Weird Art And Shit You Inexplicably Like

[Serge]

Any more for any more?

Antonio Tabucchi! There's no way I'd ever have remembered that on my own.

[Jemble Fred]

Fuck, those Yerka pics are amazing. Those are precisely the kind of paintings I always hoped and wished that I could create, when doing Art at school, but always came up against the dramatic lack of talent. Thanks for the link!

[Cerys]

Yerka makes me want to go to sleep so I can dream his paintings and find out what's just out of frame.

[small_world]

Ah, I love this thread.
Since seeing the Beksinski stuff on the previous page I've started painting again, for the first time for a good few years. I actually took an A' level in art, which really sickened me... But this has re-lit something.

[Absorb the anus burn]

I've had this map as my laptop wallpaper for a few months... Everybody who sees it says I should change it, but it's the most strikingly odd image I've seen in a long time... You can read more about it on - http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/grandmap.html - There are 100+ amazing details to pick out, but note -

1. Russia as a bear eating Eastern Europe.
2. The bull horn hat covering northern Spain.
3. Belgium as a toad sitting on France's hogshead.
4. The 'surveillance' coming from Constantinople.
5. Serbia as a terrified skeleton.
6. Italy as a collection of snakes with a cowboy's holster.
7. The insects on the bear's hat.
8. The Austrian-Hungry empire as a sort of organic machine, reminding me of the work of HR Giger (Alien / Penis Landscape etc)

[Mister Six]

Looks like it's taken from this book.

[Famous Mortimer]

I went to Saltaire and the Hockney gallery a while back, and while it wasn't on display there at the time some things similar to it were. No idea why I like it, but it's a bit brilliant, Hockney's Pearblossom Highway:


Apparently he took each individual photo from a different perspective, or height, so there's all sorts going on here. I did buy a lovely print of this from Saltaire, although the problem is it's a weird shape and I can't find a frame for it that's less than too many ££.

[DocDaneeka]

I really like what I've seen of Abner Dean.

He's got a really great classical cartoonist style (he did illustrations for The New Yorker and Life) and he uses it to make these bleak and surreal pictures filled with sexless naked people. They are all done like one panel gag cartoons but instead of a funny punchline for the caption it's normally something ambiguous or slightly sinister.

Make sure you look at this link because a lot of my favourites are too wide for the thread:
http://whatthingsdo.com/single-panel/what-am-i-doing-here/

[Jemble Fred]

So he basically invented emo?

[DocDaneeka]

Not really no.

[Cohaagen]

The anthropomorphous map was a staple political trope around a hundred years ago:



Bigger versions: The Illustration of The Great European War No.16 - A humoros Atlas of the World

[Zero Gravitas]

Codex Seraphinianus

A very strange work seemingly a scientific and social treatise from another similar world.







(click to enlarge)

Copies sell for hundreds but there's a full reproduction available here:
http://www.archive.org/details/Codex-Seraphinianus

[Neville Chamberlain]

I've loved the urban photorealist paintings of Richard Estes for years now...

[Mister Six]

Those are paintings? Wow. Though a bit of me still goes, 'Well if you're not going to do anything with that, just use a camera.' I'd rather photorealist artists did something a little crazy with their skills, like Magritte's painting with the daytime sky and night-time scenery upthread.

[Ghost of Troubled Joe]

Gotta give some attention to Russian former child prodigy Vania Zouravliov. Love his work, it's like a crazy mixture of J-horror, early Walt Disney and Russian folk art. Check out his official portfolio here:

http://www.bigactive.com/illustration/vania-zouravliov/general-portfolio

A book of his art is being released soon as well:

http://shop.gestalten.com/vania-707.html

[HAYRDRYAH]

Those are paintings? Wow. Though a bit of me still goes, 'Well if you're not going to do anything with that, just use a camera.' I'd rather photorealist artists did something a little crazy with their skills, like Magritte's painting with the daytime sky and night-time scenery upthread

As I remember this book shows some of his canvases in progress, and you can see how he starts with a photograph, moves elements around, recalculates the reflections and refractions etc. He must have a machine mind for space.

Also the source photographs aren't anything special, it's the quality of paint that heightens the details and turns it into something more hyperreal. So in that sense he's much more subtle and unnerving than many surrealists. (And I often see the sky lit by low lying sun when the land is dark, and think hmm, Empire of Lights isn't such a stretch)

[Mister Six]

Ah, well if that much work is going into it then fair enough. I would like to see him use his powers for evil, though, by creating a superficially hyperreal image but putting in some tiny detail that's just wrong and unnerving. Maybe he does that already. I'll have to check out more of his stuff.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The quality of the reflections really make it. Weird stuff. Anyway...

The Sea Of Ice by Caspar David Friedrich:



I haven't seen much landscape art like that from the 18th century before. I'm guessing he inspired many 20th century fantasy fiction artists, as that's essentially what it looks like.

[Steven]

Nice, checked out a few of his other paintings. I wouldn't have dated some of them any time before the 1930s or so, they look very modern.

That Codex Seraphinianus thing above looks like a piss-take of the Voynich Manuscript, occult fans!

I was going to start a thread on Kit Williams and his seminal book Masquerade, because I use to spend ages staring through the book as a child but not being entirely aware of the clue system hidden inside. There's a lot of pagan ideas and imagery in his work too. Then there's the stuff that went on with the guy who supposedly solved the riddle.

Before I bother though, there was another book I had about goblins, trolls and leprechauns that had a very nice art style to it that I use to look through repeatedly about the same time. I can't for the life of me remember the title and have looked all over the net for it, it had little stories in it about the various creatures but also lots of large page covering pictures done in a very fantasy cum-realistic caricatured fashion with lots of detail, ligament swathed goblins sprawled around on dark rocky backgrounds etc. The only story bit I remember is someone catching a leprechaun and demanding the gold so the leprechaun ties a ribbon around a thistle or something to mark where to dig, when the guy comes back with a shovel all the thistles in the field are tied with ribbons by the diminutive pikeys. Anyone have any clues? I get the feeling the title was something like `Goblins, Elves, Gnomes & Other Blah Blah Blah...' like an encyclopaedia but there seems to be a ton of books with similar titles and all look quite crap.

[Melody Lee]

Thanks for posting about Codex Seraphinianus, Zero Gravitas, it's exactly the sort of thing I enjoy finding or being introduced to. Another strange world to get lost in.

I'm a big fan of Wayne D. Barlowe, mainly because his creature designs (specifically in his book 'Expedition') are so wonderfully believable. They look like the products of evolution and in my opinion are just about the best extraterrestrial creature designs out there.


Bladderhorn.


Prismalopes & Butchertree


Flipsticks & Gel Suckers.


Prairie Ram.


Daggerwrists.

[momatt]

Some great stuf here, thanks chaps!  Those aliens creatures scare the crap out of me.

Found this pic online but can't find any info on it.  I love it!  Any help?

[All Surrogate]

Some info here:

http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2010/01/08/great-cthulu-brings-us-his-constitution

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Not that you want my opinion but that's tasteless and bloody (arf!) artless and awful.

[quadraspazzed]

Not that you want my opinion but that's tasteless and bloody (arf!) artless and awful.

That may be so, but covert it to sepia and it looks a lot better. It was my desktop wallpaper for a few months earlier this year. I think its great.

[ziggy starbucks]

I love it. I have no idea whether its artful or artless but I appreciate it in terms of it being, in essence, a brilliantly crafted mong.

One of the greatest mongs of all time.

[momatt]

Great thanks for the clues.  So it's unintensionally related to this week's South Park episode then.  I like it even more!
Yeah it's a bit trashy and stupid, but it's so mental I love it.  A perfect thing to get printed on a massive canvas in your hallway to perturb potential thieves.  Or any visitors, ever.
Loved those dazzle camo paintings for years.  Might get my car done like that.

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a mong?

[Blumf]

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a mong?

Spoiler alert

Board slang for photoshopped images

[close]

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

http://www.opacity.us/

Think of this as the real abandonia