"What I've tried to do with my work is eliminate the human figure"

April 9, 2017 9:46 AM

New York artist Martin Wittfooth produces stunningly beautiful and detailed allegorical paintings featuring animals wandering through a post-apocalyptic world…The world humans have bequeathed these animals is choked with plastic, devastated by pollution, and illuminated by all-consuming fire. The one hope is a progression to a better more fruitful world through personal sacrifice and death. Animals snared in manmade tangles of telephone cords sprout flowers from their eyes; a dead wolf bursts with colorful blooms that nourish a hummingbird; a white horse is set on fire by deranged monkeys.

Wittfooth discusses his latest series, "The Archaic Revival" [percussive background music]
Interview with Vincent Zambrano [classical background music]
Artist's website
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posted by Johnny Wallflower (10 comments total)

I love this. It says Dali and Griffin&Sabine and Riddley Walker to me all at once.
posted by gusandrews at 9:49 AM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I thought this looked familiar. That wolf is the cover for Wolf's Law, a really great album by The Joy Formidable.
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:50 AM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ooh, a Johnny Wallflower post about animals! I wonder what those lil' puppers are up to this time!

. . .

. . .

Hmm
posted by knuckle tattoos at 10:40 AM on April 9, 2017 [9 favorites]

Saki saw this coming:

If his work was not obviously stamped with the hall-mark of genius, at any rate it was remarkable for its choice of an unusual and unvarying theme. His pictures always represented some well-known street or public place in London, fallen into decay and denuded of its human population, in the place of which there roamed a wild fauna, which, from its wealth of exotic species, must have originally escaped from Zoological Gardens and travelling beast shows. “Giraffes drinking at the fountain pools, Trafalgar Square,” was one of the most notable and characteristic of his studies, while even more sensational was the gruesome picture of “Vultures attacking dying camel in Upper Berkeley Street.” There were also photographs of the large canvas on which he had been engaged for some months, and which he was now endeavouring to sell to some enterprising dealer or adventurous amateur. The subject was “Hyaenas asleep in Euston Station,” a composition that left nothing to be desired in the way of suggesting unfathomed depths of desolation.

On Approval (from "Beasts and Super-Beasts")
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:49 AM on April 9, 2017 [7 favorites]

Ooh, these are nice. And I got a quiet disturb-o-chuckle from the Cyriakian resonance of "Golod".
posted by cortex at 11:01 AM on April 9, 2017

Wow. Reminds me of Walton Ford's work ...
posted by bunderful at 11:41 AM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

A weird mixture of children's books and middle ages painting to this untrained eye. Love the stork with the electric plug.
posted by benadryl at 1:38 PM on April 9, 2017

Every few years I dream that I have to take a final exam for which I have not studied.

Fortunately, that's about as bad as it gets.
posted by BWA at 2:44 PM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

The animals in human-created environments remind me of Alexis Rockman's paintings, although these are more overtly allegorical.
posted by pernoctalian at 3:38 PM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ah, I like these a lot! They remind me of El Gato Chimney's allegorical animal paintings and drawings (I was lucky enough to buy a tiny one a few years ago!)
posted by rmless at 9:54 AM on April 10, 2017