Comments on: The Quick 10: 10 Celebrity Artists

By: Calli Arcale

Calli Arcale — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:45:01 +0000

One more thing: Alexei Leonov is often billed as “the first artist in space”, as he was already an accomplished artist when he flew on Voskhod 2 (which I erroneously called Voskhod 1 above; Voskhod 1 was the first multi-crew spacecraft, with a crew of three; Voskhod 2 carried just two crew so that it could also carry an inflatable airlock). His first flight was in March of 1965.

By: Calli Arcale

Calli Arcale — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:40:55 +0000

Alan Bean is a very good artist (in fact, since retiring from NASA and the military, he has made a career out of it), but he’s not the only space-going artist. Alexei Leonov, the first man to ever spacewalk (aboard Voskhod 1, also the first flight of a two-man spacecraft), is known for his artwork. Like Bean, he continues to paint in his retirement, and has established a reputation as an artist entirely independent of his fame as a cosmonaut. Some of his pieces were actually done *in* space, including a whole series that he did on his second spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in 1975.

Going back to Alan Bean, his work has an extra interesting factor in that not only does he paint almost exclusively pictures of the lunar surface, he tries to incorporate the *actual* lunar surface into them, using the mementos he kept of his trip: scraps of cloth from his gear, impressions of his moon boots and rock hammer, and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, [i]actual moondust[/i], mixed into the paint. So if you buy an original Bean, you’re getting a little bit of the Moon as well.

By: Bethy

Bethy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:58:41 +0000

If you’re a fan of the space program or the series “From the Earth to the Moon,” you may remember the astronauts of Apollo 12, the second flight to land on the moon. Astronaut Al Bean does some FABULOUS artwork and has a website.

recaptcha: partys paeans
struck me as funny :D

By: Mama9cats

Mama9cats — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:13:35 +0000

Federico Castelluccio, who played Furio on ‘The Sopranos’ – is a renowned artist.

By: Jon.

Jon. — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:27:54 +0000

John Entwistle of the Who drew the cover for The Who By Numbers. I don’t know if he has done any other art.

By: emily

emily — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:42:48 +0000

Phyllis Diller does a lot of artwork.

Gary Burghoff (Radar from Mash) does some amazing water colors.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:59:26 +0000

That was the first painting by Viggo Mortsensen I’ve seen, but I read the introduction he wrote the the 2007 (I think) edition of America’s Best Nonrequired Reading (can’t remember if that’s the exact title) and it was one of the best things about the book.

By: clint

clint — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:38:39 +0000

I’ve seen some really haunting work from John Mellencamp. In fact, my first celebrity sighting was John (at the time) Cougar Mellencamp at the mall in Bloomington, Indiana around 1985. I was about eight, and I was hanging out in the art supply store. I saw him outside the store, checking out the booth of paintings by local artists. I remember being struck by how short the guy was.

Also: Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, is quite an important abstract impressionist. His first love was art; music came later. In fact, a lot of his music strikes me as an attempt to play/sing his paintings, if that makes any sense.

By: chris r

chris r — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:32:37 +0000

Martin Mull is a wonderful painter

By: Jenny

Jenny — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:35:53 +0000

Peter Falk makes cool drawings. He can be seen drawing some people in Wings of Desire.

As for the Bob Dylan art, he did charcoal drawings between 89 and 92, which were published in a book called “Drawn Blank.” A few years ago, an owner of an art museum in Chemnitz (the Kunstsammlung maybe? something like that) was interested in them. Someone made large prints of the charcoal drawings on special paper and then in 2006 or 2007 Dylan painted over these with watercolors/pastels. The first exhibit of them was in Chemnitz in January 2008 (I got to go!) and then they moved on to London, and maybe some other places. Because they were prints, he was able to paint the same picture a few times in different ways. It was interesting to see the differences. I believe you can buy a book of all the paintings.