The Alexander McQueen label was unique - containing a lock of hair, not always his own - encased in plastic. Andrew Groves recalls the designer insisting that an assistant have his head shorn for further supplies - Judith Watt
Renaissance brocade-style print jacket from Dante, A/W 1996
i don’t have a like, eternal top 10, but on 10/15 at 6pm my favs of the moment r:
- giorgione
- caravaggio
- goya
- munch
- redon
- kandinsky
- matisse
- rothko
- ana mendieta
- yayoi kusama
honestly it just takes time and personal investment! it helps to not associate artists with artwork titles and a few general bullet points but to rather view them as complex human beings living in complex times. get to know them like you would any person: read a bit about their bios, their values, their internal & external conflicts, etc. eventually you can recall information about an artist as if someone asked you about a person you go to school/work with, for example!
just remember that knowing all of caravaggio’s artworks w titles & dates is far less important than knowing what he essentially wanted to say and why.
resources are everywhere!! even if u grow up in the middle of nowhere in a family that loathes impracticality & sensitivity / the arts (like me), u have immense access to art.
through high school i spent hours on sites like the met (check these out 1, 2), google art project, encyclopedias like grove art, etc. surveys of art history are great starting places too and you can probably find them for pretty cheap at a used book store. i also look through current periodicals (eg. artnews, frieze) and journals.
in school i took ap art history (and rec it to anyone in hs) & have just started undergrad classes. so i have a ton to learn still. my knowledge remains very general!!
i don’t like either. hirst occasionally has a neat idea or two in his works but ultimately too much of what he does is defined by capital, controversy, & appropriation. imo his shittiness drowns out his merit more often than not. i get tired.
koons is kinda in the same boat. i perceive him as an annoying & boring celebrity of absurdly inflated status. i can say that his art brings into dialogue some important ideas about design, but i don’t personally care about design at all. his works bore me to death tbh.
i know they get so much shit & it’s easy to join in the fun but i truly have just never taken anything substantial away from their works ever. i don’t get that burning awareness of life or humanity or myself or anything.
3. Who do you think is the most overrated artist and why?
like.. on this site for real bouguereau. im not about oeuvres that can’t portray real women because the artist thought women deserved no part of the real world (that they lived in & fundamentally shaped!). which is why you have these ingenue, idealized young white women in just as idyllic (and unreal) universes. they’re dehumanized. their sexualized bodies become vehicles for conservative values & misogyny. like, that’s all in addition to him being an academic & him having so little integrity tht he proudly admitted to painting what he knew would get him $$ and fame. slick technique & pretty light don’t make up for any of that.
4. Who do you think is the most underrated artist and why?
hilma af klint!
1. What is your favorite art movement?
? ? ? like ever ? ? ? i can say that my studies currently gravitate toward the german interwar period (german expressionism[s] in a vague sense)
already got 33
21. Favorite Photographer
william eggleston, shomei tomatsu, & alfred stieglitz