Artist Research - Chuck Close

Chuck Close is an american painter and photographer and he was made famous by his photorealist work. Close seems to focus more on portraits, the majority of his work is face on portraits done from the shoulder up. He also goes for a different style of picture like the one below. the image seems to be made up of tiny squares or rectangles this isnt immediately obvious, the image just seems a bit distorted but when you look closely you can see the detail that is put into it.

Artist Research - Arnulf Rainer

In his early years Rainer was influenced by surrealism, his work then evolved towards Destruction of Forms, with blackenings, overpaintings, and maskings of illustrations and photographs dominating his later work.
These pictures represent his destruction of forms work and this is made very obvious through the art. The colours he uses are mainly dull, like black white and greys, but he seems to add a slight bit of colour, although usually mainly red and yellow.

He seems to distort the face slightly as well. The impression i get from his work is not an alter ego, but some  kind of anger, as if he is letting the anger out on his paintings. This makes me wonder if these people mean something to him, maybe they are people he doesnt like or people that have done wrong, or just symbols of these people. Also from looking at his work, it seems that he only did these paintings of men, and it makes me wonder what this means, if it is something he did on purpose.

Artist Research - Cindy Sherman

Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. To create her photographs, Sherman shoots alone in her studio, assuming multiple roles as author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe mistress—and, of course, model. Bus Riders (1976/2000) are a series of photographs that feature the artist as a variety of meticulously observed characters. The photographs were shot in 1976 but, like another series entitled Murder Mystery People, not printed or exhibited until 2000 and are among the artist's earliest work. Sherman uses elaborate costumes and make-up to transform her identity for each image, but is photographed in a sparse, obviously staged setting with a wooden chair standing in for the bus seat.

This is her 'Bus Riders' collection of alter egos.


"One of the reasons I started photographing myself was that supposedly in the Spring one of my teachers would take the class out to a place near Buffalo where there were waterfalls and everybody romps around without clothes on and takes pictures of each other. I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this. But if we’re going to have to go to the woods I better deal with it early.’ Luckily we never had to do that."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sherman

This bus riders collection of her work are all pictures of Cindy Sherman herself, just dressed as different people. These could all be classed as alter egos of different people doing different things in a certain place, in this instance it would be people doing different things on a bus. 

This is another of her portrait pictures, again as a different alter ego of hers. she also seems to use other people as her alto ego, for example in the 'bus riders' collection she has clearly dressed up other people to how she wants them to look, for example using men.