My Favorite Artists
By William F. Zieske
When my colleague, Coco Soodek, first suggested that we name our personal favorite artists, I could not think of a scarier prospect. No one could ever respect me after seeing my disjointed list.
So as a lawyer, I’m going do what I always do when what I’m writing makes my skin crawl with risks: write some warnings and disclaimers.
First, I am not monogamous in the least when it comes to artists. I collect them. I rarely discard, but over-familiarity has made an initial passion die out entirely over decades, such as my adolescent love for Van Gogh.
Second, I’m still exploring, so there is a lot out there that hasn’t hit my palate yet. Third, there are so many artists whose works I’ve experienced, loved and even kept intact in my mind – collected from museums, in travels, at art fairs and in restaurants – whose names I simply cannot remember. As it is, this list is limited to “recognized” visual artists that remain foremost in my mind today.
Art movements and genres: German expressionism; Russian avant-garde, English Arts & Crafts movement; Art Nouveau; 1960s-1970s album cover psychedelia; Ukiyo-e of the late Edo period.
Painters: Max Beckman; Erich Heckel; Vassily Kandinsky; Natalya Gocharova; Frida Kahlo; Georgia O’Keeffe; Edvard Munch; Amedeo Modigliani; Gerhard Richter; Chuck Close
Sculptors: Keith Haring; Ya’akov Agam; Juan Munoz; Virginio Ferrari; Henry Moore; Lorado Taft;
Photographers: Alfred Stieglitz; Julia Margaret Cameron
Installation Artist: Christo & Jean Claude
Mosaic & Tapestry Artist: Marc Chagall
Print Artists: Andy Warhol, Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Friends, a neighbor, as well as clients, appear in my list of world-recognized artists. I count myself lucky to be able to see great works by nearly every artist listed here within a short walk of either my office in downtown Chicago or my home in Hyde Park. But I am even more fortunate to be surrounded by artists in my private life – my wife, my mother, my niece – whom I appreciate even more than any of the above.
