Maxfield Parrish

Not too many artists get to have a color named after them, but Maxfield Parrish is one. The distinctive blue color that he gets in his paintings is called "Parrish blue."
Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lived from 1870 to 1966. Like Arthur Rackham, he had a unique style and used it to illustrate all kinds of fantastical stories. Nobody really comes close to the look that his art has. One of his most famous paintings is called Daybreak. His panting "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" can be seen on the wall of a bar in San Francisco (you can get a look at it here), which is named Maxfield's. I've been there - it's really neat. I think you have to be 21 to get in though. But no rush!

Arthur Rackham

When I was a kid, we had a copy of Alice in Wonderland that was illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Arthur Rackham was English, and he lived from 1867 to 1939. He illustrated tons of stories, including Fables and Peter Pan. He had this cool style that I always found really beautiful and really creepy at the same time. He could make the most realistic monsters you can imagine. You can learn more about him from Wikepedia here, and see a bunch of his artwork on Google here. Take a look and see what you think. Creepy? Cool? Both?

Beethoven

Okay, what does this guy have to do with art?

Well as it turns out, a lot.

Ludwig van Beethoven is considered by many to be the greatest music composer we've ever had. Even if you don't think you've heard his music, you probably have. And to top it off, for most of the later part of his life, he was deaf. Stone. Deaf. And he wrote his 9th Symphony, while stone deaf. When they premiered it, someone had to turn him around on the conductor's podium to see that the crowd was going wild. That's how deaf he was.

Anyway, what does this have to do with art? Well, the arts are connected to each other and to the world. Paintings and symphonies. Dance and writing. Beethoven often said that he got his inspiration from nature. He would take long walks outdoors.

So, here's a cool site by the SF Symphony that has a "radio," that lets you play bits from all kinds of pieces of music, including Beethoven's. Poke around. And while you're listening, close your eyes and imagine what the music looks like. Does it look like warriors riding huge horses? Or hippos doing the ballet? Or just colors and shapes? Then draw what you see.

Frida Kahlo

There's a Frida Kahlo exhibit in San Francisco right now at the SF Museum of Modern Art. Kahlo was a Mexican painter, who had quite a colorful life to go with her colorful paintings.

If you aren't sure who she is, the easiest way to tell you is, "She's the painter with the big ol' unibrow on her forehead in all her self-portraits." Ring a bell?

Kahlo was married to another famous artist, Diego Rivera.

Frida Kahlo had a lot of physical problems. She was in a bus accident when she was young, in which much of her body was damaged. She ended up having something like 35 operations. She also had polio as a child. So she was in pain a lot, but lived a vibrant and interesting life.

Take a look at her paintings and see what you think. I don't know what to tell you about the unibrow - she didn't really look like that in real life, as you can tell in photographs. And she gave herself a moustache too! But her art sure does stick in your mind, and it was clearly done by a vivacious person with her very own way of seeing the world.

Graphic Novels: The Arrival by Shaun Tan

I am thrilled to see more and more graphic novels taking new directions visually. I have to admit I've never been that into the classic "comic book" style, probably because my own drawing style is much more textured than those are and so I don't relate that well. But there are lots of neat graphic novels out there. This one, "The Arrival," has no words at all. It's a great surrealistic story of the immigrant experience. Shaun Tan creates a world that is impossible to interpret - you can't read the signs, everything looks weird and unfamiliar - and in doing so really drives home what it's like to be an immigrant in a new land. This is a popular theme in this medium - "American Born Chinese" covers some of the same ground. I'll elaborate on that one soon.

Keith Haring Coloring Book

Here's something fun to do online. It's a coloring book based on the work of Keith Haring. One note - you do have to double-click to select/deselect things. But once you get the hang of it, it's big fun.

Keith Haring got famous doing graffiti in the subways of New York. May 4th of this year would have been his 50th birthday, had he not died at age 31 from AIDS. Here's a bio.

And, there's more! The Haring Kids site is good for the younger set, which is good, since some of his subject matter can be kind of adult in nature. But this site is cool. Enjoy!

Flickr is Your Friend!

Continuing on the idea of Discovering Answers, I know I just said that things with screens are passive. Which they are.

That said, the Internet is a wonderful source of inspiration. You can find out a lot about what kinds of art you really like, then you can take an artist and look him or her up on Wikipedia or Google and learn even more.

(Note to Parents: Some art sites have, er, "interesting" content on them. Depends on your own sensibilities. But I'd recommend keeping an eye on what kids are searching or what links they are following. Or, search with them. The searches I recommend below came up with content that looked okay.)

And, a wonderful place to see tons of inspiring stuff is Flickr. There is much more on Flickr than just photos. Many, many artists put their stuff on there. (I do, too!)

Try typing these things into the search box at the top of the home page (the one that says "Search Everyone's Photos"):

"drawing"

"oil painting"

"etch a sketch"

"sharpie"

"illustration"

I also recommend this group pool on Flickr - called Moleskinerie. Moleskines are little notebooks that many creative people carry around with them everywhere. There is a lot of really cool stuff drawn in these books. I have piles of these things. Mine are nowhere near as attractive as some of the things you will see here.

So much great stuff to look at!

Marc Chagall

When my daughter was about 1 1/2 years old, we took her to a Marc Chagall exhibit in San Francisco. She just ate it up. Her dad carried her from painting to painting, and she kept saying, "nother one." "nother one." We still read the catalog from that exhibit as if it were a story book.

I think Chagall's art is especially well-suited to young viewers, because it has such a storytelling quality to it. The figures are recognizable and magical at the same time. In fact, Chagall created etchings of stories like Aesop's fables. While some of his subject matter can be pretty dark, everything he made has this magical realism to it.

Kids are kind of natural magical realists, since they travel back and forth so much between their imaginations and their surroundings.

So, if you get a chance, show a child some Chagall. You can read about him on Wikipedia, or you can see a lot of his paintings here too. And this is also a nice gallery of his work as well.