Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. His work has used materials that vary widely, from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel. Quinn has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum, the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Fondation Beyeler, Fondazione Prada, and South London Gallery. The artist was a notable member of the Young British Artists movement.
Vanitas is a genre of art which uses symbolism to show the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldy desires. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory items. The genre began in the 16th century and continued into the 17th century. Vanitas art is a type of allegorical art representing a higher ideal. It was a sub-genre of painting heavily employed by Dutch painters during the Baroque period (c.1585–1730). Spanish painters working at the end of the Spanish Golden Age also created vanitas paintings.
Jim Dine is an American artist. Dine's work includes painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography; his early works encompassed assemblage and happenings, while in recent years his poetry output, both in publications and readings, has increased.
Eckhart Tolle is a German-born spiritual teacher and self-help author. His books include The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997), A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (2005) and the picture book Guardians of Being (2009).
The Transcendence of the Ego is a philosophical and phenomenological essay written by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in 1934 and published in 1936. The essay demonstrates Sartre’s transition from traditional phenomenological thinking and most notably his break from the philosopher Edmund Husserl’s school of thought (phenomenology), and into his own. This transition is more apparent after Sartre’s military service from 1939 where we observe a rather more sympathetic view of being in the world, a topic that is dealt with in much greater detail in his 1943 work Being and Nothingness. This essay begins Sartre's study and hybridisation of phenomenology and ontology.
Nicolaes van Verendael or Nicolaes van Veerendael was a Flemish painter active in Antwerp who is mainly known for his flower paintings and vanitas still lifes. He was a frequent collaborator of other Antwerp artists to whose compositions he added the still life elements. He also painted a number of singeries, i.e., scenes with monkeys dressed and acting as humans.
Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts or Gysbrechts was a Flemish painter who was active in the Spanish Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden in the second half of the seventeenth century. He was a court painter to the Danish royal family. He specialised in trompe-l'œil still lifes, an artistic genre which uses visual tricks to give viewers the illusion that they are not looking at a painting but rather at real three-dimensional objects. He also created many vanitas still lifes.
David Altmejd is a Canadian sculptor who lives and works in Los Angeles. He creates highly detailed sculptures that often blur the distinction between interior and exterior, surface and structure, figurative representation and abstraction.
Michiel Sweerts or Michael Sweerts was a Flemish painter and printmaker of the Baroque period, who is known for his allegorical and genre paintings, portraits and tronies. The artist led an itinerant life and worked in Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, Persia and India (Goa).
Hendrick Andriessen, known as Mancken Heyn was a Flemish still-life painter. He is known for his vanitas still lifes, which are made up of objects referencing the precariousness of life, and 'smoker' still lifes, which depict smoking utensils. The artist worked in Antwerp and likely also in the Dutch Republic.
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose is a 2005 self-help book by Eckhart Tolle. The book sold 5 million copies in North America by 2009. In 2008 it was selected for Oprah's Book Club and featured in a series of 10 weekly webinars with Tolle and Oprah Winfrey.
Ronald Rae is a sculptor and graphic artist born in Ayr, Scotland, in 1946. His large-scale granite sculptures are entirely hand-carved, and over the course of 58 years, he has carved 58 monoliths, many of which are in public and private collections throughout the UK, with one placed in the USA. Rae's sculpture exhibitions include Regent's Park, London (1999–2002), the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2002-04), and Holyrood Park, Edinburgh (2006-08). Rae is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
David Bailly (1584–1657) was a Dutch Golden Age artist known for his still-life paintings, portraits, and self-portraits.
Marie-Suzanne Giroust, known as Madame Roslin, was a French painter, miniaturist, and pastellist, known for her portraits. She was a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Only a small number of her works have been identified.
Guardians of Being is a picture book written by Eckhart Tolle, and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell.
Joris van Son or Georg van Son was a Flemish still life painter who worked in a number of sub-genres but is principally known for his still lifes of fruit. He also painted flowers, banquets, vanitas still lifes and pronkstillevens. He is known to have painted fish still lifes representing the Four Elements, and also collaborated with figure artists on 'garland paintings', which typically represent a devotional image framed by a fruit or flower garland.
Catarina or Catharina Ykens or Catarina Ykens (II) (1659 - 1737 or later) was a Flemish painter. The few surviving paintings attributed to her are still lifes but she is also believed to have painted history paintings with biblical themes.
Young Man with a Skull is an oil on canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, created in 1626-1628, now in the National Gallery, in London. The painting was previously thought to be a depiction of Shakespeare's Hamlet holding the skull of Yorick, but is now considered to be a vanitas, a reminder of the precarious nature of life and the inevitability of death.
Michael Clark is a contemporary British artist. His work spans a broad range of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, photography, installation, video, performance and artist's books. Clark was born in Manchester and lives and works in London.
Joannes de Cordua or Johann de Cordua was a Flemish painter who was mainly active in Vienna and Prague. He is known for his still lifes, peasant scenes, portraits, and biblical themes.
