Thursday, January 04, 2007

Top 5 Favorite Visual Artists

My wife Angie has really gotten into art these last few years. Two of her Christmas presents were a book of Dali's art and a large picture book of Italy (which admittedly is only tangentially related to art). So I was thinking today, who right now would be my 5 most favorite visual artists. The list says a lot about my personality.

1. My favorite painter (in terms of what they produced) right now is Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). He's my favorite because of his famous paintings of ancient stories and legends like the Death of Socrates.


Of all his paintings, my favorite right now is The Oath of the Horatii, based on a story in the Roman historian Livy, my favorite Roman author.


2. Rembrandt van Rijn is currently going at second, mostly because I like the dark colors he typically used (he's also Dutch as I'm about half). I like the style of his self-portrait, but my current favorite would be The Anatomy Lesson:















3. M. C. Escher is third with his mathematical drawings. Here's a sample:









4. Salvador Dali comes in fourth in terms of his art, even though he's my favorite artists in terms of personalities. As a college student, The Persistence of Memory was my favorite. Maybe my favorite now should be The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory:



Dali painted this after the dropping of the atomic bomb and the individualized streams of lines reflect the subatomic world.







5. Fifth was a bit of a toss up. On personality I would of course choose Picasso (probably my second favorite personality). But although I like the concept of his art, I really don't fancy the product too much.

I also like El Greco for his exaggerated and elogated figures of Christ and such.

But in the end I decided to choose Hieronymus Bosch on the strength of the only painting I know of his, The Garden of Earthly Delights:



On the left panel of the triptych is Adam and Eve in Paradise, the middle many humans indulged in sinful pleasures, and hell is on the right.


Now look at what the outer shutters look like when the triptych is closed:



This is the creation of the world. This conglomeration of wonderfuls wins this piece the current title of my current favorite piece of visual art work of all time.

This has been a brief interuption of Schenck Thoughts for some thoughts of Schenck.

3 comments:

Scott D. Hendricks said...

I love it! Please give yourself permission to more often grant us glimpses of your "other sides" if you will. Thanks!

David Drury said...

Wow... so weird to see your list be so close to mine.

I have two Rembrandt posters in my room... one is the "Money Changer" which I got from his actual home-turned museum in Amsterdam. The play of light and dark with that candle is amazing. I always think of "putting your light under a bushel" when I study it.

The other is The Return of the Prodigal Son which is one of his most famous and recognizible (and is my blogger pic, FYI). I got the poster years ago and once I read Henri Nouwen's brilliant exegsis of the painting in his book of the same name I too wanted to go to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to "meet" the real painting in person.

Ken Schenck said...

It's really funny how differently our perceptions of ourselves and those of others can differ and how different any of these can be from supposed "reality." Fun stuff.