Peter Doig

British Painter (born 1959)

Gasthof (2004)

Echo Lake (1998)

"Doig is interested in images that have a universal familiarity and tap into our collective sense of memory. His paintings often seem strangely familiar, highlighting the fact that in the modern age memories have become photographic. Seldom can clear distinctions be made between memories based on direct experience and those that are mechanically mediated. "

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/triennial/artists/doig.htm

Janine Antoni

Freeport, Bahamas (born 1964)

Saddle (2000)

"I think the startling thing for me was that I made a ghost of myself. When I’m with the piece I feel the absence, both of my body and the cow. It wasn’t necessarily something I intended for the piece, to be so ghostlike. It’s transparent...there’s nothing underneath, although the shape so articulates the figure. It’s a kind of push-pull that you feel, of such a presence of the figure. For me, the shocking thing was to realize that I’ve made a piece about the death of the cow, my own death."- Janine Antoni

Loving Care (1992-1996)


Gnaw (1992)

Lick and Lather (1993)

"I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture but also with the classical bust...I had the idea that I would make a replica of myself in chocolate and in soap, and I would feed myself with my self, and wash myself with my self. Both the licking and the bathing are quite gentle and loving acts, but what’s interesting is that I’m slowly erasing myself through the process. So for me it’s about that conflict, that love/hate relationship we have with our physical appearance, and the problem I have with looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘Is that who I am?’"- Janine Antoni

http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?slide=141&artindex=44

Andy Goldsworthy

Environmental artist

British Sculptor (born 1956)

Rowan Leaves and Hole (1987) Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton

Rivers and Tides clip:

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D3TWBSMc47bw&ei=8FL_SbK8JIqUswO9-LnxAQ&sa=X&oi=video_result&resnum=4&ct=thumbnail&usg=AFQjCNFrSmU7mVoY5UpVfDPPpn9kdApjFA

Stone House (2004) Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Goldsworthy constructed two thirteen-and-a-half-foot-tall columns of balanced stones, each surrounded by an octagonal dome—eighteen feet in height and twenty-four feet in diameter—of split rails. Made from materials gleaned in rural landscapes, the sculpture, Stone Houses (2004), invited viewers to peer through the wood domes to see the stacked, tapered stone spires sheltered within. The granite stones, the largest of which weighed one-and-a-half tons, were from the beaches of Glenluce in Luce Bay, southern Scotland, and the split rails of northern white cedar came from New England agricultural sources.
"Stone Houses, which the artist intended to "command the space" of the Roof Garden, was envisioned as "an exploration of the relationship between stone and wood... [with] stone the more fragile partner—protected by the [guardian wood rails]—just as trees often hold together and protect the landscape in which they grow." Inherent in these seemingly simple forms were the implicit power, beauty, mystery, and elemental aspects of nature, marked by the passage of time and by human contact."

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Goldsworthy/roof2004_more.htm

What this is all about...

This blog is an ongoing collection of contemporary artists that I find compelling and relevant, especially to use as an art teacher. Their is a lot going on in the art world right now, and I this is designed to act as a file of what I find most interesting, with images and ideas all in one place.