Vladimir Gvozdeff

Vladimir Gvozdeff
Vladimir Gvozdeff (Gvozdev) is an artist from (if I’m not mistaken) Slovenia Russia [I was mistaken, see this post’s comments], who works in both two and three dimensional media, often combining them in the same work.

On his website, I found two series of particular interest. One is of mechanisms — clockwork animals drawn out as plans in various stages of finish. These are sometimes presented in elaborate frames, or even more elaborate assemblages, that combine the drawings with various mechanical and pseudo-mechanical objects, like keys, buttons, gears, wheels, calipers, slide-rules and various measuring instruments. The effect is one of viewing an alternate reality museum exhibit presenting the history of the development of these now familiar objects.

The other series I particularly enjoyed, while not a combination of two and three dimensional art, does deal with dimensionality — but in a different way. These are paintings in which open spaces within cityscapes, like harbors or plazas, take on the form or animals or other objects.

[Via Cory Doctrow on Boing Boing]

 
FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin

Grunewald’s The Resurrection, from the Isenheim Altarpiece

The Resurrection, from the Isenheim Altarpiece, Matthias Grunewald
This painting, from the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald, is one of the most striking depictions of the Resurrection in the history of art.

I don’t think I can describe it better than I did in my post on Matthias Grünewald from 2006.

The original is in the Musée Unterlinden, but the best reproductions I’ve found to date are on the Web Gallery of Art.

 
FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin

Bruce Crane

Bruce Crane
American painter Robert Bruce Crane became associated with the American Impressionists of the Old Lyme Art Colony in Connecticut. In his later career, he developed into a Tonalist — diffusing his scenes of fall and winter landscapes into misty passages of light and color.

 
FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin

Jan van Eyck’s The Last Judgement

Jan van Eyck's The Last Judgement
This is the companion piece to Van Eyck’s Crucifixion, which I featured yesterday.

Though the Crucifixion panel is a strong and impressive painting — particularly given the small size of the panels of this diptych, each of which is only 22×7″ (56x20cm) — this panel of the Last Judgement is just astonishing.

I can’t say it gives a compelling picture of the glories of Heaven (though the angel is pretty impressive), but Van Eyck’s depiction of Hell here is a pull-out-the-stops tour-de-force of “You really don’t wanna go there!”

Not as well known as the famous vision of hell in Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted some 50 or 60 years later, this one is right up there in the scare you into towing the line department.

Given that the small size indicates that the original triptych, of which this was a part, was likely commissioned for personal devotion by an individual patron, one has to wonder about the state of mind of that individual. Or, perhaps his request for the subject of the work was more general, and he didn’t really know what he was getting until Van Eyck delivered the finished paintings.

I’ve even left out the most viscerally gruesome and horrific part of the image of hell, which is in the left portion of the panel.

Yow.

 
FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin

A. J. Casson

A. J. Casson
Alfred Joseph Casson was a member of the Group of Seven — likeminded Canadian landscape painters active in the early part of the 20th century.

Casson worked in watercolor, oil and printmaking, capturing in his landscapes both the nature of the land, and his own fascinating vision — in which the shapes of trees, rocks and other natural forms take on a muscular strength and a semi-abstracted geometric structure — sort of Thomas Hart Benton meets Cezanne.

Unfortunately, I’ve found limited resources for his work online, but I’ve listed what I could find below.

[Via One1more2time3’s Weblog]

 
FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin