Neo Rauch

Neo Rauch

Felsen, 2001, oil on canvas

Regel, 2000, oil on paper

Neo Rauch is a German oil painter. He combines themes of politics and personal history, Social Realism , and industrial alienation.

Subjects include men in uniform taking control of civilian life. The landscapes clash and have no apparent intention.  The artist or painter often appears in the paintings themselves, engaging in a violent struggle. Formally the figures appear realistically comic-booky like a cartoon I would turn off or a violent graphic novel.

His works have been described as "failed utopia"

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John Currin

John Currin

The Bra Shop, 1997, oil on canvas

Kiev, 2008, oil on canvas

John Currin is a figurative painter influenced by Renaissance oil paintings, contemporary culture, politics, and women's magazines.

He creates parodies of our sex-obsessed culture through distortion of the human figure. Main themes include pornographic eroticism and manipulation. Often his portraits appear satirical, kitschy, and humorous. Over time his works have gotten much more explicitly erotic.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown

Performance, 1999, oil on linen

Skulldiver III (Flightmask)

Cecily Brown's works ARE representational, although at first glance appear to be sloppy Rorschach-like ink blobs. Her paintings have been linked to Abstract Expressionism.

She creates expressive oil paintings of slippery body parts entwined, engorged, and ecstatic that form kaleidoscopically in the mind. She rides the line of abstraction, figuration, and pornographic abandon.

Her subject matter mainly centers around sexual pleasure, often public acts. She makes viewers question what they see by hiding her images in lavish folds of oil paint.

Dana Schutz

Dana Schutz

Death Comes To Us All, 2003, oil on canvas

Twister Mat, 2003, oil on canvas

Dana Schutz's work has been described as teetering on the edge of tradition and innovation.

Still lifes become personified, portraits become events, and landscapes become constructions. She embraces the area in which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive. She works with themes of death and discomfort.

She paints in thick impasto with heavy line work, deep colors, and dark shadows.

After looking at a variety of her work, I think she addresses reality in a very illogical, surrealist way.