Mark tansey prints
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Mark Tansey
Artist Bio
Mark Tansey’s approach to painting reflects a deep knowledge of art, as many of his motifs are either lifted from historical paintings or depict important artists and philosophers. Each of Tansey’s paintings is a carefully calculated allegory about the meaning of art and the mystery of the human impulse to make images. Rendered in a single hue, Tansey’s canvases achieve a precise photographic quality through a complex process involving the washing, brushing, or scraping of monochromatic paint into gesso. Tansey’s subjects are fantastic, sometimes surreal scenes in which intellectual theories about art are dramatized, often complete with portraits of characters drawn from the discipline’s history.
Forward Retreat, 1986, describes the slipperiness of perception and questions the validity of innovation in art. The central image of horseback riders is painted as a reflection on water. The riders, all outfitted in uniforms of Western powers (American, French, German, and British), represent the nationalities of artists who came to dominate twent
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CLOSE LOOKS: "LANDSCAPE" BY MARK TANSEY
Mark Tansey’s massive red and white painting, almost six feet tall and twelve feet wide, depicts a jumble of fragmented statues piled high in a barren, desert-like landscape. Two full-length figures lie at the base of this heap. Their forms come together to create a bright, wide, horizontal section that grounds the mound of sculptures. A variety of large and small heads surrounds this area.
The collection of statues narrows as it grows into a pyramidal form. All of the figures in the pile appear to be male, and thanks to Tansey’s realistic rendering of their faces, some of the sculptures are identifiable. George Washington, for example, peeks out from the bottom left section of the heap, while the Roman emperor Constantine, located on the right, stares vacantly into the distance. Other statues, like the Egyptian sphinx at the top of the pile and the heads of two pharaohs at the base of its right side, evoke images of civilizations past. Still others, particularly in the middle of the group, re
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Mark Tansey
American painter (born 1949)
Mark Tansey (born 1949)[1] is an American painter.
Early life and education
Mark Tansey was born in San Jose, California to Richard G. Tansey, an art historian, and Luraine Tansey, a slide librarian who invented one of the first computerized slide archives.[2] Raised in an artistic family, Tansey had an early introduction to art. He attended Saturday art classes at the San Francisco Art Institute in his early teen years and made a habit of regularly visiting art museums in the area.[3] Beginning in 1969, Tansey spent three years studying at the ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles. After graduating, Tansey worked as an assistant at the San Jose State University Gallery. There he became well acquainted with the art that would later influence much of his work. He moved to New York in 1974 and attended Hunter College in New York for their graduate studio art program.[2][4] There, Tansey continued his examination of the historic art introduced to him by his parents, as wel
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