Category: {painting}

Painting

The art of Philip Shadbolt

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Lila.

I’d intended to feature Philip Shadbolt’s paintings earlier but his site was offline last time I looked. The hiatus was a temporary one which means that the beautiful men, beatific gods and kaleidoscopic mandalas of his Earth and Spirit galleries are available for viewing again. One of these paintings is very aptly used as the cover art of Thom Ayres’ Arcanta CD, Book of Mirrors, Thom being better known to some of us as our witty and incorrigible host at Planet Fabulon. For more Shadboltiana, see the interior design at myhotel, Brighton.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Sadao Hasegawa, 1945–1999
• The art of Matthew Stradling

Fred Tomaselli at White Cube

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left: Summer Swell (2007); right: Big Raven (2008).

I like Fred Tomaselli’s hyper-detailed psychotropic paintings a great deal. Londoners can see an exhibition of new work at the Mason’s Yard branch of White Cube until 16 May, 2009.

Tomaselli’s new work is a departure from his earlier, more direct use of pills, hemp leaves or ornithological references. The birds are painted with greater freedom, with each flame-like brushstroke animating the feathers as if an aura were radiating from the wild creature. Big Raven is inspired by the American Gothic tradition and the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, while Detail, with its dramatisation of the relationship between predator and prey, is a timely homage to Darwin’s Origin of the Species. The single, hypnotic gaze of Eye celebrates Tomaselli’s understanding of visual reciprocity – as if the bird were returning the artist’s affectionate stare. This reoccurs in the galaxies of multiple eyes found in his photograms, or monstrous apparitions created in direct response to front-page articles from the New York Times, through to the talismanic eye that emerges from the sea in Summer Swell, as if it were drowning in its own visual abundance.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Fred Tomaselli

False perspective

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Satire on False Perspective by William Hogarth (1753).

Whoever makes a Design without the knowledge of Perspective will be liable to such absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece.

More eye-deceiving art for All Fools’ Day. Everyone knows MC Escher‘s pictures which continually played with the rules of perspective. Hogarth’s satire is less well-known and may even be the first of its kind. I haven’t seen any examples earlier than this.

A few contemporary equivalents follow, all of which can be found at Impossible World, a site devoted to visual disjunction.

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