Eric Carle was an American artist, illustrator, and writer of children’s books.
Carle’s picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been translated into more than 66 languages and sold more than 50 million copies.
Tag Archives: American art
RIP Karl Wirsum (1939 – 2021)
Karl Wirsum was an American artist, one of the Chicago Imagists, a group known for their grotesquerie, surrealism, and complete uninvolvement with New York art world trends.
In my universe he is famous for illustrating the nobrow essay “Cross the Border — Close the Gap” (1968).
RIP Brigid Berlin (1939 – 2020)
Brigid Berlin was an American artist and Warhol superstar.
After moving to Hotel Chelsea, Brigid Berlin took on the nickname Brigid Polk because of her habit of giving out ‘pokes’, injections of Vitamin B and amphetamines provided to her by the many Dr. Feelgoods New York sported at the time. One of these Dr. Feelgoods was Max Jacobson.
RIP Milton ‘I ❤ NY’ Glaser (1929 – 2020)
Milton Glaser was an American graphic designer.
His designs include the I ❤ NY logo, the psychedelic Bob Dylan poster, and the logos for DC Comics and Brooklyn Brewery.
Glaser was the subject of the 2008 documentary film To Inform and Delight: The World of Milton Glaser.
RIP John ‘dots over people’s faces’ Baldessari (1931 – 2020)
John Baldessari was an American artist.
A typical Baldessari work is Painting for Kubler (1967–68) which is a painting of a text paraphrasing five theses from art historian George Kubler’s book The Shape of Time (1962).
The text reads:
“This painting owes its existence to prior paintings. By liking this solution, you should not be blocked in your continued acceptance of prior inventions. To attain this position, ideas of former painting had to be rethought in order to transcend former work. To like this painting, you will have to understand prior work. Ultimately this work will amalgamate with the existing body of knowledge.”
In his own analysis, he said he would be best remembered as “the guy who puts dots over people’s faces.”
RIP Syd Mead (1933 – 2019)
Syd Mead was an American concept artist best known for his work on Blade Runner (1982), Tron (1982) and Aliens (1986).
His death comes only three months after the death of Luigi Colani (1928 – 2019) who was in a different but comparable branch of concept art.
Both Colani and Mead were obsessed with futuristic aerodynamics.
RIP RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ (late 1960 – 2010)
RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ was an American artist.
Somehow I missed this death. The passing of Pedro Bell brought it to my attention.
I want to show you three things:
RIP Pedro “P-Funk” Bell (1950 – 2019)
Pedro Bell was an American artist and illustrator best-known for his work for Parliament-Funkadelic.
When I discovered Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1990s, part of the attraction was the visual style and the grand narrative holding the whole project together. This style was just as much due to George Clinton as to Pedro Bell.
Bell’s unique album and liner notes contributed substantially to the P-Funk mythology and begot the Afrofuturist aesthetic evident also in Jean-Michel Basquiat (see for example the sleeve design for “Beat Bop“).
His precursors in Afrofuturism are Lee “send him to outa space” Perry and Sun “space is the place” Ra.
“Bell is a shackle (all shackles are just as essential) in the chain of Afrofuturism, Afro-Surrealism and black science fiction.” –Sholem Stein
A seminal text in his poetic oeuvre is from the sleeve notes of Standing on the Verge of Getting It On (1974):
“AS IT IS WRTTEN HENCEFORTH… On the Eighth Day, the Cosmic Strumpet of Mother Nature was spawned to envelope this Third Planet in FUNKADELICAL VIBRATIONS. And she birthed Apostles Ra, Hendrix, Stone, and CLINTON to preserve all funkiness of man unto eternity… But! Fraudulent forces of obnoxious JIVATION grew…only seedling GEORGE remained! As it came to be, he did indeed begat FUNKADELIC to restore Order Within the Universe. And nourished from the pamgrierian mammaristic melonpaps of Mother Nature, the followers of FUNKADELIA multiplied incessantly!”
Pedro will be missed.
RIP Carolee Schneemann (1939 – 2019)
Carolee Schneemann was an American artist who flourished in the 1960s and 1970s with her “body art”
Her best-known piece is Interior Scroll (1975), a performance in which she produced a scroll from her vagina while standing.
Her films include Fuses (1967) in which Schneemann and her then-boyfriend James Tenney are having sex, a reaction to Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving (1959) which shows Brakhage’s wife giving birth.
Above are fragments of Fuses set to an educative narration made as a school or university assignment.
RIP Chris Burden (1946-2015)
Chris Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE5u3ThYyl4
Video: Shoot (1971), in which Burden was shot by a rifle in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters, an early example of body art.
His later work is less harsh.