{"id":1508,"date":"2019-07-01T18:14:53","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T18:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/?p=1508"},"modified":"2019-07-01T18:14:56","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T18:14:56","slug":"leaving-an-indelible-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/?p=1508","title":{"rendered":"Leaving an Indelible Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Leaving an Indelible Mark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Chris Astrala<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LGBT artists have continually\nchallenged mainstream understandings of gender and sexuality. The impact of\nthis on our society is immeasurable. For example, artists of the 1980s who\nworked tirelessly to bring attention to HIV\/AIDS in America, artists today\nmaintain their roles as leading figures striving for change and cultural\nawareness. On that note, here are a few LGBT artists who have influenced the\nprogress of art and society. Here is just a glimpse of some of the many\ncreative individuals who as members of the LGBT community have put their unique\nstamp on art history. These amazing LGBT artists have assuredly changed the art\nworld and beyond with their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mickalene Thomas <\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York based artist Mickalene\nThomas is best known for her elaborate paintings composed of rhinestones,\nacrylic and enamel. Thomas introduces a complex vision of what it means to be a\nwoman and expands common definitions of beauty. Her work stems from her long\nstudy of art history and the classical genres of portraiture, landscape, and\nstill life. Inspired by various sources that range from the 19th century Hudson\nRiver School to \u00c9douard Manet, Henri Matisse and Romare Bearden, she continues\nto explore notions of beauty from a contemporary perspective infused with the\nmore recent influences of popular culture and pop art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Felix Gonzalez-Torres  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Felix Gonzalez-Torreswas an\nAmerican, Cuban-born, gay visual artist. Gonz\u00e1lez-Torres was known for his\nquiet, minimal installations and sculptures. Using materials such as strings of\nlightbulbs, clocks, stacks of paper, or packaged hard candies, his work is\nsometimes considered a reflection of his experience with AIDS. In 1987 he\njoined Group Material, a New York-based group of artists whose intention was to\nwork collaboratively, adhering to principles of cultural activism and community\neducation. Along with the other members of the group \u2014 Doug Ashford, Julie\nAult, Karen Ramspacher, and Tim Rollins \u2014 Gonz\u00e1lez-Torres was invited by the\nMATRIX Gallery at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 1989 to\ndeal with the subject of AIDS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Hockney <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Bradford, England, in\n1937, David Hockney attended art school in London before moving to Los Angeles\nin the 1960s. There, he painted his famous swimming pool paintings. In the\n1970s, Hockney began working in photography, creating photo collages he called\njoiners. Hockney\u2019s early paintings incorporated his literary leanings, and he\nused fragments of poems and quotations from Walt Whitman in his work. This practices,\nand paintings such as We Two Boys Clinging Together, which he created in 1961,\nwere the first nods to his homosexuality in his art. He continues to create and\nexhibit art, and in 2011 he was voted the most influential British artist of\nthe 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotimi Fani-Kayode <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A seminal figure in 1980s black\nBritish and African contemporary art, Fani-Kayode\u2019s timeless photographs\nconstitute a profoundly personal and political exploration of complex notions\nof desire, diaspora, and spirituality. Ancestral rituals and a provocative,\nmulti-layered symbolism fuse with archetypal motifs from European and African\ncultures and subcultures \u2013 inspired by what Yoruba priests call \u2018the technique\nof ecstasy\u2019.  A son of a prominent\nYoruba family who left Africa as political refugees in 1966, Fani-Kayode\nreceived a BA at Georgetown University in Washington, DC in 1980, and an MFA at\nPratt Institute in New York in 1983, before returning to the United Kingdom\nwhere he lived and worked until his death in 1989. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Smith <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Smith is known for\nreferencing art history in both his painting style and compositions. His new\npaintings\u2019 color and surfaces are liberated of historic constraints. By taking\nsuch liberties with the images\u2019 presentation, the artist transforms still life\npaintings into uniquely contemporary symbolic portraits. Derived from opulent\nobjects; Gothic and Baroque sculpture originally created to spiritually\ninspire; the paintings strip the all-male characters of context, suspending\nthem in an existential vacuum. His figurative oil paintings have earned him\nsolo shows at some of LA and Chicago\u2019s finer galleries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeanne Mammen  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeanne Mammen is one of the most\nimpressive, unusual and versatile German female artists of the twentieth\ncentury. She is frequently mentioned in connection with K\u00e4the Kollwitz and\nHanna H\u00f6ch, two artists who also showed a strong engagement in social\nemancipation, and whose most successful years also date to the Weimar era. When\ncomparing Jeanne Mammen to other socially critical male artists of the time,\nlike Otto Dix and George Grosz, a certain resemblance in the selected motifs\ncan be noticed, but there is quite a difference in their vision and style of\nportrayal. In contrast to Dix and Grosz, Jeanne Mammen’s pictorial statement\nregarding injustice and the ensuing deplorable social conditions is neither\nmarked by harsh denouncement, nor does it convey pity, and her portrayal of the\nBourgeois is without biting malice and condescension. She is the only artist of\nher time, who, by using her intuitive power and her penetrating eyes, succeeded\nin delivering precise and cunning portrayals capturing the characteristic physiognomic\nfeatures, typical of people of all walks of life in the 1930s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keith Haring <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout his career, Haring\ndevoted much of his time to public works, which often carried social messages.\nHe produced more than 50 public artworks between 1982 and 1989, in dozens of\ncities around the world, many of which were created for charities, hospitals,\nchildren\u2019s day care centers and orphanages. The now famous Crack is Wack mural\nof 1986 has become a landmark along New York\u2019s FDR Drive. Other projects include;\na mural created for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, on\nwhich Haring worked with 900 children; a mural on the exterior of Necker\nChildren\u2019s Hospital in Paris, France in 1987; and a mural painted on the\nwestern side of the Berlin Wall three years before its\nfall. Haring also held drawing workshops for children in schools and museums in\nNew York, Amsterdam, London, Tokyo and Bordeaux, and produced imagery for many\nliteracy programs and other public service campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in\n1988. In 1989, he established the Keith Haring Foundation, its mandate being to\nprovide funding and imagery to AIDS organizations and children\u2019s programs, and\nto expand the audience for Haring\u2019s work through exhibitions, publications and\nthe licensing of his images. Haring enlisted his imagery during the last years\nof his life to speak about his own illness and generate activism and awareness\nabout AIDS. Keith Haring died of AIDS related complications at the age of 31 in\nFebruary 1990.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Mapplethorpe <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late 70s, Mapplethorpe\ngrew increasingly interested in documenting the New York S & M scene. The\nresulting photographs are shocking for their content and remarkable for their\ntechnical and formal mastery. Mapplethorpe told ARTnews in late 1988, “I\ndon’t like that particular word ‘shocking.’ I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m\nlooking for things I’ve never seen before \u2026 I was in a position to take those\npictures. I felt an obligation to do them.” Meanwhile his career continued\nto flourish. In 1977, he participated in Documenta 6 in Kassel, West Germany\nand in 1978, the Robert Miller Gallery in New York City became his exclusive\ndealer. Throughout the 80s, Mapplethorpe produced a bevy of images that\nsimultaneously challenge and adhere to classical aesthetic standards: stylized\ncompositions of male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and studio\nportraits of artists and celebrities, to name a few of his preferred genres. He\nintroduced and refined different techniques and formats, including color\n20″ x 24″ Polaroids, photogravures, platinum prints on paper and\nlinen, Cibachrome and dye transfer color prints. His vast, provocative, and\npowerful body of work has established him as one of the most important artists of\nthe twentieth century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mel Odom <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding order from chaos, beauty\nwithin pain, and hope from despair, the artist Mel Odom’s career has spanned\nseveral of our generation’s most tumultuous cultural decades. His innate\nability to process, through his work, the events surrounding him and his life\nare viscerally transformed into a dream-like state of bliss in his art and in\nhis creation of memorable objects of desire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaving an Indelible Mark By Chris Astrala LGBT artists have continually challenged mainstream understandings of gender and sexuality. The impact of this on our society is immeasurable. For example, artists of the 1980s who worked tirelessly to bring attention to HIV\/AIDS in America, artists today maintain their roles as leading figures striving for change and cultural awareness. On that note, here are a few LGBT artists who have influenced the progress of art and society. Here is just a glimpse of some of the many creative individuals who as members of the LGBT community have put their unique stamp on art history. These amazing LGBT artists have assuredly changed the art world and beyond with their work. Mickalene Thomas New York based artist Mickalene Thomas is best known for her elaborate paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic and enamel. Thomas introduces a complex vision of what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty. Her work stems from her long study of art history and the classical genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life. Inspired by various sources that range from the 19th century Hudson River School to \u00c9douard Manet, Henri Matisse and Romare Bearden, she continues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2087,2085,2084,2088,2089,2091,2083,2090,2086],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1510,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions\/1510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}