from his murderme collection were exhibited at the Serpentine gallery, London :" In the Darkest Hour there may be light". Damien's works can be found in collections worldwide including Tate, London, UK, MoMa, Washington DC, Scotland, Netherlands, and much much more.







https://www.othercriteria.com/browse/hirst/