New Drawing

detail


detail

Self-Portrait in Photoshop

Aaronious the Twin and Jacques Callot

Jacques Callot, the french engraver, has been my most recent facination. I really enjoy his figurative work, they remind me of a game I used to play with my brother Aaron in long car rides.
The game: draw something that will make your opponent laugh. Aaron always won, so now I propose a match, Aaron vs. Callot.

Spring Break 2006

A 4 day trip playing in the Shenandoah's.

prisoner in his own house

Sam Maitin, Prisoner in His Own House, c. 1964


(A more recognizable Sam Maitin) Wildflower, c. 1993


I recently purchased this piece (the top one) by the Philadelphia artist Sam Maitin from an antique store in Glenside. Its from the same place that I bought the Gropper pieces. Its small about 15 X 18 in. and the medium according to the back is "construction". I like the smeared lines and ink markings, and how it comes across as some kind of 3-D map. It also reminds me a little of that addictive marble maze game. One thing, I'm not too keen on the title, I think its a little much.
To know more about Sam Maitin check. http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v51/n16/death-sm.html

Otto Dix

The German painter Otto Dix is one of my favorites. His paintings can be down right hilarious and then at the same time very haunting, and for me, they are immediately engaging/entertaining. His portraits are especially odd, possessing the vulgarity of realistic portraiture and the simplification of caricature.
I know very little of his life but what I have read reveals an artist who was affected greatly by war. Having been a soldier in the German Army he saw first hand the brutality and repulsiveness of war. His depiction of trenches and war scenes show a curiosity/disgust with death. He even states in an interview in 1963:

"I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all - or am I? - perhaps I was an inquisitive person. I had to see all that for myself. I'm such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that it's like that. I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths for life for myself; it's for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered." (taken from: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTdix.htm)

This fascination with that which you despise interests me. Because he experienced war he has an even greater hatred of it and can somehow communicate that hatred and propagate it through his paintings.