Chosen Artist: Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Dalí, born in Spain in 1904, he had become the leading surrealist artists of the 20th century. He is most famous for his strange dream like paintings of over exaggerated animal and objects and melting watches and clocks.

Many of his paintings have a very renaissance look to them, and he has been compared to many different renaissance artists in the past, but with his vivid imagination and realistic use of painting techniques he has created some of the best surrealist art pieces of all time. His work consists of different images that come up frequently within his paintings, all holding a different symbolic meaning, for example: He uses the egg in several of his art works, using it to symbolise hope and love; the egg is also symbolised on top of the Salvador Dalí theatre and museum in Spain, where most of the artists work is held, since he died in 1939.

"I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly." —Salvador Dalí

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/165858.Salvador_Dal_

Chosen Artist: Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Hirst is the most prominent figure in the group the young british artists. Art collector and entrepreneur he has held exhibitions all over the country including the Tate Modern in London. Using several different medias, some of which were considered very bizarre in the early 90's, Hirst has created some very famous masterpieces that have been displayed around England. His central theme around his work has usually been death. In the early 90's Damien became famous for his series of art installations in which dead animals were suspended in glass cases for the viewers to walk around. Including a sheep and a cow, split in to two so that the viewer could walk in between each case of the animal. His most famous has been the tiger shark encased in a glass case.

His other works include his diamond encrusted skull, which was estimated to be one of the most expensive pieces of art in history. A human skull named: For the Love of God, consisting of 8,601 diamonds and still containing the skulls original teeth, made my Bentley and Skinner, the skull went on exhibition in the White Cube gallery in London in 2007, and estimated to be worth £50Million.

He has also produced a series of paintings called spot paintings. Much like the Pop Art movement of the 1960's Hirst has created his version of repeated polka dot art.

Chosen Artist: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Warhol was one of the leading artists in the art movement known as pop art. Born and raised in America, Warhol started off his art career as a fine art artist, then later moving on to the pop art scene in the 1960's. in 1962 he held his first solo pop art exhibition at Elanore Wards Stable Gallery, viewing his most famous works such as the Marilyn Monroe, 100 dollar bills, 100 soup cans and 100 coca-cola bottles.

Working with mainly silkscreen and paints he created stencils of an object that he then repeats over and over to create his pop art effect.

This is his Coca-Cola art piece, comprising of 100 coke bottles all done by stencil and paint in the 1960's. When asked why he chose to use Coca-Cola as the centre of his work he said: "What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

This is his most recognisable piece of work, he took an image of Marilyn Monroe and changed the colours of her features to create his pop art effect, a technique that has been copied by man different artists and graphic designers ever since. Pop star Madonna also used his technique and recreated her version of a pop art image of her self on the front of her album Celebrations.

http://kottke.org/10/10/andy-warhol-on-coca-cola

Chosen Artist: Baz Luhrmann

Baz Luhrmann

Baz Luhrmann is an australian film director, most recognised for his adaptation of William Shakepeares Romeo + Juliet, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. winning several awards for his masterpieces in film, Luhrmann has a certain individual technique when it comes to film making. In his adaptation of Romeo + Juliet, Baz kept the traditional concept of 2 lovers forbidden to fall in love because of their families hatred towards one another, he kept the old style of language used in Shakespeare original play, yet he set in in modern day life in the city of Verona. 

Staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, this dark rendition of the traditional play is probably what he's best known for. He has created scenes that have adjusted to the wording used in the original script but also fit in with the modern day life scenery he has chosen. Along with his film Moulin Rouge he creates a certain bizarre feel to the films with outrageous music and very past paced story lines.

In 2008 Baz released his film Australia, staring Nicole Kidman and High Jackman, a story in which a British Aristocrat travels to Australia to confront her husband of having an affair only to find she is about to inherit a cattle station and has to embark on a journey around the country to try to save it. This is a slightly darker and more down to earth production unlike his previous works.

Chosen Artist: Banksy

Banksy

The artist known as Banksy is a graffiti based artist born out of the Bristol area. Although his identity is still unknown to the public his images are very much well known. spotted all over the country, mainly in London, Banksy produced graffiti art on the side of buildings and public subways using stencils to create images that speak out about the society we live in. 

This is just one example of his funny side to his street art, showing a monkey with a t-shirt indicated that one day they will in fact take over our planet. But a lot of his work shows images protesting for anti-war, anti-capitlist and anti-establishment.

This is one of his famous anti-war art pieces, showing two war soldiers secretly painting a peace sign before someone can see. I think Banksy is trying to send out a message here than even the soldiers of war just want peace rather than constant battles. His other images include a little girl searching a policeman, a young boy behind a snipers back looking excited to see him shoot, two policemen kissing, a man hanging from a window hiding from his lovers husband, and many many more, some of which have sold or up to £40.000 around the world including to people such as kate moss.

Barbera Kruger

Barbara Kruger 

Barbara Kuger is a female american photographer using mainly existing images she has found with aggressive and outspoken text layered over the top. She started her career as a graphic designer when she started to layer images together to produce art that questions her views on feminism, consumerism and classicism. 

This is one of my favourite images of Krugers, I could imagine seeing this image on a greeting card that you would send to a love one, only the background suggests something a lot darker. I think she was trying to highlight some sort of awareness towards depression or some kind of mental illness, yet portraying it in a slightly lighthearted way.

In 2007 Barbara Kruger was asked to produce a set of advertisement boards to be displayed in the Selfridges store in Central London. The phrases she included in this boards were "You want it, you buy it, you forget it" "Its you its new its everything its nothing" and "buy me ill change your life".

Some of the phrases she used seem to be very encouraging on the consumer to purchase items from the store, yet others are just showing that the consumer doesn't need any of the materialistic things they are about to buy. Many people think that Kruger has sold out as an artist by agreeing to create these boards for such a famous expensive store, seeing as for most of her career she has created work to speak out about issues concerning consumerism, but i think she may have done it to pin the joke on to Selfridges, creating almost sarcastic boards for this store to pin up around its different departments to try to entice its customers to buy their products.

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Sherman is an american photographer and film director, best known for her controversial portraits. Throughout her career she has sought to produce work that challenges important questions about the media and women in general society. Using herself mainly as her model for he photography she has documented herself in many different images, some disturbing, some provocative but all effective.

When she was asked to produce a set of fairytale images for vanity fair she didn't want to do the usual children's fairytale story, instead she chose to adapt her own concept of a fairytale that hasn't been censored for children viewers yet. She kept a level of gore and violence within her images but not enough to make the photograph a very graphic one.

Another example of her work showing her concerns over women in society is this image. She has created this image as a centre fold for a magazine, just as the provocative images in the male magazines at the time would have, so that when the men open this image expecting a sexy woman spread across the page he is faced with her image depicting women as 'the victims'.