figurativeart
781715158063104000
“Good artists do not copy, great artists do not steal.”
781622863930261504
“The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love.”
Francis Bacon
Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X
1953
Oil on canvas
60 × 46 in
781443621495980032
“Art is the lie that tells the truth.”
Pablo Picasso
Nature morte à la fenêtre
1932
oil on canvas
51 x 63 7/8 in.
Price realised
USD 41,810,000
781016105862971392
Quick Tip 525 – Different Painting Styles
781005262284816384
“I just try to live my life and do my thing.”
Robert Mapplethorpe
Rose
1982
gelatin silver print, flush-mounted on board
151⁄4 x 151⁄8 in.
Price Realised
USD 30,240
780854378914627584
“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet? On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could he be indifferent to other people and withdraw into himself? In the serene atmosphere of studios and libraries, he does not forget that the world is out there. No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”
Pablo Picasso
Guernica
1937
oil on canvas
137.4 in × 305.5 in
780549743588868096
“What I never wanted in art – and why I probably didn’t belong in art – was that I never wanted viewers. I think the basic condition of art is the viewer: The viewer is here, the art is there. So the viewer is in a position of desire and frustration. There were those Do Not Touch signs in a museum that are saying that the art is more expensive than the people. But I wanted users and a habitat. I don’t know if I would have used those words then, but I wanted inhabitants, participants. I wanted an interaction.” — Vito Acconci
In January 1972, Acconci staged one of the decade’s most notorious performance art pieces at the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo. Gallery visitors entered to find the space empty except for a low wood ramp. Hidden below the ramp, out of sight, Acconci masturbated, basing his fantasies on the movements of the visitors above him. He narrated these fantasies aloud, his voice projected through speakers into the gallery: “you’re on my left … you’re moving away but I’m pushing my body against you, into the corner … you’re bending your head down, over me … I’m pressing my eyes into your hair.” Seedbed was a seminal work that transformed the physical space of the gallery through minimal intervention to create an intimate connection between artist and audience, even as they remained invisible to one another.
Vito Acconci
Seedbed
1972
Gelatin silver print
7 7/8 x 11 11/16 in.