Whomever is your favourite artist?

[Doctor Dugald Eldritch]

Art has held a long fascination for me. When I was young I had wanted to become an artist, but my drawings and paintings make cat scratches look like masterpieces in comparison. Van Gogh, Picasso and Dali were all favourites, though only the latter is a favourite now. I am not interested in those who only paint pretty pictures of bowls of flowers or sun-soaked meadows and fields- we have Nature herself for that- but they whom insist on painting bizarre images of nightmarish and grotesque creatures and realms beyond the human ken. I am also interested in the quasi-romantic figure of the ''visionary artist'', he whom isolates himself from the world outside him and takes refuge in the dark and sinister world of his morbid art, shunning all human contact. His obsessions dominate him alone and compel him to finish his masterpiece. This type of character frequently appears in my own tales and am also planning a short novel centred around a decadent Scotch artist and his ghoulish lifestyle. In no particular chronology, here are my favourite painters.

Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956)- My favourite artist of all time. Osman Spare's fabulous paintings of malformed nude women and the unattainable mysteries of the universe have piqued my fancy and influenced my life and fiction in an immense fashion. A true descendent of William Blake. His books on his philosophy and the occult are also worth reading for one interested in the subject, as I am. Some exquisite verse also came from the masterly imagination of Spare. On Myself is a majestic little poem to morbidity, as is Life's Nightmare.

William Blake (1757-1827)- Another great visionary whom was the precursor of Spare. Blake boldly rebelled against the over-spreading materialism of his age and found solstice within the imagination, producing brilliant and uncanny works of genius. The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun is a masterpiece that enthrals, delights and spooks me at the same time. The Ghost of a Flea is also a singularly creepy piece of unhallowed artistry.

Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929-2005)- The Polish painter Beksinski was a man who saw an eldritch dream-world of death, decay and the End, and sought to capture it in his canvasses. He had a true sense of the fantastique and the nameless denizens that dwell within that forbidden otherworld. His paintings are all masterpieces of their kind and ought not to be excluded from any gallery of the terrible and the oneiric. He makes an excellent addition to illustrating Lovecraft, Machen, Clark Ashton Smith and other weird masters. Sadly, in 2005 this great man was murdered by an utterly stupid teenager who thought it a good idea to rob the world of one of its all too rare talents. I sincerely hope that little bastard is rotting in some primordial hell (I know that this is a terrible thing to say but that is a taste of my fiery side).

Richard Upton Pickman (1888-1926?)- Boston, nay, America, never had as great a painter as Pickman. His absolutely grotesque paintings of fiendish and daemoniac night-ghouls and evil Salem witches have been permanently burned into my brain. His conspicuous disappearance in 1926 is indeed a great cause for speculation. My theory? Perhaps Pickman had glimpsed Hell itself and found that his inspiration came at a terrible price. Yet whither he has gone or not I do not know, but his reputation as one of art's greatest and most fiendish masters is assured.

So there are my favourite artists. Whom is yours?

[ramonoski]

My stock answer is Beksinski because he combines not only a supreme skill but an unmatched imagination. His... alien? infernal? otherworldy? oneiric? however one can describe those landscapes? I've no idea but they are fascinating, unnerving, and full of imagery and sensations one can only perceive in dreams. Van Gogh is another favourite. I was in Amsterdam back in 2007 and I spent about half my stay visiting and revisiting the Van Gogh museum. I just couldn't get enough of it.

Pickman is an interesting choice. The week before my Amsterdam trip there was a Pickman exhibit announced in Paris, but it was cancelled at the last second because apparently the building burned down. Officially they say it was some malfunction with the electric part of the exhibit that started the fire, but there were rumours that the curator herself started it. She is presumed to have died on the fire, as she was never seen afterwards, but no remains were found inside, or so the official version says. So instead I skipped over to the David Lynch exhibit "the air is on fire" that was being held at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain (and I have the huge book they were selling as proof I was there!)

On a similar vein to Pickman there's Henri Beauchamp. He had a fine technique but his work is too judeochristian for my taste, and getting in to the exhibit is more trouble than it's worth, to be honest. I went in with the express intention of taking a peek at his famed 13th painting, but the day I attended it had been taken down for restoration purposes. Such is my luck...

edited to add: it has been brought to my attention that Henri Beauchamp and his story is, well, the pizzolatto'ed anonymous version of one Jimmy Vellum, who first appeared in an RPG book titled Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners. The relevant portions of which can be read here: 30 Background The story (contrast this to the Beauchamp story as found here The Gallery of Henri Beauchamp – Creepypasta Wiki) So, credit where credit is due.

And apologies for briefly derailing this thread...

[SpookyDread]

David Cronenberg ,

Michel Langevin aka Away ( Voivod )

,

Yoshiaki Kawajiri

, Dr. Richard Garfield and co-creators Jesper Myrfors and others ( creators of Magic The Gathering, it's combinatronics and aesthetics ) , Paul Verhoeven, Hideyuki Shigeta ( the designer of Volks super dollfie , Japanese doll company ,

a decent video of what that is

)

My wife when I met her had all these dolls most of them from LUTS and some from Soul Doll, which are S.Korean companies, but it was Volks who originally made them which is a Japanese company and she has one doll from them now . I tend to prefer other doll companies to Volks but anyway they're 1/3rd scale resin dolls (not vinyl, not plastic) which are elastic strung that have moveable arms and whatever, with removable and customizable parts. They're used as avatars as a canvas for idealized human creativity or the beautification of the self or whatever , I don't know how to explain it . . . my wife can sew and she wouldn't be the same person without them. I find them fascinating in the sense that they're always better than the human race. They're like.. Platonic ideals of essences. Thought-Forms. They're the highest technological achievement in terms of idolatry.

[luciferfell]

I will stick to photography and painting on this. Joel-Peter Witkin, H.R. Giger, Francis Bacon, Max Ernst, Santiago Caruso, Aeron Alfrey.

[SpookyDread]

Quote Originally Posted by luciferfell

I will stick to photography and painting on this. Joel-Peter Witkin, H.R. Giger, Francis Bacon, Max Ernst, Santiago Caruso, Aeron Alfrey.

What I found amazing about Magic The Gathering cards were the way in which they were framed, part of a colour-pie, with costs, abilities, complex value attributed to the way in which they effect the board state given the game situation and the presence of other cards, etc.. so its playing with paintings, and the use of those images changes in play. so a card like Veteran Explorer or Blood Moon evokes a different response depending on the deck, on the metagame, and the weirdest thing being the gulfs of time that a card can be understood to encompass in terms of a range of a response , like Transmute Artifact was a card that was hardly ever played until recently, and the thrill of playing really old cards in a new way is compelling to me. (Veteran Explorer is a boring card that can get huge stuff, the art itself isn't that compelling on that one lol). He's a deck.

Similar to how I feel about an artist like Giger being used for a tarot deck, except I don't play with tarot decks, similar kind of thing in the sense that it changes the way you respond or feel about art itself.

like the Arkham Horror board game makes the art so much more than it is than it would be just hanging on a wall.

[Nemonymous]

Vermeer, Magritte, Friedrich, many of the Pre-Raphaelites, and, in certain moods, Dada and found art, and of course Pickman.

[Druidic]

Richard Upton Pickman’s reputation has taken some serious blows recently. Apparently, several former models have come forward with frankly amazing and startling charges and revelations. The following is from an interview with one model who has requested anonymity.

“…meep …no talent…glug …drank like Innsmouth f-f-fish…meep, meep…had to f-f-finish damn painting my…meep, glug…self…”

Sadly, other models tell a similar story.

I can think of many, but someone who invariably springs to mind with me is the great Robert H. Knox. I've been a huge fan of his work ever since I first encountered it back in the 1980s on the Crypt of Cthulhu covers (and then of course his subsequent work on Necronomicon Press et al). I think he's a true genius in weird art of the order of Lee Brown Coye.

I can't see that Knox has a website or even much of an online presence but obviously a quick google image turns up astounding work.

Mark S.

[SpookyDread]

Judas Iscariot

, particularly Heaven In Flames . Really underrated and most exceptional black metal band . Epitomizes the genre in so many ways.. solo.. black and white album covers.. and sympathy with the doom metal genre as opposed to like the viking metal genre (which I don't like so much) . It's like ####ty basement quality black metal that sounds like it could be in a Bible-epic Hollywood movie about locust plagues and #### . But its black metal. Sounds so huge.

[faliol]

For some dark stuff, check out Alfred Kubin.

Alfred Kubin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred_Kubin

Also, I love Edvard Munch, Goya (his black paintings and printmaking), Jerry Uelsmann, J.K. Potter, Clarence John Laughlin.

All of these have had a great inspiration on my own art.