Margaret Keane

American artist. She is a painter, who mainly draws women and children in oil or mixed media. Her works are recognizable from the doe-eyed children that are depicted in the drawings. Wikipedia

Margaret D. H. Keane was born 1927 in Tennessee, and attributes her deep respect for the Bible and inspirations of her artwork to the relationship with her grandmother. She later became one of Jehovah's Witnesses, which she said changed her life for the better.

In the 1960s, Margaret Keane's artwork was sold under the name of her husband, Walter Keane. Walter Keane claimed credit for her work. Conflict over that issue was cited as one of the reasons they divorced. Walter and Margaret's divorce proceedings went all the way to federal court. At the hearing, Margaret challenged Walter to a 'paint-off' and created a painting in front of the judge to prove that she was the artist^. Walter declined to paint before the court, citing a sore shoulder. In 1986, the courts sided with her, enabling her to paint under her own name.

Her works while living in her husband's shadow tended to depict sad children in a dark setting, but after divorcing, moving to Hawaii, and becoming one of Jehovah's Witnesses, her paintings took on a happier, brighter style. Her website now advertises her work as having "tears of joy" or "tears of happiness".

Keane is a fixture in popular culture. Some of her well-known fans over the years have included actresses Joan Crawford and Natalie Wood, whose portraits she painted; filmmaker Tim Burton, who commissioned Keane to paint Lisa Marie; and animator Craig McCracken, whose characters the Powerpuff Girls are based on Keane's 'waifs'; additionally the Girls' schoolteacher is named "Ms. Keane".

 

Currently Margaret makes her home in Napa County, California. She will be portrayed by Amy Adams in the upcoming Tim Burton film Big Eyes.

Wikipedia

Originally recognized by their wistful and sad-eyed children, Margaret Keane's works now feature happy children, animals, or both, all with her signature large-eyes, in delightful places and situations. "The eyes I draw on my children are an expression of my own deepest feelings. Eyes are windows of the soul," explains Margaret.

margaretkeane.com

Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists, who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. Wikipedia

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques Louis David (August 30, 1748 - December 29, 1825) was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, chiming with the moral climate of the final years of the ancient regime.

The Death of Marat

David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre, and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release, that of Napoleon I. It was at this time that he developed his 'Empire style', notable for its use of warm Venetian colors. David had a huge number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.

From http://www.jacqueslouisdavid.org/

Portrait of a Young Woman in White

The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis

The art of Jacques-Louis David embodies the style known as Neoclassicism, which flourished in France during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. David championed a style of rigorous contours, sculpted forms, and polished surfaces; history paintings, such as his Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (Musée du Louvre, Paris) of 1789, were intended as moral exemplars.

Madame Raymond-de-Verninac

He painted in the service of royalty, radical revolutionaries, and an emperor; although his political allegiances shifted, he remained faithful to the tenets of Neoclassicism, which he transmitted to a generation of students, including Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, François Gérard, Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

 From the metmuseum.org

Richard Diebenkorn

During his years in Berkeley, Diebenkorn was deeply engaged with the unique setting of the Bay Area, saturating his works with color, light, and atmosphere. More than 130 paintings and drawings, beginning with the artist's earlier abstract works and moving through his subsequent figurative phase, display his profound influence on postwar American art.

— de Young museum website

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A companion retrospective exhibition of photographs by Rose Mandel, a colleague and contemporary of Diebenkorn's, further illuminates this dynamic period in Bay Area art and provides an intimate view of the painter’s studio.

http://diebenkorn.famsf.org/

 

 

Richard Diebenkorn 

Richard Diebenkorn was a well-known 20th century American painter. His early work is associated with Abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Wikipedi

Man Ray

Man Ray was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Wikipedia

 

Man Ray was on the most versatile and inventive artists of this century. Born in Philadelphia in 1890, he knew the worlds of Greenwich Village in the avant garde era following the 1913 Armory show; Paris in the 1920's and 1930's, where he played a key role in the Dada and Surrealist movements; The Hollywood of the 1940s, where he joined others chased by war from their homes in Europe; and finally, Paris again until his death in 1976. "

— From his web site

 

 

 

Born in Philadelphia, Emmanuel Radnitsky grew up in New Jersey and became a commercial artist in New York in the 1910s. He began to sign his name Man Ray in 1912, although his family did not change its surname to Ray until the 1920s. He initially taught himself photography in order to reproduce his own works of art, which included paintings and mixed media. In 1921 he moved to Paris and set up a photography studio to support himself. There he began to make photograms, which he called "Rayographs." In the 1920s, he also began making moving pictures. Man Ray's four completed films--Return to Reason, Emak Bakia, Starfish, and Mystery of the Chateau--were all highly creative, non-narrative explorations of the possibilities of the medium.

Shortly before World War II, Man Ray returned to the United States and settled in Los Angeles from 1940 until 1951. He was disappointed that he was recognized only for his photography in America and not for the filmmaking, painting, sculpture, and other media in which he worked. In 1951 Man Ray returned to Paris. He concentrated primarily on painting until his death in 1976.

— From the Getty Museum web site

 

 

 

 

For more on Man Ray, check out his ARTSY page.