Edward Hopper - Gas (1940)

Edward Hopper was raised in Nyack, New York, a small town nesteld on the banks of the Hudson river. His mother Elizabeth noticed the youngster’s flair for drawing and painting, and she encouraged him to develop his talent.  When Edward announced his intention to attend college, his parents, who had traditional middle-class values, suggested he studied commerical art rather than fine art, to ensure he would be able to provide a living for himself.

Following high school, he signed up at the School of Illustrating of New York City.  Although the college offered mainly correspondence courses, Edward Hopper attended in person, commuting to the school by train from his home town.  After a year he transferred to the New York school of Art,  where he studied with Robert Henri, one of the leading exponents of the Ash Can school of painters.  One of Hopper’s fellow students was the destined-for-fame George Bellows.  Hopper stayed at the school for over 6 years, supporting himself through teaching and occasional illustration work.

In 1906, at the age of 24, Hopper made a visit to Europe.  He spent most of the time in Paris, finding out first hand about the new style sweeping the continent – Impressionism.  Over the following 3 years Hopper made two more trips to Europe’s capital of art. The artist was later to state that ‘America seemed awfully crude and raw when I got back. It took me ten years to get over Europe’.

In 1911, Hopper moved into a modest apartment in the middle of Greenwich Village, taking on an illustrating job at a local printers.  In 1913, Hopper exhibited at the fabled Armory show, selling just 1 painting. It was not until 1923, a full 10 years later that he was to sell his second, a small watercolor entitled The Mansard Roof. The following year his work was featured by a New York gallery, and every painting sold.  Hopper had become popular with the art world at the age of 42.

1923 Hotel Management - Illus by Hopper

1923 was also the year Hopper met Jo Nivison, another artist. The two subsequently married.  Jo modeled for many of Hopper’s paintings, and has become a familiar face to lovers of Hopper’s art.

In 1929, several of Hopper’s paintings were accepted for a much-feted exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  The following year, one of his paintings (The House By The Railroad) was purchased by the MMA for its permanent collection.

After WWII, Hopper fell from the attention of the art public, as Abstract Expression became the vogue. Hopper died in 1967. His estate made a large bequest of paintings to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Best Artists’s (from 100BestEverything) rating (out of 5 stars) 3-creativity, 4-composition, 4-execution.

Andy Warhol Shoe Drawing (1955)

Andy Warhol was born and raised in Pittsburgh, by parents from  Eastern Europe. His original surname was Warhola, but Warhol dropped the final ‘a’ when a young adult (was this namechange a critical part of his success?).  Warhol’s childhood was not without tragedy.  He lost his father when just 13, then he contracted a rare form of scarlet fever, which left his skin badly pigmented (his schoolfriends nicknamed him Spot).  Throughout these turbulent years his relationship with his mother, Julia, remained strong and continued so throughout his life.  The young Warhol showed a precocious talent for drawing, and signed up to the Carnegie Institute of Technology to study commercial art. 

After college he moved to New York to start a career as a commercial artist.  Many consider that the truly genius of Andy Warhol was most apparent in these early years.  He produced an incredible variety of promotional art, using a unique ‘blotted-line’ style.  Especially noteworthy are the beautiful range of adverts he created for I Miller shoes, a series which had the triple effect of catching the public’s imagination, saving the ailing shoe concern and propelling Warhol to fame.

At the beginning of the sixties, after some early success in small gallery exhibitions, Warhol began to see himself as a pure artist, rather than a commercial draughtsman.  But he concerned himself with identical subject matter - commercial and strongly branded products, like Campbell’s soup cans, and Brillo pad boxes.   He also turned to Hollywood brands for inspiration, utilising famous faces such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.  So Warhol invented Pop Art, morphing popular culture to art. Andy Warhol artworks didn’t arrive into the mainstream of public consciousness, they started there.

In 1962 Warhol set up ‘The Factory’, a New York loft which served as a production base for his artistic output.  Warhol directed operations with a manic enthusiasm.  For a time he became obsessed with producing a huge number of ‘art movies’, many of which starred Edie Sedgwick (brilliantly played by Sienna Miller in the movie ‘Factory Girl’).   

In 1968 an assistant of Warhol, Valerie Solanis, attempted to shoot him.  As a reason she citied that ‘He had too much control over my life’.   Warhol survived, but had to wear a bandage around his midrift for the rest of his life.

The 1960s were the heyday of Warhol’s career, the time for which he’ll always be remembered.  The 70s saw him making portraits of celebrities, like Mick Jagger, using the same style, but not the same energy as with his earlier works. In 1975 he wrote and published his autobiographical book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol .  In the book Andy mentioned his conviction that he’d achieved to create Business Art, a phrase which sent a shudder through many art lovers.

Andy Warhol died in 1987, after complications arose after a supposedly straight-forward surgical operation.

Warhol’s works have continued to be phenomenally popular, with high price tags attached to his most famous works (like $72million paid in 2007 for Green Car Crash).  The Andy Warhol foundation has set up the Andy Warhol Art Identification Board to pronounce on the authenticity of any works purportedly by Warhol – surely a business proposition here that could be introduced for other artists, like an official Van Gogh Real Or Not Court.

Best Artists’s (from 100BestEverything) rating (out of 5 stars) 4-creativity,3-execution.

Gustav Klimt as raised in a family of modest means – his father, an immigrant from Bohemia, worked as an artisan engraver.  In his late teens, Klimt followed in his father’s footsteps by signing up on a course at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. 

Whilst still at the school, Gustav and his brother Ernst Klimt took on a number of commercial interior decoration projects, including the creation of some sizeable murals in public offices.

Sadly, in 1892, both Klimt’s brother, and his father died.  Klimt turned away from commercial  work and concentrated on painting on canvas.  His art was an amazing mix of the decorative flair he’d gained, combined with intense love for the female form.

Klimt’s personal life was  as sexually energised as his paintings – he had a permanent partner in Emile Floge, but dallied with many women, siring over a dozen children.

In 1897, Klimt, tired of the restrictive conventions of the art world, joined with a few fellow artists to form the Vienna Sezession movement.  The most famous exhibition mounted by the group was the 1902 homage to Ludwig van Beethoven – Klimt’s mural for the exhibition, the Beethoven Frieze formed a centerpiece.  The mural was not intended to last, but still exists (though in a poor condition).

The late 1890s saw Klimt producing his most famous works in his so-called ‘Gold Period’.  He utilized a series of mixed media techniques, incorporating gold-leaf and silver foil into his canvases, producing dazzylingly bright and decorative works.  Masterpieces include Judith I, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, and The Kiss.  

Late in his life, Klimt went back to painting in simple oil paints. He died in 1918 in Vienna, from a stroke.

The world had lost a great artist, or in one phrase – Gustav Klimt Life of the Supreme Decorator.

Johannes (or Jan) Vermeer was a citizen of the small Dutch town of Delft.

An obsession with detail characterises his paintings, which are superbly precise and skillfully colored.

But it’s often thought that Vermeer’s approach was too meticulous and time-consuming for a professional – he and his family lived a simple life, and when Vermeer died he left a wife and 11 kids in debt.

His small body of work was completely forgotten for over 2 centuries, until a Frenchmen Etienne Thoré wrote a widely published article about Vermeer and his paintings. The art world realised that a true master had been uncovered.

Today Vermeer’s work is hugely popular, and impossible to value. In 2004, the first Vermeer to come up at auction in over 80 years was sold for $30 million (despite the fact that this particular Vermeer has shaky provenance).

Van Gogh was the master of color. He pioneered new methods during his relatively short life as an artist – his color choice changed from sombre, dark tones, to the vivid palette much loved today.
Vincent was a chronic epileptic and was tormented by angst and mental illness, and found great difficulty in forming personal friendships. As a result of this, and the general rejection of his work by the art world, he took his own life at the age of 37.