Favourite Contemporary Artists

[sculpt-uk]

Nobody has a favorite in the second part of the XXst century? Is the contemporary artistic production so poor?

Hello All,

I was shifting through old posts and came along a post about choosing your favourite sculpture, it was also surprising for myself aswell for anne (bxl) that nobody had a favourite in the second part of the XXst century.

So I would like to open your eyes to a few of my favourite european sculptors that are still much in practise today, here we go:

Pedro Cabrita Reis:
http://www.pedrocabritareis.com/home.html

Jannis Kounellis:
http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartthumbnails.asp?aid=9785
http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/search/results.html?_creators=ULAN47842&display=Kounellis%2c+Jannis

Bernar Venet:
http://www.bernarvenet.com/

Anish Kapoor:
http://www.lisson.co.uk/theArtists/Kapoor/anishkapoor.html

Tony Cragg:
http://www.sculpture.org.uk/artists/TonyCragg

Richard deacon:
http://www.sculpture.org.uk/artists/RichardDeacon

And to answer the question which is currently my favourite sculpture it may have to be this one: By Pedro Cabrita Reis, called "STILLNESS"; Dimensions: 370 x 1105 x 297 cm, Technique: Steel gerders, acrylic on flurescent tubes, electric cable.

http://www.pedrocabritareis.com/images/stillness_01img.jpg

Can anyone else add any more?
I will keep adding as I remeber them...

Thanks.

[oddist]

Bernar Venet has shown up in my searches and landed in my favorite site file.

Does Chillida count as a contemporary? His work is outstanding.

I am also impressed with Simon Benetton's work...http://www.calion.com/artisti/simon/simonen.htm There are pictures of some of his work in a book "Decorative and Sculptural Ironwork" by Dona Z. Meilach that are not on his site. I think they are worth looking up.

There is no doubt that these artists appeal to me because their work is in steel.

[sculpt-uk]

Oh yes, Chillida is a fantastic sculptor, contemporary of not, it does not matter with this man. I have been to his sculpture park in San sebastian, Bilboa in Spain. Absolutly fab! I was lucky enough to be able to see him just before he died, he happend to be walking about his park, then he went into his house.

I also had the great oppurtunity two years later to be able to attend the opening of his retro spective at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the UK, It was amazing to see so many important works sited in such a beautiful setting.

Good article here:
http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag97/childa/sm-chlda.htm


http://www.eduardo-chillida.com/
http://www.ysp.org.uk/


I am also particularly interested in steel sculptors, I am big fan of your native american giant, Richard Serra. I have not heard of Simon Benetton nor seen any of his work befor, I shall look him up.

[jsimms]

I'm a BIG fan of Max Bill, born 1908, who did incredibly diverse work for his time including the first concrete sculptures.
John

[kjm]

I'm a BIG fan of Max Bill, born 1908, who did incredibly diverse work for his time including the first concrete sculptures.
John
hey john what about david smith

[ironman]

Hi, just some quick thoughts on those sculptors mentioned above.
Although I really like "Stillness" by Pedro Cabrita Reis, I found the work shown on his web site to be very uneven and (Brick walls?) quite boring. It's as if he's still searching for his voice or should I say the very next hot idea.
Tony Cragg, Bernar Venet and Richard Deacon are three of the very best sculptors working today.
All have form and feeling in a very contemporary way.
I've never seen Anish Kapoor's work in person, but I know he's well regarded, just by the amount of photos,etc., in the art mags. To tell you the truth though, I wasn't very impressed by the work on his web site and I don't think he can hold a candle to Cragg, Venet or Deacon.
Yeah, Chillida and David Smith were both great sculptors and I cut my sculptural teeth on Smith's work. Smith has been dead for about 40 years and although I still look for inspiration from his writings and his work, I don't think he's contemporary to this generation. Chillida, although now deceased, is more of a contemporary.
How about Richard Serra? He's done some great work.
Mark DeSuvero anyone, I don't like his work, it impresses just by it's size, not by it's content.
Anthony Caro, All his steel sculptures are "found object" pieces, which just blows me away, considering some of the great stuff he's done.
Have a nice day,
Jeff

[anne (bxl)]

I didn't know about Pedro Cabrita Reis
Venet, Cragg, Deacon, Chillida, Kapoor but also Giuseppe Penone : I have seen retrospective or solo exhibition for all of them somehow somewhere... Among them Kapoor is my favorite. Jeff, I agree the deepness of his work can't be translated into photography as he works on perpective effect created by material exploration. I am more sensible to organic shape than "construction" like Serra, Di Suvero or Caro.

Hey guys, what about women like Louise Bourgeois or Rachel Whiteread?

[sculpt-uk]

Women Sculptors:

PHYLLIDA BARLOW:
http://ah.utdallas.edu/season0304/phyllidabarlow.htm

JESSICA STOCKHOLDER:
http://www.gblgallery.com/artists_individual_pages/stockholder.html

EVA HESSE
http://www.eva-hesse.de/

Now what do you think of below:

http://www.art-online.org/faprojects/exhibitions/03rock/2.jpg

Neal Rock
Work from the Polari Series
AKA 6, 2003
Pigmented Silicone and Artificial Flowers on MDF and Expanded Foam support.
35 x 26 x 8.5 inches

Now this what I call contemporary!
For more: http://www.art-online.org/faprojects/exhibitions/03rock/images.html

[oddist]

Don't forget Magdalena! http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Abakanowicz/aba1.htm

[ironman]

Hi, I don't know how, but I forgot to mention Martin Puryear. He is my favorite contemporary sculptor.
Have a nice day,
Jeff

[oddist]

Mary Frank's ceramic sculpture have recently moved into my scope of interest.

Starting here (http://www.artnet.com/artist/6462/FineArtThumbnails.asp?G=0&aid=6462&which=&currpage=4&ViewSize=large) pages 4, 5 and 6.

[chapman A]

If you are interested in metal sculpture, here are a few artists to check out.
albert paley, russell jaqua, joe nyiri, jefferson mack, tom joyce, john medwedeff, and christopher T. ray.

[shona]

heres a very much alive master contemporary sculptor who has changed the way we veiw contemporary art today
http://www.cama.org.za/CAMA/countries/zimbabwe/makers/gutsa/Html/
http://artzimbabwe.com/tour/tgutsa/tour.htm

[oddist]

I just took a look at some of the other artists at art zimbabwe (http://artzimbabwe.com/tour/frame1.htm) posted just above and found Joseph Muzondo's work as just one example.

Think of "turn of the 20th century" art development and African masks collected by artists of the time and decide were the art truely came from.

Credit is due where credit is due.

Thanks for this link.

[iron ant]

There are so many great artist ,you almost have to break it down to the medium they work in.Albert pailey is "the man"when it comes to blacksmith/Artist.Check into his earlier work before he had the big bucks ,and it is hard not to be impressed.Self taught Blacksmith Jonny Boyd Smith,Savanah,GA,hands down is the best at "realistic" forging.His blue herring has every freeking feather and looks like it was cast.Glass art is everywhere,and so is Chihuly,but look into William Morris,Richard Jolly and John Kuhn.As far as realistic sculptors go the late great Fredric Hart takes all.The cathedral in Washington took 13 years to carve.Also ,Boaz Vadia,Who does stacked blue stone sculptures,aint so shabby.Isreali artist Yossi Barel is fantastic in stone.Italian trained imagine that.Metal sculptors Heath Stow and Hans Van de Bovenkamp are doing some amazing work today.Wood sculptor Fred Allen,who's Rube Goldberg mind set,is one of the best wood artist I have ever seen.A bout with cancer almost killed him,but I hope he continues to work in wood.I forgot to throw John Henery in metal sculptors.The scale and amount of work he does around the "world" put him in a class few will ever enjoy.Studio furniture in metal goes to paul Fruent hands down.He is as percise as he is anal,which meens he is good.The beauty of art it is in the eye of the beholder,so everybody can enjoy thing others might not.The best artist is the one true to themselfs and there craft,other than that as long as you can pay the bills we are all the best........

[shona]

as artist we all have a role in the world, some important and some not so important. through our art we try to bring peacefullness to the veiwer and some try to express our life condition or politics and as for being the best, you have to be consistant in your work regardless of your finacial situation for it's through your creations that the measurements are taken to rank you as an artist.
most of the zimbabwean sculptors don't even have a clue of how expenssive they're sculptures are in the west or how important they're art is in the world, and these guys just keep on carving simply for the love of it, under a tree using a screw driver for a chesile.
i have seen some work on this site that i thought was just mind blowing.

[shona]

heres some fresh news about an old teacher of mine , he is a master of mixed media and like iron man said , you gotta break them down :D
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/138/138895_for_a_blushing_bride_.html . hope it works!

[Shara]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Juan Munoz. Wonderful, amazing sculptor who ushered in the return to figuration.

As for the women, Kiki Smith can't be forgotten.

[philpraxis]

What about Thomas Schutte? To me, he's really one of the best with Anthony Gormley, Richard Deacon, Mr (first name?) Badbedat, David Nash, Robin Connelly, Eduardo Chillida and Anish Kapoor too!

http://www.dialnsa.edu/iat97/Sculpture/schutte.html

http://www.frithstreetgallery.com/schutte_bigspirits.html

[Lorax]

I am big fan of Jeff Koons sculptural work.

[GaryR52]

Oh-oh. Then you won't enjoy the thread in which a few of us bashed Jeff for his appropriation of a Hoover vacuum cleaner as "sculpture." ;)

Me, I'm a modernist, but I'm still more grounded in the traditions of sculpture (you know, actually carving, modeling or constructing forms), hence my favorites are Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Arp and other modernists of that tradition. I also love the work of more contemporary artists, such as Richard Erdman (a stone sculptor) and Don Frost, who works in fiberglass. Oh, and Robert Hague's metal sculpture, as well.

Gary

[JamesW]

Hi Folks
What a great resource this thread's turning out to be. Some of my favourite artists include Joseph Beuys, Ilya Kabakov, Ann Hamilton, Santiago Sierra, Ed & Nancy Kienholz.
James

[jOe~]

Thanks for bring this thread back up. I can't add to the list as all my favorites are mentioned. I'm enjoying revisiting the links. Great antidote to most of what is discussed in the community.

jOe~

[MountainSong]

Hey Folks, about 92% of the links above either don't work or led to an advertisment pages. Have the sites expired/moved or is my South Korea IP being diverted?

Merlion do you have a hard time getting out of China sometimes?

[obseq]

Hi, Mountainsong,

It looks like the pages that aren't working are just expired domains.
The "ad" sites are just domain brokers that currently own the respective names.

Since the thread dates back to 2004, I'm not suprised with the number of dead links.

[philpraxis]

Since this thread is a bit revived, here are two that I love and discovered recently:

- Steven Gregory
- Tom Claassen

[evaldart]

consider that being contempory and being simply "still alive" are not the same. There are artists who produced great work and impacted art history still working but may not be presently relevent. then there are those long dead
that guide the minds and hands of up and coming artists continually. And throughout our own careers we continue to be inspired by some of what we see whether we encounter it in a cutting edge gallery or in the dusty pages of an old art journal. I suppose its important to seek these visual experiences out and share them in conversation. Also, much like ones taste in music, it is always exciting to encounter something new but, of course you will always still like The Beatles. Steve Tobin has been doing some very interesting things over the past ten years but I learn from David Smith almost every day. Did anyone mention Richard Stanckiewitz (certainly mispelled)?