Swiss ArtistI was very taken with the nudes of Felix Edouard Vallotton when I came across them the other day. The Swiss painter was also well known as an important artist in the medium of woodcutting.
After doing a little more research I was pleased to find that on top of his artists merits, he boasts the looks of the kind of weirdly handsome smart ass art student with a thing for big butts that I just can’t resist (just ask my husband).
Album ArtistsIf you can remember the image of an album cover from the seventies and eighties that’s got a touch or more of photo surrealism then Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, and Peter Christopherson, aka Hipgnosis was probably behind it. The British design group basically dictated what the enduring face of rock and roll would look like for a decade.
Not only were they behind iconic albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and Houses of the Holy but some of my personal favorites – Scorpions’ Lovedrive and 10cc’s How Dare You! (favorites in album art only – The Scorpions cold never live up to their controversial covers).
Click here for the rest of Hipgnosis
Visual FuturistIt might take a while before I see Bar Basque and Foodparc, the new city eateries designed in part by Syd Mead, futurist and awesome man, but in the mean time, I can be happy looking at his work.
After browsing his illustratrations – that often are of ultra cool automobiles surrounded by swanky, rich swingers who populate the future people imagined back in the decades when the future seemed a more optimistic place.
Of course, one can spend a great, fantastic night learning about the career of Mr. Mead by watching the movies his vision helped make: Star Trek, Blade Runner, 2010, Aliens, TRON, and Short Circuit (take a lunch break during this one).
Click here for the rest of Syd Mead
A Visual ComparisonParis vs New York is such a simple and lovely visual comparison between two of the world’s most amazing cities. They are from the creative mind of Vahram Muratyan, a Paris based graphic designer and art director. I found the link on Refinery 29.
Fashion IllustratorIf you’re a fashion lover, the sketches of David Downton are likely familiar even if you don’t know the name. One of the most inspiring and visible fashion illustrators working today, Downton is going to become more well known with his new lovely looking book, Masters of Fashion Illustration (which features many other illustrators as well).
A hard working freelance graphic artist for years, who according to his biography was “wagging (his) tail when the phone rang”, he eventually found a niche in the fashion world that has resulted in some of the most beautiful modern portraits of the world’s most beautiful women.
Click here for the rest of David Downton
Food ArtistWith art and food intermingling so much (chef’s are probably more well known today than our greatest working artists) and people enthralled with all things food related, lately this viral video of food rotting, I thought of posting about Daniel Spoerri, in interesting artist whose medium was the aftermath of meals. He called his works “snare-pictures” described as “objects found in chance positions, in order or disorder (on tables, in boxes, drawers, etc.) are fixed (‘snared’) as they are. Only the plane is changed: since the result is called a picture, what was horizontal becomes vertical. Example: remains of a meal are fixed to the table at which the meal was consumed and the table hung on the wall.” He’s world renowned as a major figure in 20th century art but a new name for me personally that I am currently a little obsessed with.
Click here for the rest of Daniel Spoerri
PhotographerWell, fashion week had some inspirational styles, but the images that have been most profoundly inspiring to me this week are the tribal photographs of Hans Silvester that I came across. These floral adorned people are from the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa’s Omo Valley and the subject of Silvester’s book Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa. Their makeup and accessorizing serves no purpose except to be creative, daring, and inventive.
Click here for the rest of Hans Silvester
Colombian PainterThe work of Fernando Botero is a family favorite and I grew up looking at his lush, abstracted portraits of exaggerated fat people. He’s never questioned his choice in subject and is simply drawn to the forms. Far from a novelty, though his paintings are exquisite and recently he gained acclaim for his politically volatile Abu Ghraib paintings. He is Columbia’s foremost artist and considered “the most Colombian of Colombian artists”.
Photo credit Roel Wijnants Fotografie
Click here for the rest of Fernando Botero
Theatrical ArtistChristian Berard seems like the kind of guy I would have loved being friends with. He was a prominent gay artist who with his lover, Boris Koshno was the toast of the fashionable Paris crowd of the 20’s and 30’s. A renowned costume and theatrical scenery designer, Berard’s paintings have a distinct style that found a home in the fashion world where he painted for magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
He is probably most well known for his considerable contribution to cinema with his dreamlike designs for Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.
Click here for the rest of Christian Berard
Unique Beauty and Renaissance WomanIsabella Rossellini is so inspiring in her fierce individuality. She does the projects she wants to do and always with grace and humor. Whether starring in a David Lynch film, making short films about animal mating habits, or guest starring as the Arby’s roast beef loving ex of Jack on 30 Rock, Rossellini is constantly entertaining and one of our most interesting beauties – a woman who puts the rail thin vacant eyed stars of current young Hollywood to shame.
Most recently she’s been lending her eye to a line of Bvlgari handbags that are lined with her own snail print design. While I can not dream of affording the simple but slightly funky bags, I love that she’s making them and keeping her career interesting.
If you want to have a mini Isabella festival I recommend Blue Velvet, The Saddest Music in the World, and her Green Porno series and go ahead and throw in one of my favorites of her mother, Ingmar Bergman’s filmography, Gaslight.
Click here for the rest of Isabella Rossellini
