MetaFilter posts tagged with nsfw and Painting

Angels & Dirt

fire&wings — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:09:09 -0800

Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) was a British painter. Spencer studied at the Slade in London, but he spent most of his life in the village of his birth, Cookham in Berkshire. Deeply religious and obsessed by resurrection, Spencer viewed Cookham as a "village in heaven" where everything was invested with mystical significance. Inspired by his idol Giotto, he took scenes from the Bible and restaged them in this tiny village by the Thames. Christ carries the cross through Spencer's front garden. Jesus heals in the attic of his house. Stanley and his brother watch from behind the shed as Christ is betrayed at the bottom of the garden. He is crucified on telegraph poles in the high street. In the village churchyard, the dead are rising. Spencer served in Macedonia during the First World War and, deeply affected by the experience, spent 9 years from 1923 onwards decorating the specially commissioned Sandham Memorial Chapel (inspired by Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel) with intricate murals documenting his experiences [photo gallery] [video tour.] He was officially commissioned as a war artist in the Second World War, and spent 7 years documenting the work at Lithgow's shipyard in Glasgow in a series of monumental canvasses. An exquisite draughtsman who was equally at home painting everyday subjects, for too long his eccentricities overshadowed his art. The reputation of this "divine fool of British art," who turned up for his knighthood with a carrier bag, sketched on toilet paper, and pushed his easel around Cookham in a pram, has in recent decades been radically reappraised. The frank and intimate approach seen in his domestic works, often exposing his turbulent personal life, influenced a generation of artists. His astonishing nudes of the 1930's (nsfw - he was almost prosecuted for obscenity over these in the 1950's) provided the template for the work of Lucian Freud. He created an invaluable record of two World Wars. "Half a century ago, Spencer seemed old-fashioned; today, art has caught up with him. It no longer seems outlandish to call him the most important British painter of the last century." 251 of his works. Critical writings on Spencer by Kenneth Pople. Peter Ackroyd on Spencer and the Thames (video.)

The Paintings of Fred Einaudi

homunculus — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:10:09 -0800

The Paintings of Fred Einaudi. [Via everlasting blort]

Ripeness is All: Lustmord Portrayed in Oil

WCityMike — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:48:34 -0800

New York artist Ashley Hope's Ripeness is All exhibit at the Tilton Gallery recreates crime scene photographs of murdered women from the 1910s through the 1990s as oil paintings on huge 4' x 6' canvasses. [some nsfw art] Hope states that her goal is the "re-subjectification of a scene that had been totally objectified by the forensic camera." She chooses the crime scenes of "Lustmord" (or "lust murders") — "these incomprehensible crimes are more sublime; they exemplify a reality that betrays our expectations, a reality that so often takes us outside of our understanding." ArtDaily.com, who made Hope their Nov. 2007 featured artist, comments: "Man is valued for his interior qualities ... woman is valued for her exterior attributes ... Hope's work — images of women reduced to a body — underscores this dichotomy, thus challenging these reductive tendencies."

Baby Art

Gator — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 07:59:59 -0800

Not safe for work: Baby Art: the profoundly fucked-up artwork of one Trevor Brown, a fabulously unwell individual.

Body painting festival

madamjujujive — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 07:06:15 -0800

The World Body Painting Festival will be held in Austria at the end of the month. The event site has some colorful photo galleries from prior years. Are these festivals the modern incarnation of an ancient art and tradition? Is there a gold standard? Some works show great artistry while others, not so much. This photo has always been one of my favorite examples. NSFW - nakedness abounds!