Part 4 : Other Research

I have looked at the work of numerous artists during this part of the course, some of these were suggested by my tutor and others I found on my own. The notes here are necessarily brief.

Euan Uglow

Uglow's main focus was on painting the figure. He had a very precise way of doing so which involved asking models to adopt poses which exaggerated simple geometric shapes and then taking multiple measurements and plotting co-ordinates. He continued to take and plot measurements throughout the process of painting and sometimes his measurement marks are still visible in the final paintings.

Click Here for Uglow Example 1 from Painting Perceptions website

Uglow Example 2 from Painting Perceptions Website

I like Uglow's work. Although the work is painstaking it is not done in this way to produce a photorealistic result. The painting is more than an accurate representation of the body in front of him. I like the way that he selectively simplifies the planes of colour and tonal values. I also like the fact that the means of production is visible in the final painting. He has resisted the urge to tidy everything away - you can see the process of making and thinking which went into the painting and to me this helps me find the artist in the painting. (It's a bit like the excitement I feel when I find the thumbprint of a famous long dead artist on examining a painting close up)

John Currin

Thanksgiving 2003 John Currin on Tate Website - Click Here

Looking at  Currin's works, I find many of the characters he portrays are repellent. His work leads me to make immediate judgements about their financial and social status and their personalities. He very skilfully passes and often critical eye over society (in particular American Suburban life) interweaving this with references from art history. In the example above he uses his wife Rachel as the model for all three women. There is a reference to loss of virginity or deflowering. The turkey is waiting to be stuffed which ties in with the woman's open mouth. The whole scene also recalls Parmigianino's "Madonna of the long neck'

Hope Gangloff

Click to link to the artist's website

Hope Gangloff's subjects are mainly her friends. They are young bohemian types often pictured partying or lolling around bleary-eyed with hangovers. They appear young and carefree which is an attractive lifestyle to portray. What I particularly like about her work is that her drawings seem to capture fleeting and unguarded moments and are not formally posed portraits or obviously constructed scenes for a particular narrative purpose. She often uses textiles in her work and the patterning of the textiles contrasts with the relatively simple treatment of her subjects' faces and anatomy. There is a lot of flat patterning and in this way her work reminds me somewhat of that of Gustave Klimt

Goya

There is a striking contrast between the work in Goya's Early Career and that in his later life. His early work was as a court painter and so the style is very formal and not particularly individual.

Later, his style changed dramatically and there were two major influences on this - the first was the Peninsular war after France invaded Spain. His processing of the events of the ear led him to create images with strong political motives including etchings entitles - 'disasters of war'  and the famous "Third of May 1808"

£rd of May 1808. Goya

Later he was troubled by severe illness which affected his balance, made him deaf and also lead to significant psychological suffering - some have suggested that this may have been the result of lead poisoning from the paints that he used. Whatever the underlying cause, his subject matter became much darker and he produced a series of disturbing images called his black painting or which 'Saturn devouring his infant son' is an example.

Saturn Devouring his Son

I realise that I have not done justice to any of the artists I have researched with these very brief descriptions. More research material can be found in my sketchbooks and there are numerous other artists I would like to explore here if I had an unlimited timescale. Unfortunately I am in serious danger of exceeding the time limit for this course so I will have to stop here and move on to part 5.