Boyko Kolev is a Bulgarian artist about whom I have little background information. Most of what I know is simply gleaned from his web site, which offers no biographical profile, and his space on deviantART, which has a few odds and ends.

His painting style might be classed as hyperrealism, though he seems to play with the very fact that he is chasing that state of realistic illusion in art by offering up images that reference other images, or the act of creating other images.

My favorites of his, though, are his simple, directly and keenly observed still life subjects, like his painting The Bread (above, top, larger version here); in which his delicate handling of textures, subtle colors and deft suggestion of the interplay of shadow and light immediately put me in mind of the early still life studies of bread by Salvador Dalí. I later saw that Kolev had, in fact, done a bread painting directly inspired by Dalí’s bread paintings (and here).

Kolev has spent time investigating the work of past masters, including painting replicas of works by Van Gogh, Monet, Klimt, Bruegel, Correggio, Vermeer and, others. (See my posts on Klimt, Correggio and Vermeer.)

I particularly enjoy his painstakingly detailed replica of Jan van Eyck’s beautiful Portrait of Giovani Arnolfini and his Wife (See my post on Jan van Eyck in which I talk about this remarkable painting.)

Kolev has a special fascination with the works of Leonardo da Vinci, and has done several replicas of Da Vinci’s works, as well as referencing Da Vinci’s work in many of his illusionary self-referential paintings, like his oil painting of his own preparatory sketch (above, bottom left) for his replica of Da Vinci’s wonderful Lady with an Ermine (bottom, right, Da Vinci original here).

When viewing Kolev’s web site galleries, take note that there are multiple pages, both in original paintings and replicas, accessed by numbered links at the bottom of the thumbnail area.

[Suggestion courtesy of Robert Tracy, see my previous post about Robert Tracy]

It’s interesting to note that Japanese artist Takashi Murakami was the only visual artist included on Time magazine’s 2008 “100 Most Influential People” list. Not that I put that much stock in such lists, but it’s a glimpse of the wide ranging notice Murakami is receiving.

Muuakami’s style covers a wide range as well, with influences from traditional Japanese art, which he studied at Tokyo national University of Fine Arts and Music, combined with 20th century Modernist notions and contemporary pop culture streams from manga, anime, and “otaku” culture, in a kind of glorious art mash-up explosion of brightly colored graphic patterns and iconic imagery; as if Peter Max was channeling Utagawa school artists by way of Masamune Shirow in an exhibit put together by Andy Warhol.

Murakami seems to have the ability to slip back and forth at will through cultural layers as well, passing from gallery art to pop culture to outright commercialism, with his name appearing on designer goods along with Louis Vuittom.

There is a major show of his work currently at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, from now until May 31, 2009.

The show has previously traveled to MOCA in California, which has videos of the exhibit and interviews the the artist; and The Brooklyn Museum in NY.

Murakami doesn’t have a web site per se as an artist, but rather an art production company, Kaikai, Kiki (roughly meaning “oddly fascinating”), devoted to art related merchandise, animation and art promotion, of which his art is a part.

[Via Art Knowledge News]

There have traditionally been only two images accepted as true portraits of the man who is generally acknowledged as the greatest writer in the English language, William Shakespeare.

One is his monument bust in the Holy Trinity Church in Statford-upon-Avon (left, 4th down), and the other is the famous engraving by Martin Droeshout (left, bottom) that was used as the cover piece of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s work (and has been repurposed in a gigazillion ways since). Both of them were done after his death in 1616.

On Monday, the chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stanley Wells, unveiled a painting that has been in the house of the Cobbe family outside of Dublin for centuries, that is now suggested to be the only image of the bard painted from life (image at left, top).

This status was previously held, but always in question, for the painting called the Chandos Portrait, attributed to artist John Taylor (left, third down), but that claim has been discredited to a large extent.

The painting from the Cobbe family shows an energetic and bright eyed man, younger than the portrayals we commonly see, most of which have been based on Droeshout’s engraving.

In this portrait, Shakespeare would have been 46 at the time, six years before his death.

The painting bears a resemblance to a painting once thought to be of Shakespeare and attributed to Flemish painter Charles Janssen, that is in the National Gallery in London (left, second down).

Though this painting has been established to have been of another person, and to have been altered sometime before 1770 to make it resemble Shakespeare, it is what prompted the Alec Cobbe to begin inquires among Shakespeare scholars and art experts to see if his family’s painting was, indeed, of the great playwright.

Though the jury is not in, sophisticated dating techniques and the opinions of the experts in both camps suggest that this may, in fact, be the only portrait we have of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime.

Unfortunately, in all of the media attention the painting has received, I can find no mention of an attribution, or even a suggestion of a probable artist’s name. I suppose that may remain a mystery, like much about the bard himself.

Though out of context (and though by “paintings”, Hamlet is referring to Opheila’s makeup), the issue of identifying portraits brings to mind:

“I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face and you make yourselves another,…”

[Thanks to Larry Roibal]