francesco clemente

I saw these paintings hanging in the nga and I was like woah! That bro is like me!

I'd never heard of this Clemente guy before, but appaerntly he got pretty famous and stuff in the 80s. There's a picture of him and Andy Warhol and Basquiat chillin, and he painted a picture of that model who left Bryan Ferry for Mick Jagger, so yeah.

This sure is one pretty watercolour.

It's kind of impressive how various his work seems to be.

And they kind of seem really trashy and crap. I know that SOUNDS negative, but I feel exactly the same way about my own art. This guy is kind of like a hero to me.

I'm really impressed. He's really gross and unapologetic. He's all like 'Fuck you guys! I draw what I want!'. The above one is an etching, btw.

I like how he traverses the land between beautiful and trashy to gross and alienating.

I guess this is probably enough now.

Blue ballpoint pen!

Marlene Dumas!

You know who is a cool guy? Marlene Dumas.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure what she's on about. But maybe it has to do with identity. And possibly the human condition? Psychological states and philosphical questions?

Sexuality is another thing. Representation is another. I heard she has used images from pornography and random images of people off the internet as source material.

I like her use of materials. I'm a big fan of melty ink drawings. Also melty paintings too. Melty anything really. Water is a good medium.

I don't know quite how to say that I think her depictions of people are "alternate". Unidealised might be a good way to say it. Take for example that pregnant woman up there. This isn't the womans weekly or nappy advertisement version of pregnancy. At the same time, I dont think its a negative veiw either. Just a bit more complex and dark?

I DONT KNOW. I like the pictures, I think they're interesting.

shhhh

Pieter Bruegel the elder, yeah

Bruegel was a Dutch painting guy, hanging around in the mid 1500's. He was apparently a printmaker and painter, though I haven't seen many of his prints, and he is pretty famous.

In case you haven't noticed, the cover of the first Fleet Foxes album is a Bruegel painting. Crazy days.
I've heard that this painting depicts a lot of literal representations of Dutch proverbs and its all round pretty humourous. Even though the proverbs thing is pretty much lost on me, I'm happy just to laugh along anyway.

Things that I enjoy about Bruegel is that he was clearly a very skilled painter, but that he also did not give that much of a shit about perspective or giving things correct proportions. He had other more important things on his mind maybe, like making sweet pictures.

I also get the impression that he was interested in the lives of "everyday" people like you and me, if we were 16th century Flemish crippled people.

Looking at his work makes me feel like maybe he knew something important and was trying to tell me what it is. Like in this picture. It is called Icarus, and you can even see that guy making a bit of a splash in the water down the bottom there, I think. But you wouldn't even notice Icarus if you didn't know to look for him. You'd be too distracted by the beautiful veiws and the busy farmer tilling the land, I think.

Man, I don't know.

Also, I'm pretty sure he liked to party.

hi guys, here is some art

for some reason i decided that maybe i should impart all of my information about art guys into a blog format
enjoy the fruits of my labour mystery reader