Gotye's somebody I used to know

Triangles is my favourite shape > for now.
Gotye has interesting music videos. very fine-art directed.
I used to listen to this song a lot.

扬州八怪

http://baike.baidu.com/subview/2326/4987555.htm

One of the most creative group of artists, loosely connected, but all of the Qing Dynasty. Including Luo Ping who claimed to have seen the ghouls and ghosts he drew. This picture below depicted all of them together, which is also a figment of the artist's imagination and a forced connection that was made. For the 8 artists never conferred together like that.

Nafa best of best show 2015

Abstract forms have to be analogous when combined

Print X cut out

Reinterpretation of the way to present print in collage manner. In nafas "life after print" exhibition.

Reminds me that all mix media art is quite analogous.

Leonora Carrington - English-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Carrington
using a cat - prop.

Georgia o'keeffe - American artist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O'Keeffe

quintessential art chick look

Louise Bourgeois - French-American artist and sculptor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Bourgeois

 

   her work

Rock and Two Fish by Ba Da Shan Ren

Another painting by Zhu Da. At first glance, my favourite stroke is the one in the centre, defining the left and underside of the rock, and I shall only look at the stroke for now.
Perhaps, if I shift my eye, my favourite stroke may change in the next instant.
 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada_Shanren#/media/File:Zhu_Da.JPG

Breaking rules 5: Picasso

 “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” ― Pablo Picasso

 

What he said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Guernica by Pablo Picasso. 1937. Oil on canvas. 349 cm × 776 cm.

Breaking rules 4: 八大山人 Bada Shanren

八大山人 简笔写意花鸟画

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-sg/%E5%85%AB%E5%A4%A7%E5%B1%B1%E4%BA%BA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada_Shanren

Bada Shanren (1626—1705) was a Chinese painter with one of the most fundamental impact on modern day Chinese ink painting and art. His noble background and recluse lifestyle is quite interesting, but putting that aside, let's consider his art and how he broke rules.

Differing from the classical and precise paintings that's more typical of traditional Chinese ink painting, Bada Shanren's simplified and cartoon-like animals embody a lot of character and symbolism, and brings them from just being 2-D representational depictions to becoming conceptual symbolic art in our world.

To me, I find the almost careless expressions worn on the visages of the characters and the carelessness expressed in the brush strokes particularly noteworthy.



Recently viewed a lecture discussing his art - he said that BadaShanren didn't used to be exceptionally skilled in his drawings - so that's quite encouraging.

Breaking rules 3: Paul Signac & the neo-impressionists

Was trying to recall Georges Seurat's  name when I was pointed to Paul Signac.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Signac


By deconstructing painting (and portraying things with dots or points) he helped set the direction for neo-impressionsists as well as dot-matrix and ink jet printers, perhaps?


I particularly like the following image for its highly stylised background that reminds me of modern graphic design.

Artist	Paul Signac (1863–1935)
Title	Deutsch: Portrait Félix Fénéon English: Portrait of Félix Fénéon
Date	1890
Medium	oil on canvas, enamel of a rhythmic background of measures and angles, shades and colors
Dimensions	73.5 x 92.5 cm
Current location	Museum of Modern Art

Breaking rules 2: Pollock

When I thought about breaking the rules, Jackson Pollock came to mind. Sure, there were the impressionists from the 19th century that were moving away from the traditional style of painting, but nobody was quite as thorough as Pollock at breaking ALL the rules of painting.


"By the mid 1940s, Jackson Pollock introduced his famous 'drip paintings', which represent one of the most original bodies of work of the century, and forever altered the course of American art. At times the new art forms could suggest the life-force in nature itself, at others they could evoke man's entrapment - in the body, in the anxious mind, and in the newly frightening modern world."

Personally, I feel that there is some similarities between his creative process and that of Chinese ink works, for his works are, as he puts it,

"Energy and motion made visible - memories arrested in space." Jackson Pollock

 Convergence, 1952, 93.5 inches by 155 inches (237.49 by 393.7 cm),  Oil on canvas

http://www.jackson-pollock.org/convergence.jsp#prettyPhoto
http://www.albrightknox.org/collection/collection-highlights/piece:pollock-convergence/

Xu Bei Hong's horse

Chanced upon Xu Bei Hong's work.
Shaw Building.