One Hundred Great Artists: Part Ten - Esther

Started ten months ago, we’re at the end at last. 

Here is a recap of the previous ninety & then today’s last ten. It was in no order of course. They’re all great.

1. Harry Clarke

2. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

3. Vilhelm Hammershøi

4. Charles White

5. Artemesia Gentileschi

6. Katsushika Hokusai

7. Austin Osman Spare

8. Albrecht Dürer

9. John Tenniel

10. Tamara de Łempicka 

11. Otto Dix

12. Max Kurzweil

13. Georgia O’Keeffe 

14. Jackson Pollock

15. Jean-Michel Basquiat

16. Alfred Conteh

17. Samuel John Peploe

18. Hina Ayoama (蒼山日菜)

19. Steven Higginson

20. Bessie MacNicol 

21. Felix Nussbaum

22. Henri Fantin-Latour

23. Maurits Cornelis Escher

24. Gwen John

25. Kehinde Wiley

26. Giovanni Battista Piranesi

27. Andrea Kowch

28. Jasper Johns

29. Beatrix Potter

30. Louis le Brocquy 

31. John Singer Sargent

32. Wangechi Mutu

33. Jacob Epstein

34. Romaine Brooks

35. Pearl Thompson

36. Stanley Spencer

37. Carel Fabritius

38. Mervyn Peake

39. Paul Klee

40. Doris Zinkeisen 

41. Gustav Klimt

42. Alison Watt 

43. Richey Beckett

44. William Orpen

45. Hans Holbein the Younger

46. Théophile Steinlen

47. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

48. Muirhead Bone

49. Arnold Manaaki Wilson

50. William Blake 

51. Alphonse Mucha

52. James McNeill Whistler

53. Lucian Freud

54. Njideka Akunyili Crosby

55. George Grosz

56. Cindy Sherman

57. Ralph Steadman

58. Jules Bastien-Lepage

59. Judith Leyster

60. James McBey 

61. Bridget Riley

62. Antony Sher

63. Jacques-Louis David

64. Joseph Wright of Derby

65. Ken Currie

66. David Hockney

67. Carl Randall

68. Arthur Rackham

69. Kara Walker

70. Johannes Vermeer 

71. Abigail Larson

72. Georges de la Tour

73. Diego Rivera

74. Brad Kunkle

75. James Guthrie

76. Alberto Giacometti

77. Graham Sutherland

78. Frans Hals

79. Edward Hopper

80. Frank Quitely 

81. František Kupka 

82. Margaret MacDonald 

83. Keelan McMorrow 

84. Adriaen Brouwer 

85. Paul Nash 

86. William Hogarth 

87. J.D.Fergusson 

88. Jan Steen 

89. Michelangelo 

90. David Shrigley

91. Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Scotland, 1871-1957): Windy Hill Perspective Drawing, 1900

Mackintosh was an architect. It was his job. How glorious to turn your job into something innovative, recognisable & immortal. Whether or not his design is in your taste, there are aspects of it that are favoured in Scotland in other styles of architecture. He borrowed from & worked in keeping with the surroundings of place but he subverted it too. In this drawing, we see glimpses of the dreamier designer & artist that he also was – look at those trees, look at how the sky slopes up towards the roof on the right hand side. He was dreaming of that sky & how he could reach it.

92. Helene Schjerfbeck (Finland, 1862-1946): Smiling Girl, 1921

There are few artists I can think of that make their way along a particular trajectory & throughout their career & lives are always on it. This is what I see in Schjerfbeck’s work however. She begins in a very traditional – though highly accomplished – painting style & abstracts it continually until through death alone, she can actually paint no more. She is a true artist. Smiling Girl shows a universally recognisable expression, where Helene is some way along her artistic & life’s journey.

93. Alasdair Gray (Scotland, 1934-2019): Cover design for “A Working Mother” by Agnes Owens, 1994

Although his was a very distinctive drawing style, Alasdair Gray could nevertheless portray great tension & expression in his figures. In this cover illustration, the pose, the objects & even the cigarette create barriers & suggest psychological drama. Before you open the pages, you fear the worst. Marvellous.

94. Francis Bacon (UK-Ireland, 1909-1992): Self-portrait, c. 1973

Francis Bacon’s influence can be seen everywhere. He made these sorts of things okay to look at. We see him in the glass box in the RSC’s King Lear of 2017 as Gloucester gets his eyes gouged out. He’s with us in Heath Ledger’s Joker. You’ll see him in your dreams about teeth. You can even hear him in Nick Cave’s Stagger Lee. The World of Francis Bacon is an absurdist nightmare reducing us all to little more than the meat we are. But with psychological problems.

95. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Netherlands, 1606-1669): Lucretia, 1661

Recently I remarked to someone that it’s hard to write an art blog without Rembrandt in it. This is me warning you that he’ll pop up yet again, so we can focus on the subject. In Roman mythology, Sextus Tarquinius raped Lucretia & she took her own life. This supposedly triggered the move from kingdom to republic in Rome but Lucretia has proven a popular subject in art, ironically often portrayed naked & representing a “fallen woman.” Sadly, that’s the patriarchy for you.

96. Aubrey Beardsley (England, 1872-1898): Merlin, 1893-4

Beardsley’s minimalist illustrations are indeed things of beauty & expertise but I have always loved this Merlin. Much younger than usual in art, he’s not so much carrying the weight of the world as he is trapped by it. Perhaps we’re seeing Merlin & magic untamed or perhaps he is shapeshifting.  Regardless, we see a troubled & intense young man, maybe even a mirror... 

97. René Magritte (Belgium, 1874-1961): The Treachery of Images, 1929

If you’re in the mood to turn your head inside out, consider this painting & all its meanings & paradoxes. It’s not a pipe, it’s a picture of a pipe. When you start unpicking all the conventions of language (which Magritte frequently did), you don’t know what on earth you’re talking about any more. When I first discovered & understood this painting as a young person, it was revolutionary. I even had it on a t-shirt. Well, a picture of it on a t-shirt. I’m going to stop otherwise I’m going to get into a spiral of worrying about what I’m writing. Is this even a blog?

98. Salvador Dalí (Spain, 1904-1989): The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937

I’ve known of Dalí’s work since I was a child & was always attracted to it. Its weirdness, its death-obsession, its lack of logic (& yet…) & often its humour was highly appealing from the start. Despite having looked at & admired this painting for most of my life, I only recently realised (when it was pointed out in a podcast) that the mirror of the hand clutching the egg is actually Narcissus himself. I always saw the left hand figure as just a weird abstracted version of the hand as rocks perhaps. Now that I see that the egg turns into the head & the mirror of the hand is the man’s body, it becomes even more disturbing than I ever realised. Brilliant! A painting that keeps on giving.

99. John Byrne (Scotland, 1940-): Two Buddies, ?

Another artist I find difficult to keep out of the blog (although why would I want to?), John Byrne often shows the queasier side of life in his works. I like these wobbly friends, their quiffs & their urban setting. The drama of the sky, coupled with their shifty backward glance renders this work almost Expressionist.

100. Egon Schiele (Austria, 1890-1918): Self-portrait, 1914

“I love life & I love death.”

A quote attributed to Schiele & for me sums up the purpose, the meaning & the importance of art itself. As I see it, if you’re an artist, you’re rejecting death whilst simultaneously embracing it. Whether this shows in your art is another matter, but in my opinion & although this list is in no real order, the first & last artists listed (Clarke & Schiele) understood this profoundly, through direct experience & through exploring these concepts in their work. 

This makes them perhaps my ultimate great artists.

All this, plus Hitler didn’t like him. Seems like a good place to stop.