Basically, I'm always looking to broaden my range of influences and stare at pretty pictures. Because I'm gay like that. In anycase use this as a chance to post any art or artistic things you like in here. If you can provide the name of the piece or the Artist a bonus too but even just a nice image you find on the internet is always good!

So without further a do I'll kick it off with Dan Mumford.

My favourite picture:



Yes, a predictable and unimaginative choice for a Metaller, but I love it.

A good one though. I plan to get many new prints soon. It's a shame they're so expensive.

An artist everyone knows in the metal scene. Paul Romano. This is just one example of his work but some will have seen it those who own Crack The Skye
















Djinn and Wizards are the best.

I love art, ehh but I'm aware that saying that is as broad as saying "i like music". I tend to get stuck on one artist whom I like a lot, and add to favourites list, which rarely grows.

The first artist I really loved was Alphonse Mucha:

That's called The Dance. I loved it as a teen.

Then I got into Gustav Klimt:

That'll be his most famous painting, The Kiss. I got given a huge Klimt frieze which I think is in my mums attic. Good present.

Yeahhhh this is a Tamara De Lempicka, she's done some good self portraits. Haha yeah I really did just say GOOD.


A bit more modern, I am a big fan of Cindy Sherman, who is a artist/photographer:

She has done other things, but her main work is photography and she is the model in all the shots. She wears (sometimes dodgy) "disguises". But if you google her, you can have a look at a load of these different personas she takes on.

And yet more contemporary, you should google Jake and Dino Chapman, "Fucking Hell", and find a picture of the whole thing. Or better yet, I THINK if you go to their website you can watch a video of the whole piece of art, but this is a photo of a section of it:


The End.

Good call on Gustav Klimt!

Some new people I havn't heard of there will check them out!

Been thinking of starting a thread like this for a while! Dare say I'll post plenty, but I'll start with possibly my favourite painting ever:

Olympia by Manet. The more I learn about this painting, the more I love it. It's difficult to imagine just how shocking this was at the time (1863), for the style as much as the subject matter. As well as more or less inventing Impressionism (well, not quite, but Manet was the single biggest influence on it), the painting is a piss-take of the nude paintings of the time, which were more or less porn dressed up as art. Here there's no pretence that she's high class - the woman is obviously a prostitute, you're looking at her naked, and she's looking at you, accusing you almost. She's saying, "yeah, and?" But it's simultaneously a brilliant homage to a Titian painting that I can't remember the name of, showing Manet's love and respect for the old masters. It's hugely radical, in terms of style and subject and the point it's making, while still being in thrall to 'classical' ideas of great painting. I just love it. I have to tear myself away from it whenever I go to the Musée d'Orsay as people seem to look at you funny if you spend to long looking at a picture of a nude woman.

I have a print of this directly on wood.

Can't stand Klimt - I don't know why, his works just really irk me.

De Lempicka is tops though. She was part of a group called the Futurists, who believed for modern art to progress, all old art should be destroyed, so they decided to burn down the Louvre - but in the end didn't, because de Lempicka's car had been towed so they couldn't get there (I'm not making this up!). There's a brilliant portrait by her - as usual I don't remember the title - but she's painted in actually a very traditional way, pre-Romantic, almost - and then behind her is a weird futuristic Metropolis that's painted in a sort of neo-Cubist way, really interesting.

NB This thread will see me being even more poncey than usual.

Burning down the Louvre. Exactly why some artists shouldn't ever dabble in politics, too passionate for their own good and never think things through.

Escha!

John Howe http://www.john-howe.com/

Paul Kidby http://www.paulkidby.net/

Hehe, I still have my huge hardcover The Hobbit novel illustrated by John Howe from when I was a kid of about 6. The images and the book really captivated me as a child and as a result I stole the book from the primary school library and never gave it back.

I suppose it was the beginning of being a geek.

John Howe > Alan Lee.

Once You Start Down The Dark Path, Forever Will It Dominate Your Destiny.

Dali, 'Slave market with disappearing bust of Voltaire'. 1941

I like the guy who did the Death Is This Communion cover art.

Post images, dick!

You've all seen it!