Showing posts with label painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label painting. Show all posts

Sunday, August 21, 2011

PHILIP GUSTON EXHIBITED AT THE SAATCHI GALLERY

A Day's Work 1970 Oil on canvas 198 x 279 cm 78 x 109¾"

Painter in Bed 1973 Oil on canvas 152.4 x 264.2 cm 60 x 104"

The Magnet 1975 Oil on canvas 171.5 x 204.5 cm 67½ x 80½"

Friend - to M. F. 1978 Oil on canvas 172.7 x 223.5 cm 68 x 88"

Edge 1976 Oil on canvas 203.3 x 316.9 cm 80 × 124¾"

Frame 1976 Oil on canvas 188 x 294.6 cm 74 x 116"

Rug III 1976 Oil on canvas 175.3 x 280.7 cm 69 x 110½"

Head, Bottle, Light 1969 Oil on canvas 50.8 x 55.9 cm 20 x 22"


Found Here: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/philip_guston.htm

Monday, February 14, 2011

Marcus Wills - The Paul Juraszek Monolith

Portrait of the artist as a holed man wins the day

Most people paint one good portrait to win Australia's most famous art award, the Archibald Prize. This year Marcus Wills churned out more than 200 to claim a surprise victory.

The 34-year-old Melbourne artist was yesterday crowned the 2006 winner of the $35,000 prize for his surreal work The Paul Juraszek Monolith (after Marcus Gheeraerts), which depicts more than 200 figures crawling over a giant stone head.

It is Wills's first entry.

The work, inspired by an etching by the Flemish engraver Marcus Gheeraerts, features 29 individual portraits in various positions of the Melbourne sculptor Paul Juraszek.

Painting the same face that many times could get tiring for someone less tenacious, but Juraszek's shiny pate was an endless source of inspiration for Wills. "I quite like painting bald heads. Hair can be annoying to paint," he said yesterday.

Wills, 34, spent more than two years on the work and confessed he struggled to finish.

"It just went on and on," he said. "I got so sick of painting rocks, but I don't think I'll ever get sick of painting people."

Among the faces he has portrayed, tucked away in the right-hand corner, is a sly little portrait of Wills himself, holding a Paul Juraszek puppet.

Wills's edged out well-known artists such as Ben Quilty, Jenny Sages and Adam Cullen to win, but was one of many Archibald entries to take a fellow artist as a subject.

The director of the Art Gallery of NSW, Edmund Capon, called the painting "very different, very original".

"In every sense it is a most unexpected choice."

Especially so for the gallery's packing room worker Peter Tsangarides, who bet $30 on Wills's work in Sportingbet Australia's first ever Archibald tipping competition. At odds of 41:1 his long shot paid off.

"About $1200 has come in," he said yesterday, adding that he was drawn to the intricate painting. "You stand back and you just see a skull or whatever, but you look closer and it's full of all these people. I didn't think it would win because it's not the style they usually go for."

Asked if he would be buying a round for his packing room workmates, Mr Tsangarides pointed to the Archibald Prize celebratory function in the next room.

"Yeah, but the best time to win money is when there's free drinks at the bar," he laughed.

The 2006 Photographic Portrait Prize went to Vanila Netto for The Magnanimous Beige Wrap - Part 1 (Contraption). The Sulman Prize was won by Jiawei Shen for Peking Treaty 1901, and the Wynne Prize went to John Beard for The Gap.

The Archibald Prize is open to the public from today.

Found Here: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/03/24/1143083960340.html

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Romulus, Conqueror of Acron, 1812, Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres


Jean Ingres’ “Romulus, Conqueror of Acron” of 1812. Ingres was born in Montauban in 1780 and at the age of sixteen he went to Paris to study under David. He won the Grand Prix in 1801. He went to Rome in 1807 having secured a following in the art world. He continued to mature and gather a greater gathering until his death in 1867. Romulus, Conqueror of Acron, was created as a large painting for the salon of Napoleon I. It recalls the earliest and mythological history of Rome and reflects the Napoleonic obsession with all things Roman and Classical. The original painting is in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Found Here: http://finecanvas.com/finecanvasartblog/2010/12/romulus-conqueror-of-acron-1812-jean-auguste-dominque-ingres/

A few important commissions came to him; the French governor of Rome asked him to paint Virgil reading the Aeneid (1812) for his residence, and to paint two colossal works—Romulus's victory over Acron (1812) and The Dream of Ossian (1813)—for Monte Cavallo, a former Papal residence undergoing renovation to become Napoleon's Roman palace. These paintings epitomized, both in subject and scale, the type of painting with which Ingres was determined to make his reputation, but, as Philip Conisbee has pointed out, "for all the high ideals that had been drummed into Ingres at the academies in Toulouse, Paris, and Rome, such commissions were exceptions to the rule, for in reality there was little demand for history paintings in the grand manner, even in the city of Raphael and Michelangelo."[18] Art collectors preferred "light-hearted mythologies, recognizable scenes of everyday life, landscapes, still lifes, or likenesses of men and women of their own class. This preference persisted throughout the nineteenth century, as academically oriented artists waited and hoped for the patronage of state or church to satisfy their more elevated ambitions."[19]

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Auguste_Dominique_Ingres


Saturday, November 6, 2010

Eric Fortune

Illustrator and gallery artist Eric Fortune creates images that are at once fantastical and emotionally immediate. His subjects, often elongated and in motion, seem isolated but straining to connect, adrift in worlds just beyond their understanding.

His paintings, are done in acrylic on watercolor paper, and always have a strong element of texture, complimenting his often muted palette and tonally complex compositions. Shadows and half light play a frequent role, with areas of illumination moving your eye to the core elements.

Fortune studied at Columbus College of Art and Design. His clients include Simon & Schuster, Tor Books, Harcourt Brace, Scholastic and Realms of Fantasy. Lately he has been focusing more in gallery work with showings at Opera Gallery (NY), Copro Nason Gallery (LA), LeBasse Projects (LA), Roq La Rue Gallery (Seattle), Gallery 1988 (LA) and others.

There is a step-by-step process of the image above, bottom on Arrested Motion, and a step through of another image on a blog post from Irene Gallo on Tor.com.

Fortune also has a blog, and there is a nice introductory gallery on the Tor.com site.

Found Here: http://www.linesandcolors.com/2010/02/05/eric-fortune/



Lyrical, haunting, yet poignant at the same time, Eric Fortune’s paintings make lasting impressions. These are characters who are neither out of place in the world, nor at home in it — they are characters wrapped in their own worlds. The emotionally complex metaphors Fortune paints are richly evocative. His imagery is quiet yet dynamic, and seasoned with a touch of surrealism that takes us to captivating places, beyond our everyday experience but filled with truth.

Packed with emotional nuances he creates soft yet riveting lighting and atmosphere. With uncompromising patience and discipline he slowly builds up his luminous characters and worlds until they radiate life.

And so what sometimes seems to be a simple image to the viewer becomes richer and richer as he or she becomes increasingly entranced by the emotional presences within the art. A true original, Fortune is emerging as a subtle yet powerful artistic voice.

Eric is an artist based out of Columbus, Ohio. He received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design where he was honored with the Outstanding Senior Award upon graduation. His work continued to garner acclaim with the acceptance into such prestigious annual competitions as The Society of Illustrators NY and LA as well as Spectrum and others. He was the Artist Guest of Honor for ConGlomeration and was recently awarded the Jack Gaughan Award for Best Emerging Artist of 2009.

Currently Eric is focusing his efforts on personal paintings and upcoming gallery shows. He has shown or will be showing at the Opera Gallery (NY), Copro Nason Gallery (LA), LeBasse Projects (LA), Roq La Rue Gallery (Seattle), Gallery 1988 (LA), and many others.

Found Here: http://www.ericfortune.com/bio









Friday, November 5, 2010

Navajo Sand Painting

The Navajo people are members of the largest Native American tribe in North America. Located in the Four Corners area of the United States (see maps above), their reservation spans over 18-million acres and is known as Dinétah (Navajoland). We also know this area as Monument Valley (see below) because of the incredible rock formations which evolved over millions of years.

According to their legend, the Holy People (Snake People, Spider Woman, Corn People, First Man, First Woman, and many others) lived in worlds below this one and "were guided by First Man in ascending to the world in which we Earth Surface People now live." 1

The Holy People (gods) instructed the Diné (Navajo) in the ceremonies and uses for certain chants, along with the creation of intricate paintings made of various materials. Known as Sandpaintings, these renderings are temporary. Created on a smoothed bed of sand, the Navajo use crushed gypsum (white), yellow ochre, red sandstone, charcoal, and a mixture of charcoal and gypsum (blue). Brown can be made by mixing red and black; red and white make pink. In addition, the sandpainters use pollen, cornmeal, and crushed flower petals to achieve a great variety of colors, according to the instructions of the gods.

The Navajo art of Sandpainting began as a spiritual healing system rather than art for art's sake. Traditional Diné healing incorporates ritualism, prayer, ceremonies, and herbology to increase wellness and promote harmony with the universe. Sandpaintings are part of religious chants in which "Earth People and Holy People come into harmony, giving healing and protection." 2

Many Sandpaintings include yéi figures, which are Navajo spiritual beings. The healing ceremonies involve medicine men chanting particular songs and simultaneously creating a Sandpainting on the ground. The medicine man asks for the yéis to come into the painting and help to heal the patient by restoring balance and harmony.

Once a healing ceremony is complete, the Sandpainting is destroyed. The Sandpaintings one sees in shops and on the Internet are commercially produced and contain important errors. As the real Sandpaintings are considered sacred, should one come into possession of a correctly completed Sandpainting, the Navajos fear that evil would befall the person in possession of what "amounted to a never-ending cry beseeching the Holy People's appearance." 1 Top

Preparation

Learning to become a medicine man is a painstaking process which takes many years and has been compared to the intensity of one's earning a degree in a modern university. "So much is required in the way of detailed knowledge, special equipment, and the exact memorization of songs, prayers, and paintings, that a single medicina man can usually learn only a few major chants in his lifetime (three or four would be outstanding). The most common chant in general use is Blessing Way because it is short and inexpensive, and can be given any time for many reasons." 3

The ritual of healing is ordinarily done in a specific sequence which is called a "chant". These chants can last anywhere from five to nine days, but never less than three. Each chantway is connected to an origin myth and is never learned in its totality by the apprectice from one person. Rather, the apprentice must find the missing pieces to the puzzle from other Singers (medicine man). Each Sandpainting must be created within a 10-hour period: sun-up to sun-down and vice versa, and each completes a different part of the sequence. The Singer chants long prayers, which are a litany consisting of a series of invocations. "When the chants have been sung beautifully, and the Sandpainting done masterfully, the spirits are 'compelled' to attend this ceremony held in their honor." 4

"The medicine man must first go through a three-day period of purification, fasting, sweating, vomiting, sexual restraint, bathing, and a lone vigil, for he knows that these disciplines bring him in touch with a magnetic and static force that concentrates in solitude. This is the dynamic force that will use him to heal, to bless the patient, to instruct, restore and make whole again. It is an exacting knowledge that he must use, and one that is not acquired quickly." 4

During his three-day purification period, the medicine man is also making other preparations for the chant. He must collect materials for the Sandpaintings, such as the colored stones, flowers, pollen, ground cornmeal, roots and barks. Top

Chant

The length of time involved in any specific chant depends on the illness the patient is experiencing and what the family can afford. Just like Western medicine, the medicine man's services are not cheap. "Fee setting is discussed ahead of time with the patient, his relatives and is usally a hard-headed, realistic process." 3

A medicine man may charge cash or may accept beads or livestock for his services. The chants are a community affair and being a gracious host is expected of the patient's family. Therefore, it is expected that the patient's family will pitch in with food and help in the kitchen. "A nine-night chant with many visitors may cost as much as $500 to $1,000." 3

Once a chant has begun, the Sandpainting is just one aspect ritual of the healing process. The process and the drawings themselves do not vary, except in minor, inconsequential areas. To change the design would be to prevent the Holy People from being invited, or it might invoke their anger. This is because Sandpainting is a "sacred prescription akin to a chemical formula. The gods cannot be summoned by other than the means they themselves established for accompanying that holy mission." 1



The patient troubled by physical or mental ills is brought to sit on the Sandpainting, facing east. This is the direction from which the "Holy People will arrive to infuse the Sandpainting with their healing power" 1 After the patient is "sung" to, the Sandpainting is physically transferred onto his body. The chanter dips his fingers into a liquid and then onto the Sandpainting. "The sand which adheres is carried over to that part of the patient's body, which symbolically corresponds or harmonizes with the spirit in the Sandpainting." 4

Once the ceremony has ended, the Sandpainting is destroyed. Sometimes those present may take a small amount in a pouch to hang around their necks. But most of the sand is gathered up by the medicine man to proper disposal. "He walks first to the east, then south, then west, then north, and, finally, with a symbolic gesture, up to Father Sky and down to Mother Earth, he scatters his precious sands to the 'six directions' from whence they came, or buries them, as the occasion demands, where no one will desecrate the alter, or the power of the visual prayer." 4 Top




Belief

The chanting and Sandpainting rituals have a miraculous effect on the patient. He knows that the "healing power of the 'sing' is good for a sick mind and a sad heart." 4 These rituals may or may not cure his bodily ills, but he believes deeply in the Holy People who have been summoned to help him resolve his conflicts and regain harmony within himself and the world around him.


Found Here: http://www.anthro4n6.net/navajosandpainting/

Sand paintings, as created by Navajo Indians, were not made to be an "art object," but rather were made as part of an elaborate healing ritual or ceremony. The artist, or in the Navajo context, the medicine man, would use naturally colored grains of sand, and pour them by hand to create these elaborate "paintings."

Once completed, the person that needed healing was asked to sit on top of the sand painting, which was supposed to act as a portal so that the healing spirits could come through the painting and heal the patient. Once the healing ceremony was over, then the painting was believed to have removed the illness from the patient, and therefore had the illness contained within it, so at that point the painting was destroyed.

Here's a look at some more Navajo sand paintings. The figures in sand paintings are symbolic representations meant to tell a story in Navajo mythology. They might represent objects like the sacred mountains where the gods live, or legendary visions, or they illustrate dances or chants performed in rituals.

Found Here: http://www.artsology.com/navajo_sand_painting.php








Monday, November 1, 2010

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (Armenian: Հովհաննես Այվազովսկի – Hovhannes Aivasovsky, originally Aivazian, Russian: Иван Константинович Айвазовский) July 29, 1817 – May 5, 1900) was a Russian[1][2][3][4] painter of Armenian descent living and working in Crimea, most famous for his seascapes, which constitute more than half of his paintings.

Aivazovsky was born in the town of Feodosiya (Theodosia), Crimea (Russian Empire) (modern-day Ukraine) to a poor Armenian family. His parents' family name was Aivazian. Some of the artist's paintings bear a signature, in Armenian letters, "Hovhannes Aivazian" (Հովհաննես Այվազյան). His talent as an artist earned him sponsorship and entry to the Simferopol gymnasium №1 and later the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts, which he graduated with a gold medal. Earning awards for his early landscapes and seascapes, he went on to paint a series of portraits of Crimean coastal towns before travelling throughout Europe. In later life, his paintings of naval scenes earned him a long-standing commission from the Russian Navy stationed in the Black Sea.

In 1845, Aivazovsky went to Constantinople upon the invitation of Sultan Abdülmecid I, a city he was to travel to eight times between 1845–1890. During his long sojourn in Constantinople, Aivazovsky was commissioned for a number of paintings as a court painter by the Ottoman Sultans Abdülmecid, Abdulaziz and Abdulhamid, 30 of which are currently on display in the Ottoman Imperial Palace, the Dolmabahce Museum and many other museums in Turkey. His works are also found in dozens of museums throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and the Aivazovsky Art Gallery in Feodosiya, Ukraine. The office of Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gül, has Aivasovsky's paintings on the wall.[5]

At 31, Aivazovsky married Julia Graves, an English governess in St. Petersburg. They had four daughters. The marriage was dissolved, and at the age of 65, Aivazovsky, married Anna Boornazian, a young Armenian widow from Theodosia.

Aivazovsky was deeply affected by the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in Asia Minor in 1895, painting a number of works on the subject such as "The Expulsion of the Turkish Ship," and "The Armenian Massacres at Trevizond." and renouncing a medal which had been awarded to him in Constantinople.[6] He spent his last years in Feodosia where he supplied the town with water from his own estate, opened an art school, began the first archaeological excavations in the region and built a historical museum. Due to his efforts a commercial port was established at Feodosiya and linked to the railway network.[7]. Aivasovsky died in Feodosiya in 1900.

Aivazovsky is best known for his seascapes and coastal scenes. His technique and imagination in depicting the shimmering play of light on the waves and seafoam is especially admired, and gives his seascapes a romantic yet realistic quality that echoes the work of English watercolorist J. M. W. Turner and Russian painter Sylvester Shchedrin. Especially effective is his ability to depict diffuse sunlight and moonlight, sometimes coming from behind clouds, sometimes coming through a fog, with almost transparent layers of paint. A series of paintings of naval battles painted in the 1840s brought his dramatic skills to the fore, with the flames of burning ships reflected in water and clouds. He also painted landscapes, including scenes of peasant life in Ukraine and city life in Constantinople. Some critics have called his paintings from Constantinople Orientalist[8], and others feel the hundreds of seascapes can be repetitive and melodramatic.

Aivazovsky became the most prolific Armenian painter of his time. He left over 6,000 works at his death in 1900. The funds earned during his successful career as an artist enabled him to open an art school and gallery in his hometown of Feodosiya.

As of 2006, Aivazovsky's works have been auctioned for as much as $3,200,000, and his international reputation continues to grow.[9] On June 14, 2007 his painting "American Shipping off the Rock of Gibraltar" sold for 2,710,000 pounds, "the highest price paid at auction for Aivazovsky".[10] He is also said to be the most forged of all Armenian painters.


Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Aivazovsky

Biography: Hovhannes (Ivan) Aivazovsky is the most interesting phenomenon of 19th century art. He gained international fame at the age of 25, was elected a member to five European Academies and was awarded the medal of the French Legion of Honor. Delacroix referred to him in reverence and Turner called him a genius.

Aivazovsky's name is intricately bound with the sea. "Perhaps no one in Europe has painted the extraordinary beauty of the sea with so much feeling and expressiveness as Aivazovsky has", writes V. Adasov.

In his best seascapes (and in a legacy of about 6000, there are some works which condescend to his artistic ability and others which merit singular artistic attention) he has revealed his inner self through the spirit of the times, his ideals of humanism, and the love of freedom. The Artist lived by those ideals; the love that he had towards the oppressed, the help he offered and the work that he did for the public good make him an exceptional individual and a true son of his times.

Aivazovsky was born to an Armenian family in the city of Theodosia in the Crimea {The Artist's ancestors were called Aivazian. His father called himself Haivazosky. The Artist and his brother decided to call themselves Aivazian or Aivazovsky. Some of the Artist's work bears the signature Hovhannes Aivazian, in Armenian}. At the age of twenty he graduates from the Art Academy of St. Petersburg with a gold medal. He goes to Italy to continue his studies and returns as an internationally acclaimed seascape painter. Neither financial security nor life in Palace interests him. He returns to his native land, builds a workplace/home on the seashore and, until the last days of his life, dedicates himself to the work that he loves. He participates in exhibitions all over the world. He gets recognition and glory as a representative of Russian art greatly helps in familiarizing it.

In Aivazovsky's creative work one finds such aspects of Armenian culture and national temperament that it becomes impossible to separate his art from his native people. It is this characteristic that gives Aivazovsky's creativity its unique quality.

Found Here: http://www.armsite.com/painters/aivazovsky/







Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Ed Paschke

Edward Francis Paschke (June 22, 1939 - November 25, 2004) was a Polish Americanpainter. He was born in Chicago, where he spent most of his life. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art. As a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago he was influenced by many artists featured in the Museum's special exhibitions, in particular the work of Gauguin, Picasso and Seurat.

Although Paschke was inclined toward representational imagery, he learned to paint based on the principles of abstraction and expressionism. Paschke received his bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961, and later his Masters Degree in Art in 1970 from the same school. Drafted into the Army on November 4, 1962, he was sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana, where he worked in the Training Aids Department, working on projects including illustrations for publications, signs, targets and manuals to explain weapons and procedures to incoming troops.

Paschke studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the height of the Imagist movement in the late fifties, while supporting himself as a commercial artist. He avidly collected photographs-related visual media in all its forms, from newspapers, magazines, and posters to film, television, and video, with a preference for imagery that tended toward the risqué and the marginal. Through this he studied the ways in which these media transformed and stylized the experience of reality, which in turn impacted on his consideration of formal and philosophical questions concerning veracity and invention in his own painting. At the same time, he sought living and working situations—from factory hand to psychiatric aide - - that would connect him with Chicago’s diverse ethnic communities as well as feed his fascination for gritty urban life and human abnormality. Thus he developed a distinctive oeuvre that oscillated between personal and aesthetic introspection and confronting social and cultural values. Official Ed Paschke website

In his early paintings Paschke both incorporated and challenged depictions of legendary figures by transforming them into corps exquis, such as Pink Lady (1970) where he set Marilyn Monroe’s famous head atop the suited body of an anonymous male accordion player; or Painted Lady (1971) where he redesigned screen legend Claudette Colbert as a tattooed lady fresh from a freak show. Another direction through which he explored the features and quirks of meaning and logic was in paintings of leather accessories interpreted as anthropomorphized fetish objects, such as Hairy Shoes (1971) and Bag Boots (1972). In the decades separating Pink Lady and Matinee (1987), Paschke shifted his interest from print to electronic media and a dazzling spectrum of televisual waves and flashes began to fill the paintings. Forms and images disintegrated, broken apart in the fabric of electronic disturbance and its surface. In Matinee, the face of Elvis Presley is fragmented into a field of glowing swathes of color with lips and eyes alone suggesting the human presence beneath the electronic overlay. [1]

Paschke made use of an overhead projector to layer images, which he then rendered using the traditional and time-consuming medium of oil painting. He began with an underpainting in black and white, then addressed it with refined systems of colored glazing or impasto to enliven the optical and physical textures of his painting. With this original and painstaking process he created a formal parallel with the black-and-white-to-color progression in the historical development of printing, film, and television images, at the same time moving the subject matter from the particular to the non-specific to allow a wider range of interpretation. In his later work, once again forms became more solidified, moving back towards certain kinds of psychologized presences and the edgy tension that characterized his earlier work. [2]

Unlike most of his Pop predecessors with their unthreatening embrace of popular culture, Paschke gravitated towards the images that exemplified the underside of American values—fame, violence, sex, and money – a preference that he shared with Andy Warhol, who was one of his foremost inspirations. Although long considered to be an artist of his own time and place, his explorations of the archetypes and clichés of media identity prefigured the appropriative gestures of the “Pictures Generation,” and for a new generation of global artists his totemic, eye-popping paintings have come to embody the essence of cosmopolitan art. [3]

Ed Paschke lived and worked in Chicago. His work is included many museum collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Major exhibitions include “Ed Paschke: Selected Works 1967–1981”, Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (1982, traveled to the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston); “Ed Paschke Retrospective”, Centre Pompidou, Paris (1989–1990, traveled to the Dallas Museum, Texas and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1990–1991; “Ed Paschke: Recent Work”, Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago (2003); and “Ed Paschke: Chicago Icon, A Retrospective”, Chicago History Museum (2006). [4]

Paschke died Thanksgiving day, 2004, apparently of heart failure. At that time a New York critic lamented that Paschke's "contribution to the art of his time was somewhat obscured by his distance from New York."[1] Since his death there have been several museum and gallery exhibitions of Paschke's work, most recently including a museum-quality show at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City, curated by noted pop artist Jeff Koons. [5] As a student, Koons admired Paschke’s work and became his assistant in Chicago in the mid-1970s while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschke would prove to be an important mentor and formative inspiration for the young artist. Paschke's influence in both his subject matter and pioneering use of color continues to influence artists around the world. [6]

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Paschke

PROFESSIONAL EVOLUTION

Ed Paschke was born in 1939 in Chicago. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons led him toward a career in art. As a student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago he was influenced by many artists featured in the Museum's special exhibitions, in particular the work of Gauguin, Picasso and Seurat. Although Paschke's interests leaned towards representational imagery, he learned to paint based on the principles of abstraction and expressionism. Paschke received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961, and his Master of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970. Between his graduate and undergraduate work Paschke traveled and worked a variety of jobs amassing the experiences that would shape his artistic style. During a brief period in New York, he was exposed to Pop Art philosophy and began to incorporate elements of this style borrowing images directly from the print media and other elements of popular culture. Themes of violence, aggression, and physical incongruity prevail in his work of this period. Returning to Chicago in 1968 he exhibited with other artists whose work, like Paschke's, shared references to non-Western and surrealist art, appropriated images from popular culture and employed brilliant color throughout a busy and carefully worked surface. Known collectively as the Imagists, their work attracted attention both regionally and nationally.

Paschke's work of the 1970's reflects society's subculture as the artist replaced images from the print media with images derived from the electronic media. In Paschke's most recent work, he enlarges scale to a grand proportion and includes images of such well-known figures as George Washington, Elvis Presley, and Mona Lisa. His work reveals a powerful interaction between humanity and technology capable of shaping perception at the most fundamental level.

In addition to his individual pursuits as a fine artist, Paschke was an active member of the academic community for most of his adult life. Following brief stops at a Barat College in Lake Forest Illinois, Meramec Community College in Kirkwood, MO. and the School of the Art Institute, Paschke became a full-time professor of art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1978. He remained there, where he often served as Chairman of the Art Department, for over twenty six years until his death in 2004.

TIMELINE

1957

Paschke enrolls in The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Drawing, Painting, and Illustration. He excels in figure drawing (which he practices on the commuter train) but is unprepared to deal with formal concepts of composition; he is particularly mystified by theories of abstraction. At school Paschke points expressionistically, but in private he draws realistically. Frequently he visits the Art Institute galleries where he admires paintings by Edouard Monet that depict figures in a "posterlike" manner against a black background-thereby violating the rules taught in class. Paschke also responds to compositions by Edgar Degas, particularly The Millinery Shop (1879/84) with its "repetition of shapes." Other favorite works include Peter Blume's The Rock (1948) and Jack Levine's The Trial (1953-54), which he finds "amazingly well painted with an economy of means." He is appreciative of J.-A.-D. Ingres's depictions of flesh and fabrics but is emotionally drawn to Rembrandt's self-portrait. The "Picasso: 75th Anniversary Exhibition" is an important experience for Paschke, as is the work of Richard Lindner included in the "62nd American Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture." In conjunction with academic classes, Paschke reads Charles Dickens, Aldous Huxley, H. L. Mencken, Franz Kafka, and Jack Kerouac.

1958

Favorite classes are two in life drawing: lineal with instructor John Fabian, and volumetric with Isabel Steele MacKinnon, a former student of Hans Hofmann. He also takes a class in lettering and magazine illustration. "Seurat Paintings and Drawings" introduces Paschke to the master's Conte-crayon works, which later serve as stylistic models for his own black-and-white drawings, such as the Queen Dido illustration for Playboy (see figs. 8, 9). Paschke exhibits Commutism (1958), a work based on his daily train rides, in the "1958 Chicago Artists Exhibition." He receives commendation for figure drawing from the School of the Art Institute.

1959-61

Paschke is exposed to the work of Ivan Albright, Leon Golub, Hans Hofmann, Jack Levine, and H. C. Westermann in the "63rd American Exhibition" at The Art Institute of Chicago. He also sees work by Bruce Conner, Robert Rauschenberg, and Larry Rivers in the "64th American Exhibition." He receives Faculty Honorable Mention for Advanced Painting and Figure Drawing (1960-61) and Class Honorable Mention for Figure Painting. He graduates from the Art Institute and wins the Anna Louise Raymond Foreign Traveling Fellowship ($1,500), which he uses for a three-month trip to Mexico with SAIC colleagues Karl Wirsum and Bert Phillips. In August 1961 he returns to Chicago with slides, a pet parrot named Flaco, and a "visual written journal which locked the experience into my conscious or subconscious."

1961-62

In September Paschke takes an apprentice position at the Pace Studios, Chicago, where he cleans brushes and fetches coffee for the established commercial artists but receives no assignments of his own; he leaves after six months. He receives three commissions from Playboy (which include Queen Dido, fig. 8) and establishes a continuing relationship with the magazine (twenty-eight of his illustrations are published from 1962 to 1989). In May Paschke seeks employment in New York as a magazine illustrator. During his week there (staying near the Greyhound Station in Times Square), he visits Birdland and museums but is unsuccessful in obtaining a job. Back in Chicago and sensing an impending draft notice, he takes a civil-service examination and works (June-August) as a psychiatric aide at the Dunning Psychiatric Center (Chicago-Read Mental Health Center) to satisfy a long-standing curiosity concerning mental abnormality.

Returning to New York, Paschke rents a room on the Upper West Side and experiments with filmmaking, surreptitiously shooting the neighborhood derelicts. He rewards them with drinks for "mugging" and "acting" in his films. Later he splices this footage with professional move clips; the interspersed visuals, which the artist had seen repeatedly as a child, are for him "a collage of early life."

1962-64

Paschke is drafted into the Army, November 4, 1962, and sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana. As a Specialist Fourth Class, he illustrates training aids to explain weapons and procedures to incoming troops. The images include diagrams on how to load a gun as well as full-scale renderings of guns; in retrospect, they remind him of Pop Art. Paschke's own proficiency with a .45-caliber revolver qualifies him for the job of pursuing AWOL soldiers across the South into Georgia and Texas. Personally, he is surprised by the tough brutality of several fellow draftees whose aggressive demeanor and life experiences significantly contrast with his own. Released from the Army on November 4, 1964, he returns to Chicago.

1965

In January he spends the remainder of his fellowship funds on a trip to Europe, visiting Rome, Florence, London, and Paris. Glad to be back in the United States, "where things were happening," he spends March and April in New York, where he sublets a room on the Lower East Side in an abandoned synagogue. To keep warm, he stuffs old New York Times in the cracked window frames; the most appealing images he cuts out and pasts on cardboard, inking over some parts and painting out others (see fig. 11). The resulting collages-many with duplicate figures-serve as prototypes for paintings. At the Museum of Modern Art's "Recent Painting and Sculpture Acquisitions" exhibition, he is impressed by Andy Warhol's Gold Marilyn (1962). Paschke returns to Chicago in April. He rents space in a condemned building (near North Avenue and Halsted Street) and paints-living on three dollars a day-until the money runs out. He sees exhibitions of works by Max Beckmann and Stuart Davis at The Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibits in "Phalanx 3" at the Illinois Institute of Technology with, among others, Tom Palazzolo, a colleague from the School of the Art Institute, whose work has interested him for its theatrical subject matter and depictions of amusement-park freaks. In October he takes a job at the Wilding Studio working with a team of draftsmen rendering a map to be used in training astronauts for the Apollo moon mission.

1966

Paschke leaves Wilding Studio in June to work for Silvestri, a display company, painting a Piranesi-style scene on the temporary faÁade around the first-floor windows of the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company department store (fig. 10); he notes how ironic it is to be covering Louis Sullivan's architectural landmark with an imitation of art. Paschke explores the inner city's ethnic neighborhoods and historic shrines, including sites of infamous crimes and favored underworld hangouts. Occasionally he deposits an assortment of jackets on the back seat of his parents' car and, cruising from bar to bar, changes clothes to harmonize with the local clientele. He sees various exhibitions of work by Jack Levine, Rene' Magritte, Robert Rauschenberg, and James Rosenquist and feels "an affinity for their Surrealistic juxtapositional strategy." Paschke attends the first of the "Hairy Who" exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center. Seeing his former Art Institute colleagues James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum professionally engaged and organized causes him to question his own potential.

1967

Paschke stops work in June to give himself time to paint. Large Round Open (1965) (fig. 12) is exhibited in the "Seventieth Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity." Paschke sees works by Claes Oldenburg and Dan Flavin at the newly opened Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

1968

Paschke takes the role of "leading man" in Red Grooms's film Tappy Toes, which is staged in Grooms's room-sized construction, Chicago (1967-68). He joins with Sarah Canright, Edward C. Flood, Robert Guinan, and Richard Wetzel in the "Nonplussed Some" exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center; Paschke shows nine works, including Amor (1968) and Dos Criados (1968) (cat. nos. 2, 3). Purple Ritual (1967) (cat. no. 1) and Tet Inoffensive (1968) are included in the Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition "Violence in Recent American Art."

In the spring Paschke meets Nancy Cohn, a former Art Institute student he had dated during his undergraduate years. They are married November 22. The couple takes an apartment at Clark Street and Oakdale Avenue; Paschke attends graduate school at the Art Institute on the GI Bill; a master's degree will enable him to obtain a teaching position that will support his family and still leave him time to paint.

1969

Paschke studies silkscreening with Sonia Sheridan at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, where he prints Budget Floors (1968-69) (fig. 19). He enters a variety of national juried print and drawing shows as a means of obtaining exposure for his images; practically, he finds that works on paper can be most easily and inexpensively transported. He exhibits in "Nonplussed Some Some More" at the Hyde Park Art Center and in "Don Baum Sez 'Chicago Needs Famous Artists'" at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Paschke is taken on by Deson-Zaks Gallery in Chicago. For "Art by Telephone," an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, he follows phoned instructions from British artist Richard Hamilton. Dos Criados (1968) is among three works included in "Human Concern/Personal Torment: The Grotesque in American Art," organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

1970

Paschke sees a retrospective exhibition of works by Andy Warhol-the artist whom he deems to be the most significant postwar American painter-at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. He exhibits Accordion Man (1969) (cat. no. 4) and other works of the Hyde Park Art Center in "Marriage Chicago Style" (see fig. 21). Paschke continues graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute where he is a Ponte del Arte Fellow. He receives his Master of Fine Arts on June 22, 1970 (his thirty-first birthday). In May he has his first one-person show, at the Deson-Zaks Gallery, Chicago, Mid American (1969) (cat. no. 5) is exhibited in the "30th Society for Contemporary Art Exhibition" at The Art Institute of Chicago and is acquired by the museum. The canvas is one Paschke has struggled with over an extended period of time, and which he had considered a failure prior to repainting its left side. One of Paschke's few repainted works, the painting conceals an image of a young boy beneath the now-visible baseball mitts.

Moving to St. Louis in the late summer, Paschke begins in September teaching at Meramec Community College, Kirkwood, Missouri. He shows Marshall McLuhan's documentary film The Medium Is the Message to his painting classes and is as impressed by the film's visual effects-which feature the superimposition of colored gels on live action-as he is by the content.

Found Here: http://www.edpaschke.com/biography/professional_evolution.php