I've been making an effort to explore more work by living artists recently. Here's a few folks whose stuff I've been getting into. Please list some of your favorites as well. ZHANG HUAN He used to do a lot of performance art type stuff, but did a good job documenting them and even the documentation itself is well done. Here's some of this that I've particularly enjoyed: Here he had friends paint Chinese characters all over his face until it was completely black: Here's one where he covered himself with birdseed and honey (or some other sticky food) and let birds feed off of him. That performance touches on some Buddhist funerary stuff: I also like this photo, titled "To Raise the Water Level in a Fish Pond"
Another from Zhang Huan that I really like. He does "ash paintings" where he collects ash from the incense sticks burned at Buddhist temples and creates art from them. Here's one such work:
Amongst Australian artists, I quite like David Boyd. He is one of the last living members of perhaps our most prolific artistic dynasty.
I'm still bumming that Robert Rauschenberg died a couple years ago, but I'm pleased to have found out that Hlen Frankenthaler is still alive. Her work suffers on the screen, but I've seen her work in galleries and exhibits, and it's awesome. And while she's mostly working in poetry these past few years, my Galesburg, Illinois homegirl Dorothea Tanning made some major contributions to surrealism back in the day Now, let's see if I can think of some living artists under the age of 90.
Photographer Chris Verene does some things that I find interesting. Not sure if people who aren't also from Galesburg, Illinois would dig his work much as I do (though a lot of people I know from Galesburg have fairly respectable reasons to not like him). http://www.chrisverene.com/ http://www.chrisverene.com/galesburg.html I don't really consider Galesburg "rural" by west-central Illinois standards. It's more a little island of rust-belt post-industrial America, but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Sorry, too many come to mind... Audrey Kawasaki: http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/ Andrew Wilson: http://andrewandavid.blogspot.com/ James Jean: http://www.jamesjean.com/ David Choe: http://www.davidchoe.com/
This blog has a lot of artwork from current artists. I've enjoyed a lot of the stuff I've found there: http://www.booooooom.com/
when i first happened upon this thread i grumbled, "damn! just when twombly's kicked the bucket!" if this thread had existed when i first started posting on BS i could have groaned the same about paul rebeyrolle, but in the intervening six years i probably wouldn't have posted here. it's not the time or the desire i would have lacked, but the words: along with many who claim to do so, i don't really understand much about art. as many of my posts will attest, i'm generally not averse to writing about things i don't understand but art, true Art, which the work of these two very different artists undeniably represents, deserves better than does politics, industry... or even football. rebeyrolle and twombly both kept scratching away at all the possibilities Art holds until the were about 80. perhaps by that age i'll be able to write something about them that deserves reading. that would also give me time to write something about gérard traquandi or vincent ganivet, as well as ensure they will be as deserving of it as the above two, and still make it under the wire specified in the thread title. anthony caro and françois morellet however are at an age which does not allow, nor require, such reticence. unable to say more, i will only tell you that they are both great artists.