Who is your favourite painter of all time ever

"August the 4th—Have just heard that B— has been dead more than a fortnight, so his poor children have now lost both parents. I hear she was seen on Friday last near the Strand, evidently without a place to lay her head. What a fall hers has been."

http://www.nd.edu/~cvandenb/egg1.gif

why isn't leon kossoff better known?

sadly, nobody on ilx has ever heard of Kossoff, but he's tops!

(this would be living painters. too many dead ones.)

All-time: nearly always Wassily Kandinsky, but the one I've been looking at most of late, with most pleasure, is Shibata Zeshin. (Who I suspect is far less well known than Kossoff, outside Japan.)

It's not very good.

Actually, this is sort of true for me saying Ad Reinhart, too.

http://www.geocities.com/ngl_u/coll/bellini3meadow.jpg

http://www.d4rkw00d.net/gallery/vallejo/boris_vallejo_85.jpg

Also, recently stumbled upon this interesting Japanese dude called Yamaguchi...
http://www.assemblylanguage.com/artpiecepictures/YamaguchiA.JPG

-- Under the paving stones, Paul Scholes (adamr...) (webmail), Yesterday 1:58 PM. (nordicskilla) (later)

haha

St. Francis fresco cycle (st francis' life and death) San Francesco, Assisi. These were originally attributed to Giotto but recent opinion is swaying toward Pietro Cavallini. Anyway, these are, obviously, much more impressive in person, especially if that person is Catholic.

http://img469.imageshack.us/img469/8549/ssfuccellim0sq.jpg
Francis telling the birdies whats what.

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/4896/ssfstigmatem4pp.jpg
Uh-oh! Stigmata.

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/5813/ssfascertaindm6st.jpg
"Was that really stigmata?"
"Nice bangs"

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/2886/basilicasuperiore2208mr.jpg
upstairs

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6904/ablowerm7un.jpg
downstairs (these are almost definitely Giotto)

My other favorite: James Rosenquist.

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8983/wrappeddoll53ub.jpg

http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/2227/wrappeddoll145vg.jpg

francis bacon - INTERACTIVE!!!!

love his shit

i went to see a large exhibition of bacon paintings at the hirshhorn in washington DC when i was in my late teens. loved his work and was head over heels about the opportunity to see it up close and personal. was fascinated at first, but found it increasingly oppressive and disorienting i progressed through it. about halfway through i had a sort of panic attack, more like a despair attack, really, and had to retreat outside to catch my breath and get my bearings. was impressed, as the art-value of "impact" was v. important to me in my youth, but i never loved bacon in the same way after that.

bronzino ftw

Vermeer, believe the hype

I quite like this Giotto, he's underrated. My favorite painters change, probably influenced by what I've been looking at on the internet. I like painting with a lot of "information" in it. I shall have to give Ingres another go, too!

Kurt Schwitters + Man Ray

Barnett newman

Hopper, Magritte, Kandinsky off the top of my head but it might be diff I thought about it for a while.

http://www.radford.edu/~rbarris/art427/rauschenbergcharlene.jpg I was just looking at Rauschenberg this weekend. It looks so vital and instructive in an internet context!

oh man yeah also love love love Rauschenberg and Rothko and expressionist-era Guston

Goya.

The London Richter retrospective just hit me hard, so he's the living painter who's been top of my mind lately.

i have liked alex katz more and more since whenever it was years ago that i just kinda liked alex katz

http://www.artandliving.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/the-cocktail-party-434.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_336qCeW74Tg/ShceZT-uApI/AAAAAAAAAVM/QTuGfIg_kBE/s400/alex-katz-lily-flower-painting.jpg

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/media_collection/6/AR00012.jpg

the other big guns in my life before katz were schiele, hockney & rothko i think

woof, that richter show was truly amazing. have you seen the anselm kiefer at the white cube in bermondsey? incredible show, i highly recommend it to all londoners.

What I know about painting comes through books, not galleries, but Francis Bacon.

I'd probably want to choose between three or four

Velazquez and Breughel the Elder are shoo-ins. But I'd also want to look at the very little known Magnasco:

http://cdn2.all-art.org/rococo/images/magnasco9.jpg

(hope this isn't too big).

Samuel Palmer -

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AXgbkXdDsJA/TsrfC5SWIbI/AAAAAAAABME/BIuIUCllcfU/s1600/N03868_9.jpg

and Wyndham Lewis, a better painter and draughtsman than writer, generally I think:

http://www.march.es/arte/ingles/madrid/exposiciones/wyndham/img/barcelona.jpg

not really known as a painter so much but alberto giacometti or maybe schiele's trees. I like paintings of trees and rooms a lot.

OMG @that Alex Katz lily. I just GISed him and am now obsessed. Can you get posters of his stuff anywhere?

caravaggio, vermeer

I'm starting to like Grant Wood a lot more these days.

Vermeer, believe the hype

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, January 22, 2012 3:22 AM (10 hours ago)

quoted for truth

rembrandt

OMG @that Alex Katz lily. I just GISed him and am now obsessed. Can you get posters of his stuff anywhere?

― franny glass, Sunday, 22 January 2012 18:58 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

aw awesome!, i'm so glad
idk; actually the lily is one of the few things i've seen available online, albeit in the form of: a magazine ad for a gallery show framed by someone and sold on ebay, every few months. occasionally there are prints of his stuff for thousands, also.

you should check out some of his books, in the short-term; the last thing i posted is from 'night paintings', which is a series i'm familiar w/ but didn't know there was a book of. & his collages are v v beautiful, too; i would've included one itt were it not explicitly marked 'painters'

http://www.ursusbooks.com/itemimages/118897a.jpg

http://p.agostini.pagesperso-orange.fr/katz/OrangeInterior1968.jpg

The Richter show was probably my fave 'blockbuster' exhibition of all time (the films that they programmed alongside it were gd too).

jed - I'll check out the Anselm Kiefer, thx.

I think saying Kiefer is a "painter" is somewhat limited a description. Although one can say he paints with material, too. Regardless, do check him out.

my boring list, in order of preference:

renoir
klimt
van gogh
schiele
hopper
kandinski
munch
kirchner

I saw the Richter show at MoMA back whenever -- '02 or so -- and he's been on my shortlist ever since. But to this question I always say Charles Burchfield, because I just really love him and I think he's underappreciated. His more realist stuff can almost stand with Hopper, but his crazy expressionist nature paintings are the best. Not like anyone else ever.

Diego MF'ing Velasquez

Err...Velazquez

some of my favorites are

picasso
klee
kandinsky
pollock
barnett newman
ellsworth kelly
john wesley

and i wanna mention robert irwin even though he's not really a painter anymore

dürer
hiroshige
tiepolo
courbet
redon
de chirico
guston
richter

and klimt

agnes martin

lxy

bucket list goal is to make it to the Prado to see Goya's Black paintings (or, you know, whoever did them)

^^^

Yeah that's on our Madrid itinerary in a few months.

If you want more Madrid Goya try to fit in the church of St Anthony of La Florida. really love the angels who are showing you the miracle going on in the dome.

& multi-xp, jed, no I haven't seen the anselm kiefer, but I will try to get to it, not sure why I haven't yet. (IDEA: perhaps I will leave it to the last weekend, ensure that I am shoved and squeezed in a maximally irritating environment)

(and on the London derail, I also really like Grayson Perry's British Museum thing, but maybe as much for his artifact choice as his art, i dunno)

Is it weird that when posed with the question 'who is your favourite painter' my thoughts tend to revolve around ideas of skill and atmosphere, whereas if the question had been 'who is your favourite artist' (or even '...artist in the medium of painting') my criteria would be immeasurably different?

francis bacon
odilon redon
wayne thiebaud
frida kahlo
charles blackman
john brack
brett whiteley

When I posted about Grant Wood yesterday I was on iPad and so couldn't easily copy over images, but anyway, though I'm no art historian or student or anything, his work outside of "American Gothic" hits this weird intersection of folk art, Soviet social realism and Hudson River School nature-y stuff that I really like:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-n_VXjOPyN1g/TVi4GkqKEFI/AAAAAAAAAbM/EhBAJnlhND0/s1600/Grant-Wood--Arbor-Day--1932.jpg

http://edu.warhol.org/Images/gwood.jpg

http://www.dailyartfixx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/January-Grant-Wood-1940.jpg

That last one currently hangs in the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is where I saw it and started getting interested in his work.

That last one is so surreal and avant garde. When I was an undergraduate, the literature was CONSUMED with Europe vs the United States themes.

yeah, love that last one especially

Speaking of American painters, what about Wyeth, another victim of political correctness. http://www.awyethgallery.com/andrew/master.jpg

^ love that stuff phil. d and yeh esp the last one

I'm quite into De Chirico at the moment; and his stuff up until about 1920, that stuff really speaks to me. I like how his work seems really natural/innocent/pure and not contrived/try-hard which is how I find some of the stuff he influenced.

(n.b I know next to nothing about art so I'm prob talking arse)

I always have time for Mexican painters...this is Orozco. http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/342/w500h420/CRI_151342.jpg (Zapatistas, 1931)

wow, those grant woods are amazing. roger brown must have liked these.

OK, this story was like James Redd catnip: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/11/vermeer-secret-tool-mirrors-lenses

klimt
caravaggio
alphonse mucha
frida kahlo

Richter is 91.

How do we square the feeling that Richter's “abstraction comes from a climate of dead cynicism and irony" with his own nearly religious claims on behalf of painting? https://t.co/VJfYg0vHiZ

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) May 2, 2023

The Richter show was probably my fave 'blockbuster' exhibition of all time (the films that they programmed alongside it were gd too).

jed - I'll check out the Anselm Kiefer, thx.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 22 January 2012 bookmarkflaglink

Looking back this post remained true until very recently, till I went to the Brueghel room at the Kunsthistorisches museum.

Richter is 91.

🐦[How do we square the feeling that Richter’s “abstraction comes from a climate of dead cynicism and irony" with his own nearly religious claims on behalf of painting? https://t.co/VJfYg0vHiZ🕸
— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) May 2, 2023🕸]🐦

Inspired by one of his paintings that I saw online, I got Heat waves in a swamp : the paintings of Charles Burchfield out of the library, and almost everything therein was revelatory. I'll have to go to his museum if I ever make it back to Buffalo.

wow at revive, richter IS my favorite painter of all time ever I think

Gerhard Richter Painting (Belz, 2012)

This is on MUBI UK for a few more days.

I loved watching him paint. In conversation he is wonderful, he does not say a thing more than he needs to.

prefer Kiefer's sculptural work to his straight-up paintings
soft spot for Guston
De Chirico quite a bit
Magritte - but - because so much of the context for which i see his work is digital reproductions / riffs - i sometimes forget that the underlying works were paintings? if that makes any sense?

I don't know if I would ever slot Stanton Macdonald-Wright in at #1, but right now I'm appreciating his obstinacy even if it's not all that different from someone who has a legit psychedelic/transcendental experience and uses that insight to justify their own assholeness. Like people who microdose to become better capitalists. OTOH, I once got to see a bunch of his paintings up close and goddamn.