As we near the end of our journey through the alphabet some of you may have noticed a slight itching in the back of your eyes. Maybe you’ve felt hunger pains, not in your belly, but at the midpoint of your head. That’s where your visual cortex is found and that hunger signals the beginning stages of art addiction. Other symptoms include a compulsive need to discover all the names of teachers and friends of a particular well-known artist, exploding bookcases due to the weight of too many art books, and a deep knowledge of auction houses and their scheduled public viewings. Lastly, hives.
Don’t worry, the addiction is relatively benign and plenty of support groups exist. Just remember, it’s a scavenger hunt which has no list and never ends.
This week’s installment is S, which stands for SUPER SIZED. Click through for a double portion of A is for Artist.
Note: Click on images to see them larger and in much higher quality.
John Singer Sargent
One of the holy trinity of big brush painters. His paint must’ve been ground from pure bravura, because people are still trying to paint portraits like him. He was a master of putting in all the necessary details and expunging the rest.
Frank Schoonover
One of Howard Pyle’s earliest and most trusted students. Schoonover is a prime example of why Pyle’s students ruled the golden age of illustration. Dramatic lighting and dynamic compositions are front and center in every single piece of Frank’s work.
François Schuiten
A French comic artist who’s known for rendering phantasmagorical architectural spaces. Primary features include Canyons of Beaux Arts buildings populated by Art Deco flying machines.
T. F. Simon
A seemingly little known Czech graphic artist, he was a master of discovering both the beautiful and the mysterious aspects of Prague. A European counterpart to the numerous master Japanese printmakers of the early twentieth century.
Ivan Solyaev
A Russian illustrator whose work blends the grotesque and the mysterious. Distorted perspective and grim colors combine to make snapshots of junkyard nightmares.
Beth Cavener Stichter
A contemporary sculptor who seems to shape animals not out of clay, but raw emotion. Her fantastic work oozes with characterization, sensuality and dynamic gesture. It stands as some of the most awe-inspiring dimensional work in the contemporary art scene.
William Stout
A modern master of the inked line, William Stout has had a long and varied career inside and outside the entertainment industry. He’s long been associated with the rendering of dinosaurs and this reached a new peak with his completion of seven of the twelve large murals for the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Justin Sweet
If you were wondering what it might look like if N.C. Wyeth became obsessed with Frazetta’s subject matter, you can find your answer in Justin Sweet.
C O L O P H O N
Warnock Pro is by Robert Slimbach, a prolific designer of text types for Adobe. Talented type designer Christian Schwartz created Neutraface (House Industries 2002) based on the mid-century architectural lettering of Richard Neutra.
We are Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon. We live in a pocket-sized apartment in Brooklyn where we collect neat, weird things. Our home is abundant with books, old furniture, mismatching tea cups, and a cat named Cipher. We both illustrate stuff for money so we can continue to invent stories, buy shoelaces, watch puppet shows, and eat sandwiches.
