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Eugène Delacroix 1798-1863
French painter
This leading painter of French Romanticism ardently admired his near contemporary Théodore Géricault, a fellow non-conformist struggling against the entrenched classicism of the Paris Salon.
The violence of Delacroix’s imagination, his brilliant colour and painterly exuberance can be seen in The Death of Sardanapalus (1829), in which the Assyrian king orders the death of his animals, slaves and concubines. The Salon establishment bitterly attacked it, but the poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) was thrilled by what he called this 'strange ideal that finds enjoyment in the terrible'.
It is possible that Delacroix’s massive output of exotic/erotic works found a very mild counterpart in his own life: 'My resolutions always evaporate when faced with action.' There is a poignant diary entry: 'This morning Hélène came to see me. How embarrassing! … I couldn’t do it.'
Find out more …
Eugene Delacroix
www.artchive.com/artchive/D/delacroix.html
Comprehensive archive site with images, concise biography and useful contextual links.
Delacroix, Eugene
www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/delacroix/
Hosted by the Web Museum, Paris.
Delacroix by Barthelmy Jobert (Princeton University Press, 1998) £49.
The definitive monograph.
Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840
German painter
A major artist of early 19th-century German Romanticism, Friedrich fused new perceptions of individual human nature with the direct experience of the wildness of nature. 'Close your physical eyes,' he wrote, 'in order to see your painting first with the spiritual eye. Next bring into the daylight what you have seen in your night.'
His Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (c.1818) stands on a crag, contemplating vague distant peaks and, below his feet, plunging cliffs veiled by mist. This spatial ambiguity induces an overwhelming sensation of immensity, prefigured in Edmund Burke’s 1757 essay on the sublime.
In other paintings, such as The Chasseur in the Forest (1813), the solitary traveller is led along a logging path that loses itself within a labyrinth of dark trees — an image that haunts the Grimm brother’s fairytales, first published in 1812, and was becoming an essential symbol of German nationhood.
Find out more …
Caspar David Friedrich
www.artmagick.com/artists/friedrich1.asp#bio
Site features a biography and an annotated index of paintings, including the infamous Cross in the Mountains.
Caspar David Friedrich by Werner Hoffman (Thames & Hudson, 2001) £39.95.
Appraisal of the artist, featuring his paintings, watercolours and drawings. Explores the critical judgements of his contemporaries.
Jackson Pollock 1912-56
American painter
In the 1950s, Pollock’s large-scale, ‘all over’ drip paintings were featured in Life magazine. In a trice, 'Jack the Dripper’ had become — notoriously — the main representative for American abstract expressionism <LINK TO D1>.
Born in Wyoming, Pollock moved to New York to study art, and it was here that he met Barnet Newman and Mark Rothko, his fellow artists in the 'New York School'.
Pollock's large mature paintings, such as Lavender Mist (1950), comprised trickles and skeins of dripped arcs of enamel industrial paint, which intertwined densely over the canvas. To Pollock, the canvas was 'an arena in which to act'. 'When I am in my painting,' he said, 'I’m not aware of what I’m doing.' The works are explosive and direct expressions of his inner feelings.
Pollock was a hard-drinking macho artist, who was also undergoing Jungian analysis. Once, after a drunken argument, he trod blood on to a canvas with feet cut by a broken glass. His life ended suddenly when his car careered of the road and crashed into a tree.
Find out more …
Jackson Pollock
www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/
The Web Museum's page includes a summary of Pollock's works and several images
Artcyclopedia: Jackson Pollock
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/pollock_jackson.html
Portal site with links to online exhibitions, images and articles about Jackson Pollock. Hosted by the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.
Jackson Pollock by B H Friedman (Da Capo Press, 1995) £13.50.
Biography, written by a friend of the artist.
Jackson Pollock by Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel (Tate Gallery Publishing, 1998) £50.
Catalogue of the Pollock retrospective at the New York Museum of Modern Art (1998) and London's Tate Gallery (1999).
Joseph Beuys 1921-86
German artist
In 1943, during World War II, Beuys — a Stuka dive-bomber pilot — was severely injured when he crashed in the Crimea. His life was saved by the locals who wrapped him in fat and felt. He later suffered a grave personal crisis, after which he started making monuments to the past and future, using materials that symbolised comfort, warmth and healing, such as copper, bronze, wood … and fat and felt.
A complex artist who defies classification — sculptor, painter, politician — Beuys believed that life itself should become the work of art and that 'thinking is sculpture'. He stated: 'Every human being is an artist, who from his state of freedom … learns to determine other positions in the total art work of the future social order.'
Everything that Beuys said or did became an art work. As a result, a number of times these have been mistaken by people as 'real' objects and have been washed and cleaned, removing their patina.
Find out more …
the-artists.org
www.the-artists.org
In the pages dedicated to the artist, there is an interview with Joseph Beuys, articles, images of his works and links to exhibitions.
The Information Office
www.walkerart.org/beuys/info_introframe.html
Comprehensive site dedicated to Joseph Beuys, his life and works.
The Essential Joseph Beuys by Alain Borer and Lothar Schirmer (Thames & Hudson, 1997) £48.
Provides a survey of the artist's work in the many mediums in which he created.
Joseph Beuys by Caroline Tisdall (Violette Editions, 1998) £29.95.
Collaboration between writer Caroline Tisdall and the artist. A photographic record that documents their wide-ranging travels, as well as Beuys' performances, installations and lectures.