The art of Jason Driskill

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left: Hanging (2004); Judging (2004).

San Francisco artist Jason Driskill paints, writes and creates his own digital artwork and video, often with himself as the main model. This multi-disciplined approach is a rare thing among artists predominantly concerned with gay themes, despite the example set by significant forebears such as Jean Cocteau and Derek Jarman. Driskill’s work also has a sense of humour, something which never seems very popular in the art world unless, perhaps, you’re a Pop Surrealist. Laugh at something in a gallery and it might be felt that you’re laughing at the work, not with it. Or worse, laughing at the price tag, and that would never do, would it? (Thanks Jason!)

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The gay artists archive

Berenice Abbott

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Manhattan Skyline: I. South Street and Jones Lane, Manhattan. March 26, 1936.

I love Berenice Abbott’s photographs of New York in the 1930s which capture the city in transition from a world of 19th century brownstones to the more familiar high-rise skyline. Dover Publications produced their own collection of her photos which I used as one of my key references when drawing Reverbstorm. The NYPL Digital Gallery has a huge selection online, including many which didn’t make the Dover book.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Eugene de Salignac
Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
Edward Steichen
Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
Atget’s Paris
Downtown LA by Ansel Adams

William Rimmer’s Evening Swan Song

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Evening: Fall of Day by William Rimmer (1869–70).

This curiously sexless figure is a good example of a work by an artist whose reputation may not have been as elevated as many of his contemporaries but who nonetheless created an image which speaks to future generations. Rimmer (1816–1879) was an American artist who produced a number of pictures along these pre-Symbolist lines. This particular drawing (a blend of crayon, oil and graphite on canvas) became hugely familiar in the Seventies when it was chosen by Led Zeppelin as the basis for their Swan Song label logo (below).

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