2. Robert Rauschenberg
Was an American artist best known for paving the way for pop art of the
1960's with fellow artist Jasper John by making use of non-traditional
materials and questioning the distinction between art and everyday objects.
He worked as a costume and stage designer in New York City before
moving to painting, sculpture, music and collage to produce his work.
Rauschenberg allowed chance to determine the placement and combination of
the different found images and objects in his artwork such that there were no
predetermined arrangements or meanings embedded within the works.
Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein traced their inspiration for Pop art to
Rauschenberg's collages of appropriated media images, and his experiments
in silkscreen printing.
4. Ellen Gallagher
She has Irish and African American origins, which have shaped the texture and
subject matter of her practice. Sources include the vaudeville tradition of black
minstrels, science fiction and advertising targeted at African Americans.
Gallagher has relied on the repetition and revision of minimalist structures since
her early career; the subtle shifts and repetitions in the writing of Gertrude Stein
have long been an influence, along with the sublime paintings of Agnes Martin.
Minimalist geometry is used as an empty shell into which controversial or taboo
subject matter relating to gender, race and history is inserted.
Recent developments have seen Gallagher collecting and appropriating images
from magazines aimed at African American women, many of them suggesting the
use of prosthetic enhancements to diminish blackness. In collaging a range of
materials into the surfaces, including plasticine, rubber and coconut oil, Gallagher
adds her own humorous prostheses, developing a personal visual language.
6. Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky took up the study of art in earnest at age 30, moving to Munich to
study drawing and painting. A trained musician, Kandinsky approached colour with a
musician’s sensibility. An obsession with Monet led him to explore his own creative
concepts of colour on canvas, which were sometimes controversial among his
contemporaries and critics, but Kandinsky emerged as a respected leader of the abstract
art movement in the early 20th century.
He began with conventional themes and art forms, but all the while he was forming
theories derived from devoted spiritual study and informed by an intense relationship
between music and colour. These theories coalesced through the first decade of the
20th century, leading him toward his ultimate status as the father of abstract art.
Colour became more an expression of emotion rather than a faithful description of
nature or subject matter. He formed friendships and artist groups with other painters of
the time, such as Paul Klee. He frequently exhibited, taught art classes and published
his ideas on theories of art.
8. Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly was an American painter of large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on
solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colours. Many of his later paintings and works on paper shifted
toward "romantic symbolism", and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words.
Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarme as well as many classical myths and allegories in his work
•“My line is childlike but not childish. It is very difficult to fake... to get that quality you need to project yourself
into the child's line. It has to be felt."
•"Graffiti is linear and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls. But in my paintings it's more lyrical."
•"When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time."
•"Paint is something that I use with my hands and do all those tactile things. I really don't like oil because you
can't get back into it, or you make a mess. It's not my favourite thing..pencil is more my medium than wet paint."
•"I sit for two or three hours and then in 15 minutes I can do a painting, but that's part of it. You have to get
ready and decide to jump up and do it; you build yourself up psychologically, and so painting has no time for
brush. Brush is boring, you give it and all of a sudden it's dry, you have to go. Before you cut the thought, you
know?"
These are lines from Cy Twombly.
His Inspirations came from Greek and Roman mythology, history, and places, French Neo-classicism, and
contemporary graffiti on ancient local walls. Twombly was able to balance the seemingly static history of the
past with his own sensual and emotional responses to it. Twombly was interested in the layering of time and
history, of painting and drawing, and of various meanings and associations.
