20 Sites n Years by Tom Phillips
Tom Phillips has long been one of my favourite contemporary artists and he’d certainly be my candidate for one of the world’s greatest living artists even though the world at large stubbornly refuses to agree with this opinion. Phillips’ problem (if we have to look for problems) would seem to be an excess of talent in an art world that doesn’t actually like people to be too talented at all (unless they’re dead geniuses like Picasso) and a lack of the vaunting ego that propels others into the spotlight.
Phillips is predominantly a painter but a restlessly experimental one. On my journey through the London galleries in May I visited the National Portrait Gallery, a rather dull place mostly filled with pictures of the rich and famous by the rich and famous. There were two Tom Phillips works on display in different rooms, inadvertently showing his artistic range: one, a fairly standard (if very finely detailed) portrait of Iris Murdoch, the other a computer screen showing a portrait of Susan Adele Greenfield which manifested as an endlessly-changing series of 169 processed drawings and video stills. One work was static and traditional, the other fluid, contemporary and unlike anything else in the building.
Turkish wrestlers
Wonderful Flickr photo set by istanbul mike
depicting off-duty Kirkpinar wrestlers.
Clockwork Orange bubblegum cards
Oh, if only…
From Bubblegumfink who specialises in creations like these. Via Boing Boing.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alex in the Chelsea Drug Store
The art of Gérard Trignac
Gérard Trignac produces etchings of a kind I’d most likely be doing myself if I wasn’t otherwise occupied, detailed architectural fantasies that owe a lot to my sainted Piranesi and (I’m guessing, since they’re both French) Charles Méryon. As usual with contemporary artists of this nature one can find the pictures but information about the artist is harder to come by. A web search reveals this:
Gérard Trignac was born in 1955, and initially trained to become an architect—training which is evident in his imagined cityscapes. Each of his prints begins with a detailed sketch, which is then fully developed on the copper plate. Each print can take months to complete. Besides individual prints, Trignac has often turned his talents to series of prints used to illustrate classic texts by authors such as Calvino, Borges, and others. His work is in the collection of numerous museums and public collections in Europe and the United States.
The wonderful (French-only) Egone.net has an artist’s quarter with two Trignac portfolios (scroll to the bottom of the page—and look at some of the other work while you’re there). Work by Gérard’s sister, Colette, is also featured. Other print collections can be found here, here and here.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive