Artists and their Imagery

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, who was born in January 19^th, 1954. She is best known for her conceptual portraits and her representation of women in society and the media through different series of work. Her series of photographs include some of the most expensive photographs ever sold.  She lives and works in New York till today.

She received her first camera at the age of 12 which she loved.  Shortly after that her Uncle sent her and her brother a darkroom kit which was used by her great grandmother. Her and her brother really enjoyed using it. She was the yearbook editor in her high school. When her school’s basketball team won the State Championships, she became the sports photographer.  Cindy Sherman photographed her first wedding in 1976 and has done professional photography since 1980.  After freelancing for several years she opened up a shop called ‘Photos by Cindy’ in Union County, Oregon in 1987.  She sold her studio in 2000 and moved to Boise, Idaho due to her husband job.

Cindy Sherman’s photos are mainly of woman and the way they are represented in society and the media.

Andy Warhol was born on August 6^th 1928 and died on the 22^nd February 1987 at 58years. He was a leading figure in pop art, which was a visual art movement. He was a successful commercial illustrator. His photographs explore the relationships between artistic expressions, celebrity culture and advertisement. He worked in a range of media including painting, printmaking, sculpture, film and music. He funded a magazine and was the author of a number of books including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He is notable as a gay man who lived openly before the gay liberation movement.

Andy Warhol’s studio ‘The Factory’ was a famous gathering place that brought together people from different, stereotypical cultures, such as drag queens, playwright, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrity and wealthy patrons. There have been a lot of retrospective exhibitions, books and feature/documentary films. He created the saying ‘15minuttes of fame’. There is a museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which celebrates Andy Warhol’s life and work. Warhol’s work contains some of the most expensive paintings ever sold, with one selling for $100million.  $100million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre- August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem De Kooning have achieved.

Andy Warhol photographs a lot of portrait images and does a lot of pop art. These are the main two occurrences within his galleries. I prefer these images to Cindy Sherman’s ones because they make more sense to me and I feel that these are the type of photographs I would produce if I became a photographer.

Arnulf Rainer was born on December 8^th 1929 in Austria. He is a painter, printmaker and photographer and is known for his informal abstract art. He became painting as a self taught artist in the mid 1940’s. In his early years he was influenced by surrealism. From 1048 to 1951 he producer surrealistic drawings representing underwater scenes and mystical forms, rendering these fantastic images in pencil as a densely worked surface.  Around this time he producer his first portraits such as Rainer Dying. In 1050’s he produced the first of his prints; over the next 20 years he explored a variety of media including etching, dry print, lithography and screen-printing. He had done some paintings under drug influence. In 1978, he received the Great Austrian National Prize as well as an Austrian representative at the Venice Biennale.  He was also a representative in the year 1980. From 1981 to 1995, Rainer held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His works are shown in the Museum of Modern Art and in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Arnulf Rainer’s photographs seem very abstract and distorted. The common form in his photographs are portraits with dark blurs and drawings over the faces. These pictures seem very dark and different and I don’t get any sort of messages or ideas from these photographs that would be seen and identified through the Arnulf Rainer’s eyes.

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close was born on July 4^th in 1940, Monroe, Washington.  He is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive- scale portraits.  Although he had a spinal artery collapse in 1988 which left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors. 

Charles Close has a lot of portrait photographs. They look realistic and simple. He has photographer different people’s emotions in colour and in black & white and this seems more understandable and easy to read. His paintings look like photographs. They are very specific and he pays a lot of attention to detail. There is one painting called ‘Emma’ where he paints a child which looks like a photograph, with an effect put over the picture. At first I thought it was a photograph but when I read about it I discovered it was a painting.