Artist Research Project

My first artist choice would be Jasper Johns, I had never heard of this artist before and his work immediately intrigued me.  His work seems to be mostly abstract and pop-art type pieces, which is interesting to me.  One work of art that I was particularly drawn to of his was Flag, which is basically just an image of an American flag.  However, this image made me think more in depth about what the flag symbolizes and how art can be related to so many things.  Also, I really like how his work makes me really think about what is behind the initial meaning of the work, which I don’t always find myself doing with other artists.

The next artist I would choose is Andy Warhol.  I have prior knowledge of his work, unlike Jasper Johns, but I am still very drawn to his art.  To me, his images stand for so much other than just the literal content of the image and I feel like you could always be finding hidden meanings within the work.  This is very intriguing to me because sometimes I find myself exhausting all possible meanings of the art within a few minutes after looking at it.  Also, I really like Warhol because if you look at his work collectively, it can almost be seen as a timeline of American history.  His Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s soup pieces are critical to American culture and have definitely made people think of art in a different light than they previously had.

My final artist choice is Hans Hoffman for a few different reasons.  Like Jasper Johns, I had never known about this artist until now.  He is a German abstract painter and I have never seen art like his before.  The color and brush stroke choices he uses in his art is very appealing to me.  After having painted in our art class, I feel as if I can relate to his brush stroke choices and it has definitely broadened my horizons as to how I can paint on my own.  His drawings are also incredibly intricate and so different compared to his paintings.  I really like this contrast within his works and it shows how versatile artists really are.  I feel as if I could spend a lot of time researching his work and still not really be able to cover all of it.