One Hundred Great Artists: Part Three - Esther

I do love a list & an arty list is one of the best kinds. There may be artists you think it is criminal to have omitted, but you are always free to make your own list. Other opinions are ever available.

Picking my own personal list of 100 Great Artists was the easy bit – deciding on a single great work to represent them, sometimes more difficult. Also picking a work I haven’t mentioned in a previous blog…? Can it even be done…?

We shall see.

21. Felix Nussbaum (Germany, 1904-1944): Self-portrait in a Shroud (Group Portrait), 1942

Sometimes you look at an artist’s dates & your heart sinks. If you look at Felix’s & your heart sinks, it should. His art stands as a witness statement to the horrors of the Holocaust from one man’s point of view. After going into hiding from the Nazis he continued to work on his art, pouring his struggles & terror onto canvas in unflinching detail. The first time I encountered him was in a book The New Objectivity, about a movement the Nazis despised. The self-portrait showed a half-naked Felix at his easel, pipe in smirking mouth, brushes in hand & staring impudently at the viewer. You knew at once he wasn’t the Nazis’ type. You therefore knew he must be investigated further. Yet it is not the painting I have chosen for this list. This self-portrait was the most affecting & troubling thing I saw in the city of Berlin when I visited in 2018. You can see there’s a sickening fear lurking in his works; the dread catching up with him in his everyday life is profoundly nightmarish & visceral. His self-portraits in particular distress us because there is by turns fear, anger, bravery, resignation & always knowingness in his gaze. I’m grateful for the sacrifices Felix must surely have made to leave us with such an important account.

22. Henri Fantin-Latour (France, 1836-1904): Self Portrait, (?)

Fantin-Latour is known primarily for his paintings of floral arrangements (as well as group portraits). He was exceptionally gifted at depicting the light on the blooms, the texture of the leaves & of convincing the eye that these were indeed flowers sitting in someone’s drawing room. They were realistic, with light touches of Impressionism here & there. But he also created some stunning self-portraits, both painted & drawn. His treatment of light is expert in all these images, but this piece in charcoal is my favourite. Although almost a sketch, it shows an intense & focused young man, aware of how he is manipulating his own image. The sketchy lines are perfectly placed & he is clearly already an expert in his craft.

23. Maurits Cornelis Escher (Netherland, 1898-1972): White Cat II, 1919

How on earth do I select one image from the hundreds of examples, varied in style, technique & artistic philosophy by a man who is a master of all the methods he employed? Simple really. He made woodcuts of cats. Once one knows that it’s a no-brainer. I realise I’m reducing one of the most gifted & complex artistic minds to the (allegedly) lowest common denominator of internet subjects, but the simple beauty of the image, particularly when compared with his stunning mathematical works is a wonder in itself. The essence of the calm, almost sleeping feline is perfectly captured, its texture convincingly suggested. Nonetheless those whiskers are primed for action.

24. Gwen John (Wales, 1876-1939): Mère Poussepin, late 1910s

It was tempting to include another cat here, however, I’ll resist, despite Gwen John’s cats being some of the most loosely yet perfectly portrayed in art history. She was surrounded by successful men (not least her brother), whose talents for some time eclipsed her own. Now however, the expression of her desire for “a more interior life,” the understated aesthetic, a friendship with Rilke & often melancholic sitters possess a peculiarly modern appeal. Here is an example of Gwen’s portraiture, typical in terms of muted colour & posture, atypical in that the nun appears to smile a little. (I have now made myself desperate to include one of her beautiful cats but will compromise by promising myself a separate blog on the subject…)

25. Kehinde Wiley (United States of America, 1977-): Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, 2013

Wiley has earned much-deserved acclaim for his stunning 2018 portrait of Barack Obama but I admire him for his ability to turn a seemingly ordinary person into a modern-day icon. Following in the tradition of surrounding his subjects with William Morris-esque patterning, his work is bright & energetic, but respectful & human. The hyper-real portraits in themselves show the people as they ought to be: confident in themselves & defiantly staring down the viewer.

26. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italy, 1720-1778): Carcel X Interior prision dos garitas, c.1800-07

Piranesi was principally an architect & he produced some of the most incredible & certainly unique etchings of real, imagined & partially-imagined buildings in art. He fantasised about restoring ruins, created ancient worlds that never were, as well as designed imaginary edifices. His extensive knowledge of structures, how to form them & the effects of light on his invented townscapes make them amongst the most unusual & breathtakingly clever images we have. Although I used the cat as Escher’s art example (& again with no pun intended), a clear line can be drawn from Piranesi’s ideas to Escher’s “impossible” structures.

27. Andrea Kowch (United States of America, 1986-): The Watch, (?)

Andrea Kowch’s beautifully rendered work disrupts my thought. Laden with symbolism, some of her imagery stays with me in a folk horror manner. It’s about what happens when the world of people is interrupted by the influences of nature. The people wear a mask, often frozen in time as others around them would appear to continue moving. I believe there is a distinct narrative in each of her works but it’s up to the viewer to unravel it. The mind-blowing detail & realism combines with these narratives to create some of today’s most deliciously unsettling images. Her work is both my dream art & the art of dreams.

28. Jasper Johns (United States of America, 1930-): Flag, 1954

Standing alone in New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2000, I first became aware of the utter obsession some people have with the American flag. As I stood in front of Jasper Johns’ Flag a youth of about fifteen & his father walked up slightly in front of me & looked at it too. Almost instantly the youth casually announced to his father, “It’s only got … stars.” As a Scottish person who only has a big white saltire on her native flag, I was stunned. Not only was this person very young but he knew immediately that the flag was wrong for 2000. Until that point I had very little knowledge of Johns but that very small incident spoke of an enormous American question I still barely understand but remain deeply suspicious of. This piece held great interest for me & as a result I bought a postcard...

29. Beatrix Potter (England, 1866-1943): Crimson Waxcap (Hygrocybe punicea), 1894

Having grown up loving Beatrix Potter’s books, it was satisfying later in life to discover how much she had done to buy up, conserve & donate areas of natural interest in England. She may have horribly anthropomorphised her subjects in the name of a cautionary tale or two, but she used living (& not living) creatures & plants to draw from life as much as possible. The detail & technical ability in her botanical sketches & paintings show scientific truth & a disciplined, keenly observant eye. She was prolific & accomplished as an artist & like many children’s books, the tales might be very little without her illustrations. Experienced as an adult, the stories & therefore the art becomes somehow more sinister, much like the instructive aspect of fairy tales. Which is as it should be.

(I can’t resist also including her delightful Beatrix & bunny picture letter with real-life photograph version…) 

30. Louis le Brocquy (Republic of Ireland, 1916-2012): Image of Samuel Beckett, 1979

When I first happened upon Louis le Brocquy’s work in his hometown of Dublin in the 1990s, I’d never seen anything like it. He had a long life & career & was hailed as “Ireland’s greatest living artist” until 2012, yet disgracefully, in all that time, even when I was aware of him almost twenty years previously, you never heard a single thing about him in the UK. Like all the greats, he had a command over a huge variety of styles, even designing tapestries, but his deconstructed then reconstructed “heads” are among my favourites of his work. I’ve referred to them as being like abstracted cave paintings, perhaps as sophisticated as it’s possible to get in art. They’re simplified to an almost primitive level, barely portraits at all. Here is one of several of Samuel, as if he’s looming out of the mist with those piercing blue eyes. For the record, I love Sam's work too.