This is just a place to put some of the artwork I really love. There's not really an important reason for this page besides wanting to share artwork/other stuff that I love.
All images may be clicked to enlarge.
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
Corot is the complete master of the landscape. Corot often painted numerous depictions of the same location, emphasizing different aspects in each variation as mood or memory struck him. As he told his biographer Théophile Silvestre, “When a collector wants a repetition of one of my landscapes, it is easy for me to give it to him without seeing the original: I keep a copy of all my works in my heart and in my eyes.”
“I hope with all my heart there will be painting in heaven” –
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875)
Giovanni Fattori
“Il vero non ha bisogno di soggetti bizzarri, il vero è così bello che l’artista trova tutto nella vita che gli si muove attorno.”
"The truth has no need for bizarre subjects; the truth is so beautiful that the artist finds everything in the life that moves around him." - Giovanni Fattori (1825-1908)
Charles Csuri
Charles Csuri was an early generative artist (creating his first digital art pieces in 1964). I find his work a lot more compelling than his contemporaries also working with computer art at the time (Molnar, etc) - maybe it's because unlike most other generative artists at the time he came from a background of traditional painting.
"Even though we have all this marvelous technology, you still need to have an esthetic sensibility, you need a sense of culture and history [for the image to work as art]. That has not changed." -Charles Csuri (1922-2022)
Albertine Meunier
Albertine is one of the most interesting artists working with computers or the internet now, and uniquely she approaches it with a dada sensibility (cofounding the "DataDada" movement with Julien Levesque). Her work is hard to put into still images since it is conceptual, you can view more of it on her website: www.albertinemeunier.net/
"I am often told that I am mischievous. To start with, I wasn’t necessarily so, but the internet has become a powerful colossus. Humour is a credible response to this power, a form of soft revolution. It allows you to tackle important subjects with more levity," -Albertine Meunier
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik's work will always hold a very special place for me, one of his shows was the first art show which I saw growing up that I really felt a connection with. "Nature is beautiful, not because it changes beautifully, but simply because it changes." - Nam June Paik (1932-2006)
Ronan Barrot (b. 1973)
"I don’t think
everything’s already been done. I don’t agree at all with that postmodern idea
that sees art history as a set of pots and pans in which to cook something up.
This painting, the one from the poster [speaking of his painting which was the poster of a film festival in Avignon], for instance: I’ve never seen it anywhere.
That’s it. Saying it like that is very pretentious, but it allows you to live. When I
painted Le 17 octobre 1961 à Paris [17 October in Paris], for instance, I knew
no one had ever painted it. But ideas for history paintings don’t come to you
every five minutes. I’m not trying to do something that’s never been done just
to say I’ve done it. The creation of a painting often involves the hybridisation of
pre-existing paintings. We make paintings “grow.” I think of myself more as a
peasant: it’s as if there were several plots of land, some of them fallow, and that
I made paintings grow, one after the other." - Ronan Barrot
Eugène Leroy
[...] For Eugène Leroy, resemblance consisted of painting a reality that is not the representation of an image but its
essence instead. Since the artist was not seeking mimesis, figuration and abstraction went hand-in-hand.
« Tout ce que j'ai essayé en peinture c'est d'arriver […] à une espèce d'absence presque, pour que la peinture soit totalement elle-même » "All I have ever tried to do in painting is reach [...] a kind of absence almost, so that painting is totally itself." -Eugène Leroy (1910–2000)
Jonas Jeppesen (b. 1998)
I was incredibly lucky to have met and been able to work with Jonas at art school. It was nice to study with someone else who was interested in landscapes, and interested in painting for painting's sake.
Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964)
"I am now working on a still life with a bottle and other objects spread out on a plane and it seems to be turning out well." - Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964)
"Chasing new technology as the way to differentiate your art rewards speed, money, and computing power over creativity... The tech cannot be the only interesting aspect of an artwork for it to be successful and have staying power." -Helena Sarin
Bug Bus Piano
It's hard to write about them briefly, but Bug Bus Piano is one of my favorite living artists. Check out their website at www.carriswheel.com or their bandcamp at bugbuspiano.bandcamp.com.
Quake DeFRaG / w3sp
I think that w3sp's castle run is particularly beautiful (I cannot imagine how many hours he spent on it). I wish that things like this were more widely accepted as 'performance' with artistic value.
I also really admire movement gamemode players in general, there are some incredible Counter-Strike Surf players as well, but the castle run in the video on the left being a total freestyle with no goal of completing a course or doing anything specific besides just beautiful movement is what makes it so special to me.
It's not visual work, but I wouldn't feel right making a list of artwork that I like without including Chrétien de Troyes. If you haven't read anything by him, "Eric and Enide", "The Grail", and "Yvain, The Knight of the Lion" are just incredible, (Staines has a very good translation from old French into English). If you can find an original manuscript to reference while you are reading, some of them have beautiful illuminations too.
