Showing posts with label painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label painting. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Alfons Mucha

Little needs to be said about the tightly controlled, whimsical work of Art Nouveau artsist, Alfons Mucha. His beautiful females have probably graced more puzzles, t-shirts, and black light posters than Bob Marley, and his work never ceases to amaze. Few artists have the intricate mastery of line and color that together make Mucha's work so stunning, and his smooth shading techniques would make a digitial artist envious. Mucha's work is now mostly over 100 years old, however, with his work's emphasis on advertising, it makes you wonder where the "Ad men" went wrong, and how things like "wuu-u-u-uh-zu-u-u-u-uhhh" and that stupid gecko manage to sell anything. One drawback that I've noticed only after researching Mucha's work is the prevalence of horrible Mucha tattoos out there. Take a gander toward google images, and you'll see what I mean. While Mucha's work captures a moment in stunning lines and color, its intricacy and detail doesn't lend itself to good tattoo material without covering, say, your entire back, or...without adaptation by a very good tattoo artist. Moral of the story--tattoo artists are called artists for a reason--if you hand them an image and they say it can't be done, it probably shouldn't be.














Friday, March 18, 2011

Will Cotton

If there's two things Americans love, it's beautiful women and high fructose corn syrup. This can be seen no better than in the sultry, sugary works of Will Cotton. Cotton's paintings (yes, they are all paintings), can be described as surrealist, but I'd rather call it magical realism. The flocculant, whimsical landscapes are rendered with the utmost detail-- to the point where you can almost feel how sticky Cotton's figures must be as they lounge in cotton candy or metling ice cream. Obsessed wtih this sugary delight, Cotton also sponsored a bakery exhibit in 2009, where he displayed an assortment of candy and cake goodies that inspired him for people to enjoy in real life. I'm particularly impressed with the models Cotton uses in his work- women that are not all uniform in their look and build. Sure, some fall into the stick-thin creepy model look that is so pervasive in our culture today (Check out Katie Perry's lackluster Cotton-inspired video, "California Girls"), but others have the fabulous,  thick, creamy figures that fit so well into Cotton's pin up cotton-candy landscapes.












Check out more sweet stuff at Cotton's website, http://www.willcotton.com/