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Babel
BABEL, by oil painter Martin Wittfooth, is a hard cover art book project featuring 65-large-scaled oil paintings masterfully reproduced over 124 pages. Martin’s work celebrates the narrative tradition and features work spanning over five years, 2009-2014.
Martin has gathered an excellent group of contributors to complete the writing, editing, design and production stages. Renowned artist and teacher Marshall Arisman provides introduction and inspirational interview with the artist. Curator and gallerist Kirsten Anderson provides creative insight to Martin’s imaginative world.
Martin has gathered an excellent group of contributors to complete the writing, editing, design and production stages. Renowned artist and teacher Marshall Arisman provides introduction and inspirational interview with the artist. Curator and gallerist Kirsten Anderson provides creative insight to Martin’s imaginative world.
- GenresArt
124 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 12, 2019
Eisnein's No.3 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.4 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
Zoopocalypse? Why Not... Martin Wittfooth's 'Babel', and More Beautiful Creatures Dancing on Humanity's Grave
Wittfooth is the protégé of acclaimed artist Marshall Arisman, who also provides an essay and interview for this monograph. Like Adam Miller, David Cooper and Jeremy Geddes, Wittfooth's skill with a brush is crazy… some of the artists I admire most are visionaries whose imagination transcends any technical limitations. Wittfooth has no such limitations, and his paintings are evidence of a rapidly evolving artistic genius, closing in on a visionary route all his own. This combination of technical brilliance and visionary creative genius is an exceedingly rare thing,
Martin Witfooth
Wittfooth's 'The Devil's Playground' (the first pic below) may reference another wonderfully creepy Symbolist painting of the demonic 'Scapegoat' from 150 years ago, by Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt (the second pic below).
At the moment, the contemporary art world is seeing more artists taking an approach similar to that of Walton Ford. His prodigious appropriation of 19th Century Natural History and scientific illustration -- particularly Audubon’s original field paintings -- to frame complex and densely layered symbolist-surrealist allegories, has established him as one of the most important names in contemporary art. Wittfooth, like Tiffany Bozic, Josh Keyes, Scott Musgrove, Alexis Rockman, and John Newsom, is either inspired by Ford or taking a similar tack, finding a powerful way of approaching ecological and conservationist concerns. The strength of Wittfooth’s compositions and subject matter is extraordinary. Painting wildlife seemed campy and amateurish to Modernist sensibilities; with the exception of Gilles Aillaud's work featuring animals in captivity, 'serious artists' rejected the nature painting of Robert Bateman, et al, as saccharine, shallow, and pointless. That's a fair assessment, actually. But the symbolic and archetypal power of beasts makes them fair game, so to speak, for deeper artistic explorations... totem animals loaded with metaphorical and mythological significance. It's a fine line; I think John Newsom's busy and decorative compositions fail where Bozic and Wittfooth succeed, but it's a personal judgement.
Martin Witfooth
Stylistically, Wittfooth has a feel for color and light and texture that is rooted in the Chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and Rembrandt Van Rijn. His deepest affinities, however, link him to the 19th Century European Symbolists and British Pre-Raphaelites. Amongst the latter, the mysterious imagery of George Frederic Watts seems like a close relation; amongst the former, Wittfooth has made his Symbolist predilections very clear, continuing a 150+-year-old tradition of homage paintings based on a work by Symbolist great Arnold Boecklin. Although his name isn’t widely known, he remains a quintessential ‘artist’s artist’; Boecklin’s ‘The Isle of the Dead’ has fascinated and inspired artists like Max Klinger, Otto Dix, Fabrizio Clerici, Giorgio De Chirico, and Ernst Fuchs, all of whom provided their own versions of the compelling, ominous and beautiful island. Boecklin painted a few versions, each with its own subtle characteristics setting it apart; one version hung in Hitler’s office, before being ‘rescued’ in the waning days of WWII…
The first painting [01] is by Witfooth; entitled ‘Isle of the Dead’, he employs his ‘post-apocalyptic renaissance’ style in a homage to Symbolist master Arnold Boecklin’s painting of the same name (in German, ‘Die Toteninsel’); [02] is the original Boecklin version (1880), and [03] is the third version (1883); [04] is one of H.R. Giger’s homages, and [05] is by Fabrizio Clerici, my favorite old-school Surrealist.
[01]
[02]
[03]
[04]
[05]
‘Babel’ is Wittfooth’s first monograph, and this is a signed and personally embossed limited edition, but reasonably priced at 65$ USD including shipping for anyone in the US; 85$ USD, shipping included, for the rest of the world. There's only 1500 copies, so I recommend spending impulsively; take the money you have set aside for mortgage payments, baby food, hitmen, crack, and that black-market liver you've had your eye on, and enjoy some fine art instead. You can find it here:
http://martinwittfooth.com/Store
This 124-page book, published by Murphy Design, has the kind of richness and consistency I love, collecting work created between 2009 and 2014, and it has that art-object feel… it belongs on the shelf next to Abbeville’s gigantic slip-cased editions of ‘Audubon’s Birds of America’ and ‘The Grand Medieval Bestiary’, Prestel's 'Visions of Nature: The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel', Walton Ford’s ‘Pancha Tantra’, Tiffany Bozic’s ‘Drawn by Instinct’, and Alexis Rockman’s ‘A Fable for Tomorrow’; if the pics aren’t enough to convince you, what the fuck could I possibly say?
Martin Wittfooth
P.S.: Everything about this book speaks to the attention given to its execution. 'Murphy Design' isn't a publisher I'm familiar with, but details like the crimson end-papers, thickly textured with a leathery feel, and the embossed silhouette of a hummingbird providing an understated focal point, are the sort of thing that triggers my monographic bibliophilia. The paper stock is heavy and coated, showing off the rich chiaroscuro contrasts perfectly. The works are presented both in their entirety, and complemented by full-bleed details, all flawlessly reproduced. Another 'small thing' that pleasantly surprised me: the packaging. Wittfooth and Murphy made specially designed boxes with a stylized black graphic of the Babel logo and cover art, carefully constructed to protect the book from dents and crushed corners... nice.
Eisnein's No.3 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.4 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
More Art-book Reviews
More Comic-book Reviews
More Novel Reviews
Zoopocalypse? Why Not... Martin Wittfooth's 'Babel', and More Beautiful Creatures Dancing on Humanity's Grave
Wittfooth is the protégé of acclaimed artist Marshall Arisman, who also provides an essay and interview for this monograph. Like Adam Miller, David Cooper and Jeremy Geddes, Wittfooth's skill with a brush is crazy… some of the artists I admire most are visionaries whose imagination transcends any technical limitations. Wittfooth has no such limitations, and his paintings are evidence of a rapidly evolving artistic genius, closing in on a visionary route all his own. This combination of technical brilliance and visionary creative genius is an exceedingly rare thing,
Martin Witfooth
Wittfooth's 'The Devil's Playground' (the first pic below) may reference another wonderfully creepy Symbolist painting of the demonic 'Scapegoat' from 150 years ago, by Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt (the second pic below).
At the moment, the contemporary art world is seeing more artists taking an approach similar to that of Walton Ford. His prodigious appropriation of 19th Century Natural History and scientific illustration -- particularly Audubon’s original field paintings -- to frame complex and densely layered symbolist-surrealist allegories, has established him as one of the most important names in contemporary art. Wittfooth, like Tiffany Bozic, Josh Keyes, Scott Musgrove, Alexis Rockman, and John Newsom, is either inspired by Ford or taking a similar tack, finding a powerful way of approaching ecological and conservationist concerns. The strength of Wittfooth’s compositions and subject matter is extraordinary. Painting wildlife seemed campy and amateurish to Modernist sensibilities; with the exception of Gilles Aillaud's work featuring animals in captivity, 'serious artists' rejected the nature painting of Robert Bateman, et al, as saccharine, shallow, and pointless. That's a fair assessment, actually. But the symbolic and archetypal power of beasts makes them fair game, so to speak, for deeper artistic explorations... totem animals loaded with metaphorical and mythological significance. It's a fine line; I think John Newsom's busy and decorative compositions fail where Bozic and Wittfooth succeed, but it's a personal judgement.
Martin Witfooth
Stylistically, Wittfooth has a feel for color and light and texture that is rooted in the Chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and Rembrandt Van Rijn. His deepest affinities, however, link him to the 19th Century European Symbolists and British Pre-Raphaelites. Amongst the latter, the mysterious imagery of George Frederic Watts seems like a close relation; amongst the former, Wittfooth has made his Symbolist predilections very clear, continuing a 150+-year-old tradition of homage paintings based on a work by Symbolist great Arnold Boecklin. Although his name isn’t widely known, he remains a quintessential ‘artist’s artist’; Boecklin’s ‘The Isle of the Dead’ has fascinated and inspired artists like Max Klinger, Otto Dix, Fabrizio Clerici, Giorgio De Chirico, and Ernst Fuchs, all of whom provided their own versions of the compelling, ominous and beautiful island. Boecklin painted a few versions, each with its own subtle characteristics setting it apart; one version hung in Hitler’s office, before being ‘rescued’ in the waning days of WWII…
The first painting [01] is by Witfooth; entitled ‘Isle of the Dead’, he employs his ‘post-apocalyptic renaissance’ style in a homage to Symbolist master Arnold Boecklin’s painting of the same name (in German, ‘Die Toteninsel’); [02] is the original Boecklin version (1880), and [03] is the third version (1883); [04] is one of H.R. Giger’s homages, and [05] is by Fabrizio Clerici, my favorite old-school Surrealist.
[01]
[02]
[03]
[04]
[05]
‘Babel’ is Wittfooth’s first monograph, and this is a signed and personally embossed limited edition, but reasonably priced at 65$ USD including shipping for anyone in the US; 85$ USD, shipping included, for the rest of the world. There's only 1500 copies, so I recommend spending impulsively; take the money you have set aside for mortgage payments, baby food, hitmen, crack, and that black-market liver you've had your eye on, and enjoy some fine art instead. You can find it here:
http://martinwittfooth.com/Store
This 124-page book, published by Murphy Design, has the kind of richness and consistency I love, collecting work created between 2009 and 2014, and it has that art-object feel… it belongs on the shelf next to Abbeville’s gigantic slip-cased editions of ‘Audubon’s Birds of America’ and ‘The Grand Medieval Bestiary’, Prestel's 'Visions of Nature: The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel', Walton Ford’s ‘Pancha Tantra’, Tiffany Bozic’s ‘Drawn by Instinct’, and Alexis Rockman’s ‘A Fable for Tomorrow’; if the pics aren’t enough to convince you, what the fuck could I possibly say?
Martin Wittfooth
P.S.: Everything about this book speaks to the attention given to its execution. 'Murphy Design' isn't a publisher I'm familiar with, but details like the crimson end-papers, thickly textured with a leathery feel, and the embossed silhouette of a hummingbird providing an understated focal point, are the sort of thing that triggers my monographic bibliophilia. The paper stock is heavy and coated, showing off the rich chiaroscuro contrasts perfectly. The works are presented both in their entirety, and complemented by full-bleed details, all flawlessly reproduced. Another 'small thing' that pleasantly surprised me: the packaging. Wittfooth and Murphy made specially designed boxes with a stylized black graphic of the Babel logo and cover art, carefully constructed to protect the book from dents and crushed corners... nice.
Eisnein's No.3 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.4 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
More Art-book Reviews
More Comic-book Reviews
More Novel Reviews
January 23, 2016
Just a great book with great, thought-provoking art.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews