One Hundred Great Artists: Part Seven - Esther

I make no apologies for this being a particularly European section of the list. 

61. Bridget Riley (England, 1931-): Fall, 1963

Bridget Riley’s mind- & eye-bending works are all the more remarkable because they’re painted. Not digitally created, not generated on an app or with filters but painted. Her ability to create works that appear to move whilst being still & two-dimensional fascinates even today. She was inspired by sources such as ancient Egyptian art & Seurat in particular for colour use & effect & inspires in us the joy in geometry. The power of seeing her work up close cannot be underestimated. 

62. Antony Sher (South Africa/UK, 1949-): Laurence Olivier as Richard III, 1984

It’s difficult to be great at more than one thing. It’s even more difficult to combine the things you’re good at so that they enable you to get better at each of them. This is one of the many amazing traits possessed by one of my great heroes Antony Sher. Not only is he a working artist & writer of many books, plays & diaries, he is probably best known as an actor of screen & stage. There’s plenty of evidence to show it is frequently inadvisable to dabble in art if you’re an actor but Antony could have done either from his early years in South Africa. He draws to better understand a character, finding it easier at times to work from the outside in. He also draws what the character will end up looking like with makeup, costume etc. This particular work was created as he tussled with the film version of Richard III as created by Laurence Olivier & depicts himself small & feeling inferior in the great actor’s shadow.

63. Jacques-Louis David (France, 1748-1825): Death of Marat, 1793

Marat’s death fascinated me as a child. Pretty much all violent deaths did, in a kind of sickened & suspicious way. I had a “Book of Heroines,” (dubious or otherwise) growing up & it included the story of along with a simple book illustration. When I later discovered David’s Death of Marat, it was almost thrilling. An activist during the French Revolution, he was already known as a history painter & later portraitist. David’s work is a politically charged, romanticised painting of a friend & fellow campaigner. His competence as a painter & the personal, intimate way he has portrayed the dying Marat reminds us of a religious work. He has made his friend a martyr.

64. Joseph Wright of Derby (England, 1734-1797): An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768

Joseph Wright perhaps more than any other artist captured the drama of the Industrial Revolution. His almost unbelievable ability in the technique of chiaroscuro to depict realistic candlelit scenes perfectly captures the light & dark we now associate with the activities of that time. In this, his best-known painting & masterpiece, we see the various reactions of the onlookers who know the likely outcome for the bird & the moon at the window with clouds about to cover it hint at the darkness unfolding. It’s another example of the use of religious art as inspiration for composition & mood.

65. Ken Currie (Scotland, 1960): Forest, 1995

Ken Currie creeps us out. His paintings go beyond unsettling. He’s very good at it. Although it may seem as if he’s more concerned with the horror or bodyshock side of art, he is in fact asking us to explore ideas about psychology, death & illness in relation to the body…which is probably where much horror originates. It’s just what he does & how it comes out. 

66. David Hockney (England, 1937-): My Parents, 1977

Another artist that came into mainstream public awareness in the 1960s, David Hockney will try his hand at most media & subjects, even producing works & exhibiting digital art, enjoying the new-found speed the technology offered. He’s an appealing interviewee, interesting & engaged & has made many TV programmes. This painting of his parents was completed after two previous attempts fell flat. We feel we are seeing into their home life & differing personalities in their poses & demeanours. It’s beautifully of its time in colour, composition & mood. 

67. Carl Randall (UK, 1975): Tokyo, 2011

Carl Randall’s beautiful paintings of huge gatherings of people give us a sense of isolation within a crowd. The monochromatic heads against the more colourful & backgrounds of real places lend a further mood of alienation & isolation. He shows us that the city is not just a place of buildings, architecture, traffic & noise but that everyone walks around in these spaces carrying their own thoughts, fears & ideas as individual entities.

In this clip, he paints one of his “crowd” paintings & we can see that he uses real sitters to pose for each individual in the group:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHSL6K6FPDM&feature=youtu.be 

68. Arthur Rackham (England, 1867-1939): White Rabbit, 1879

Simply one of the greatest illustrators that ever lived, Arthur Rackham entered my life when I was about nine via an illustrated book of Aesop’s Fables given to me by my godparents. Sure, the anthropomorphism might be nonsensical, associating different creatures with different human qualities & sticking to those tropes. But whilst Aesop annoyed me quite a bit (smug, preachy, clearly disliked certain animals), Arthur allowed the characters dignity & respect. Only a truly gifted & disciplined draughtsman could do this, make animals as speaking characters with human traits & feelings believable, enhancing the stories & bringing them to life. An absolute genius.                            

69. Kara Walker (USA, 1969): Slavery! Slavery! 1977

Kara Walker is a disrupter. At first glance, her art can have an accessible, illustrative feel. Her silhouettes remind us of children’s fairy tales, of Victorian cameos, of puppet theatres. We think we know it. Once she has our attention however, we start looking closely at the individual figures before us. Her work can be shocking & has proved highly controversial, a state she herself describes as “too-muchness.” She has been provoked criticism from many quarters. That said, the work is clever & accomplished & does what contemporary art ought to do – make us think. 

70. Johannes Vermeer (Netherlands, 1632-1675): The Astronomer, 1688

Vermeer seems to have done so much with so little. Few rooms, few objects, few sitters, few paintings. Little light, little furniture, little paintings for the most part & not many of them. But he painted big ideas, big thoughts, big emotions. He used the best quality paints & deep sensitivity. The Astronomer is a beautiful work & one of only three that Vermeer dated. It is similar in composition to another work, The Geographer & masterfully combines religion & science via the book & the painting. Of course, it was swiped by the Nazis in 1940 but is now safely tucked away in the Louvre.