The Man Who Drew Bunnies It was January 13, 1995 when it happened. On that harsh winter evening there were multiple witnessess that claimed they saw a man dive into a body of freezing water to his death. The man’s body discovered a day later was ‘supposedly’ the last form of art performed by the late, estranged William Johnson. His death still remains a mystery today as no ever knew why he did it, there is only speculation. However, after a thorough investigation, the police found no answers and ruled his death as a suicide. Raymond Johnson, most famous for his collages in the days of early Pop art was simply never a household name. Instead, the movie How to Draw a Bunny proclaims he was "New York's most famous unknown artist.” The movie explains this and so much more as the people “closet” to Raymond reflect how disconnected and different he was from society in his lifetime. The movie captures this and so much more as the director thouroughly investigates the enigma of what Raymond was and his mysterious death that baffled both friends and the public by interviewing people th...
Another case is that of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson whose death was initially ruled the result of accidental suffocation. A second autopsy produced a different conclusion, but when the second autopsy was performed, his body had been stuffed with newspaper, and his organs were missing ("Organ Trafficking, Melanin Theory & the Fountain of Youth -," n.d.). The brain, heart, lungs and liver were missing. He also discovered Johnson's death was due to blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck (Archer,
From an early age the artist felt ostracized from nature and his only connection to wild life was through the natural museum of history and his uncle’s house, which was filled with taxidermy. His parents were divorced and his father suffered from alcoholism. His tough childhood forced Walton Ford to find humor in the challenging aspe...
Ernie Barnes was and still is one of the most popular and well-respected black artists today. Born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, in 1938, during the time the south as segregated, Ernie Barnes was not expected to become a famous artist. However, as a young boy, Barnes would, “often [accompany] his mother to the home of the prominent attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr., where she worked as a [housekeeper]” (Artist Vitae, The Company of Art, 1999). Fuller was able to spark Barnes’ interest in art when he was only seven years old. Fuller told him about the various schools of art, his favorite painters, and the museums he visited (Barnes, 1995, p. 7). Fuller further introduced Barnes to the works of such artists as, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Correggio, which later influenced Barnes’ mannerist style of painting.
Claes Oldenburg was born in 1929 in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was a Swedish Consul General, and because of his job they moved to Chicago in 1936 where he became an American citizen. When he graduated Yale University in New Heaven, he took up the job as working as a reporter in 1946. Later on in 1952 Oldenburg attended Chicago Art Institute. While he was there he published some drawings in magazines and started to paint pictures. He was inspired by Abstract Expressionism. Then in 1956 he moved to New York and met Jim dine, two years later he met Alan Kaprow and a couple other artists. All of them were interested in art and pushed the question “What is art?” They started to stage “happenings”. That was the start of the Pop Art Movement. Pop Art is the products of mass media. From 1958 -59 he arranged and designed his first sculpture. After that he started to replicate food, like hamburgers, ice-cream and cakes. Oldenburg’s first exhibit was in 1958. There was a selection of his drawings that were included in a group show at the Red Grooms’ City Gallery. A year later, Oldenburg had his first one-man show. He had sculptures at the Judson Gallery. Then in 1962 he had his art work in the “News Realist” which helped define the Pop Art Movement. He also had other exhibitions in 1964, a one man show at the Sidney Janis Gallery and also in 1968 at the Museum of Modern Art. In the mid-1960s he also began making creation for huge monuments.
Walcutt, Charles Child. "Sherwood Anderson: Impressionism and the Buried Life." The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966. 158-170.
"An Artists's Life." Litzmann, Berthold. An Artist's Life. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. 532. Book.
In order to add something to their lives, [black families] decorated their tenements and their homes in all of these colors. I've been asked, is anyone in my family artistically inclined? I've always felt ashamed of my response and I always said no, not realizing that my artistic sensibility came from this ambiance.... It's only in retrospect that I realized I was surrounded by art. You'd walk Seventh Avenue and took in the windows and you'd see all these colors in the depths of the depression. All these colors.
Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo had an immense amount of impact on the world of art. Warhol has always explored the rooted connection between celebrity culture and artistic expression, which left him with a lasting legacy that has marked him for one of the most famous artists to have existed. The population was fascinated by Warhol’s ability to blur the lines between fine art and innovative design, providing him a large following and work that will be remembered for decades. Kahlo too is a name that is not likely to be forgotten. Her work is recognizable on a global level and her works are loved by many people. The deep admiration her followers have given her, and the amount of modern artists that she has influenced, creates an immortalization
The essence of art is truly in the eye of the beholder, and Joseph Beuys redefined the meaning of artistry when he once said that “every man is a plastic artist who must determine things for himself.” One may find himself or herself asking the million dollar question: “Who is Joseph Beuys?” Joseph Beuys was a German-born conceptual artist who started to pursue art as a career after serving as an airman in the Second World War. Beuys's assorted body of work ranges from the conventional methods of drawing, painting, and sculpture, to process-oriented, or time-based "action" art. With his time-based “actions”, Beuys suggested how art might exercise a healing property on both the artist and the audience when psychological, social, and political are the influence.
Peter, S., 1996. The History of American Art Education. 7th ed. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Mark Rothko is recognized as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century and during his lifetime was touted as a leading figure in postwar American painting. He is one of the outstanding figures of Abstract Expressionism and one of the creators of Color Field Painting. As a result of his contribution of great talent and the ability to deliver exceptional works on canvas one of his final projects, the Rothko Chapel offered to him by Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil, would ultimately anchor his name in the art world and in history. Without any one of the three, the man, the work on canvas, or the dream, the Rothko Chapel would never have been able to exist for the conceptualization of the artist, the creations on canvas and the architectural dynamics are what make the Rothko Chapel a product of brilliance.
Robert Motherwell unlocked creative forces during a time when Abstract Expression was frowned upon. Motherwell gave art a voice. He used raw emotional vitality during an era when American painting had become the prevailing force in international art. The role of Motherwell was quite distinctive. It helped to give the onlooker a sense of historical realization that such work can be perceived as not for what it is but what we think it is. It changed the audience’s awareness of reality. Robert Motherwell taught himself to paint and made friends with other surrealists such as himself. Just as psychoanalysts use the term free association, which is a mental process by which one word instinctively means another, Motherwell’s art expresses such
Ferguson, Russell. In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art. Los Angeles: U of California, 1999.
In conclusion we can see that even worlds apart artists can still find inspiration from unlikely subject matter. Watteau’s from the theater. Picasso’s from the street. Both artists not only showed their era in their art but also themselves and others. Even when it comes to entertainment it seems that not artist can escape the idea of shaping their own worlds into their piece of art. As well, both also showed not only the similarities but also differences of their era and how art was viewed.
When I imagine an artist, I picture a Parisian dabbing at a sprawling masterpiece between drags on a cigarette seated in an extravagantly long holder. He stands amid a motley sea of color, great splashes of vermillion and ultramarine and yellow ochre hiding the tarp on the studio floor. Somehow, not one lonely drop of paint adorns his Italian leather shoes with their pointed toes like baguettes.