Who is your favorite artist.

in the classic sort of media.

I think arguments will eventually break out over what constitutes "classic sort of media". :)

Dali, Giger & Franzetta are all fairly recent, in the greater scheme of world history.

With that in mind, I would have to say my one single favourite artist is:

Garrison Keillor :cool:
 
Off the top of my head, we've already hit Geiger, but don't miss:
(wikipedia links for history and examples)
René Magritte
Hieronymus Bosch
Max Ernst
Vincent van Gogh (obvious choice, but you can't really argue with him)
Francisco Goya

I'd also add that art is kinda hard to "get" from pictures. I never cared much for Picasso or Mark Rothko until I saw the pieces in person. Particularly Rothko; kinda blew my mind, but didn't quite get it from photos of his work, which seems like scraping the bottom of the "modern art" barrel. On the opposite end of things, I have little interest in Andy Warhol or Piet Mondrian even after having seen TOO MUCH of their work in person.
 
I love so many individual works for so many different reasons (same goes for movies, music) I'd end up in a padded cell if I have to choose a favorite. Francis Bacon and Magritte couldn't be more different, but I'm a big fan of both. Same goes for countless others. I could sit and flip through The Little Book of Art everyday for hours on end and never get bored.
 
When I was a small child I channeled my precocity into the Impressionist movement and became an 8 year old expert on the subject.

But not, having been to some of the best art galleries in the world, I still can't shake how much I love that one movement of art.

For that reason my favourite artists are Monet, Caillebotte, Morisot, Pisarro, Sicily, early Manet...etc.
 
mine is Caspar David Friedrich
I knew/liked some of his pictures already, but then I stumbled upon this one and was speechless, I can't explain why this picture made such an impression on me.

I also like Edward Hopper and some others I can't think of right now, but Caspar David Friedrich is my favorite.
 
Dali. But, there's a really unique excellent "comic book artist" that now does children's books, his name is JON J MUTH.

He took the Fritz Lang movie M and created the most beautiful 3 volume comic book I've ever seen. The drawings were done with charcoal and aluminum foil (I think). I don't understand it, but his work is magnificent.
 
Vincent van Gogh (obvious choice, but you can't really argue with him)

The De Young Museum here in the Bay Area had Starry Night on the wall at a recent exhibit. I was totally unprepared for seeing the actual painting. Literally, I didn't know it was there prior to going.

Walking around through the exhibit and suddenly there was this deep blue room packed with people. Then I saw this bright light out of the corner of my eye. Specular, almost like an LED being pointed at my eye.

It was the painting. Seriously, there is no way to reproduce in print the effect created by the reflectivity of the paint surface as a result of the gloss and texture. It's almost like Van Gogh discovered a way to make Scotchlite reflective material out of oil paint. The stars quite literally pop from the surface as if they little LEDs in the midst of the deep cool blue.

I just stood there and stared at it; one of the few times that my claustrophobia in dense crowds actually disappeared. I only really got the fascination with Van Gogh in an academic way until I saw the actual painting. Now I feel I understand what made his work so dramatically singular in a way that I probably never would have otherwise. I guess I wasn't figuratively prepared to see it either. :D

I also discovered this guy on that trip:

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

Another one with really great (if far more subtle than some) light. The wiki jpgs loose a lot of the subtle detail.
 
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There's a Joan Miró exhibition on at the Tate at the moment which I highly recommend to anyone in the vicinity. I'm horrified and at the same time fascinated by the Spanish Civil War and the great artwork that came out of that short period and the years of Franco's subsequent dictatorship.

I especially enjoyed his Constellations series and Still Life with an Old Shoe
 
arrodiii, being from Houston and a Rothko fan, I will assume you've been to the Menil, and the Rothko Chapel? One of my favorite museums ever! If you haven't, you definitely need to. Life changing stuff!
 
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