Adam Adamowicz, concept artist behind the hugely popular video games Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, passed away this week after a long struggle with cancer.
posted by restless_nomad on Feb 11, 2012 - 37 comments

Bob Cassilly, an industrial artist/sculptor from St. Louis, responsible for revitalization via art, has tragically died in a bulldozer accident while working on his last creation, Cementland.
posted by readyfreddy on Sep 26, 2011 - 31 comments

Richard Hamilton, early pop artist, has died age 89. [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Sep 13, 2011 - 12 comments

Writer, traveler, and kidnapper of Nazi generals, Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor -- Paddy to friends and fans -- is dead at 96. A silver lining: his biographer Artemis Cooper reports that the long-awaited final installment of his trilogy recounting a year-long walk across Europe as a young man in the 1930s, "has existed for some time, and will be published in due course."
posted by villanelles at dawn on Jun 10, 2011 - 41 comments

Jorge Semprun, author, resistance fighter, Holocaust survivor, has died.
posted by OmieWise on Jun 10, 2011 - 5 comments

Jeff Jones, comic book artist, science fiction and fantasy artist, and former member of The Studio, died today of emphysema and bronchitis. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on May 19, 2011 - 31 comments

When "Proto-Pop" artist Larry Rivers' died in 2002, he left behind extensive archives of his letters, paperwork, photographs and film documenting the New York artistic and literary scene from the 1940s through the 1980s. They chronicle his friendships and relationships with dozens of artists, musicians and writers, from Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol to Frank O’Hara. Also included: films and videos of his two adolescent daughters, naked or topless, being interviewed by their father about their developing breasts. Now, one daughter, who says she was pressured to participate beginning when she was 11, is demanding that material be removed from the archive and returned to her and her sister. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Jul 8, 2010 - 74 comments

Frank Frazetta, was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1928. He rose to fame first for his work with comic books in the 1940s and 50s, then for his iconic fantasy art from the 1960s on. Frazetta was the inspiration behind Zelda artist Yusuke Nakano, and Frazetta's artwork for the "Famous Funnies" were an inspiration for Star Wars. Frank Frazetta died today, at the age of 82. More history, eulogies and links inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on May 10, 2010 - 85 comments

"The quest to undercut fashion’s standards of perfection, and to find beauty in the disdained, overlooked or overripe, runs throughout Mr. Penn’s career. In an otherwise pristine still life of food, he included a house fly, and in a 1959 close-up, he placed a beetle in a model’s ear." So long, Irving Penn.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 7, 2009 - 20 comments

Dash Snow, seminal artist, is dead of an overdose. [more inside]
posted by infinitefloatingbrains on Jul 15, 2009 - 149 comments

Legendary artist Alton Kelley created a graphic style that rocked the world beginning in the psychedelic sixties. His concert posters, logo designs, LP album covers, and fine art have forevermore defined that time. Kelley passed away peacefully at home on Sunday, June 1, 2008 of complications from a long illness.
posted by terrapin on Jun 2, 2008 - 18 comments

Elizabeth Murray, a New York painter who reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form whose subjects included domestic life, relationships and the nature of painting itself, died yesterday at her home in upstate New York. (Images)
posted by R. Mutt on Aug 12, 2007 - 7 comments

Famed Arabic calligrapher Khalil al-Zahawi murdered. (Arabic: خليل الزهاوي‎; 1946 - 25 May 2007) Khalil al-Zahawi was the most famous practitioner in Iraq of the art of writing classical Arabic script. He was shot to death Friday as he left his home.
posted by psmealey on May 29, 2007 - 54 comments

Australian artist Pro Hart has died. Hart used DNA in his paintings to foil counterfeiters. Sometimes he painted with a cannon, other times with a plane.
posted by tellurian on Mar 27, 2006 - 16 comments

SA VIGNAC. Welcome to the world of Raymond Savignac, the greatest poster artist of all time, and inventor of the little Bic man. Joyous, naughty, simple, elegant, and beautiful.
posted by Sticherbeast on Dec 7, 2004 - 4 comments

Another master taken: Richard Avedon, dead at 81. Arguably the greatest portrait photographer in history, Avedon was famous not only for his fashion or celebrity shots, but also his interest in the common man, best emphasized by the book "In the American West". He was recently working on a piece, "On Democracy" when he suffered a brain hemorrhage. Many may be familiar with his simple black & white on white style from his shots for the New Yorker (he was their first staff photographer). His site is currently shrouded in respect.
posted by Civil_Disobedient on Oct 1, 2004 - 13 comments

Wesley Willis: Rock and roll star, artist, poet, movie star and friend to all he met passed away last night from Leukemia at the age of 40. The six foot five, 320 pound Chicago area musician who cut his teeth on the streets selling city landscape drawings and playing music on his tiny Casio keyboard was infamous for his raw insightful songs and ability to draw his audiences into a schizophrenic's take on reality.
posted by car_bomb on Aug 22, 2003 - 35 comments

Cartoonist Bill Mauldin Dead at 81. Mauldin was the creator of the every-GIs Willie and Joe during WWII and twice won the Pulitzer Prize.
posted by turbodog on Jan 22, 2003 - 11 comments

Frank Moore [NYT], the originator of the red ribbon, died of AIDS last week. His gorgeous paintings depicted politics from Yosemite to Versace. As one of the few incredibly contemporary but still publicly accessible artists, he will be missed.
posted by RJ Reynolds on Apr 26, 2002 - 4 comments

"When Christ called his disciples called fishermen, he didn't call nobody from a qualified university," R.I.P. Rev. Howard Finster. Which is your favorite Finster cover art? Mine would have to be R.E.M.'s "Reckoning".
posted by likorish on Oct 22, 2001 - 14 comments

The man behind Woman in the Dunes has passed away. Filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara died on Saturday with nary a press announcement. I haven't been this pissed off about a media blackout since Sam Fuller passed on (or, to some extent, the recent death of Joey Ramone). Is the only way for an obscure artist to gain that long-neglected recognition for their works to kick the bucket? It would seem that, even then, there are no guarantees.
posted by ed on Apr 18, 2001 - 4 comments