NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2018 / Marc Dennis, the acclaimed New York-based artist known for his hyper-realistic paintings of tattooed people has received the latest badge of recognition on BuzzFeed, being named one of 50 Badass Figurative Painters to Follow in Instagram by PoetsArtists Magazine.
On BuzzFeed the artist is represented by ''Double Marilyn,'' a painting of a fashionable and stylish woman, wearing sunglasses and with a plunging neckline, her cleavage exposes much of her breasts displaying tattoos of Andy Warhol's iconic Marilyn Monroe while posing in front a gold framed painting of a Rachel Ruysch floral arrangement from 1700.
The woman's chin is also tattooed with Jean Michel Basquiat's famous crown symbol reminiscent of the infamous story of Olive Ann Oatman, a woman from Illinois whose family was killed in 1851, when she was fourteen, in present-day Arizona by a Native American tribe, possibly the Yavapai; who captured and enslaved her and later sold her to the Mohave who tattooed her chin in what was embraced culturally as a means of beautification and perhaps ownership, which in the case of Dennis' model would ring true for an artist and his muse clearly signifying the artist's slightly voyeuristic interest in where history and modern American culture intersect.
''Double Marilyn'' carries the hallmarks of what makes the paintings of Marc Dennis unique and unmistakable. It has exquisitely rendered still-life elements reminiscent of the old masters but exuding a very modern-day vivacity. Combined with familiar contemporary motifs, centering on a human subject to create an alternate reality we are confronted with art history, nature, and culture in a provocative yet humorous way.
Earlier in 2017, new works by Dennis were exhibited at the Dallas Art Fair with Cris Worley Fine Arts of Dallas, TX. Reporting on the event, Edward Gomez wrote in Hyperallergic: ''Marc Dennis, in the past, working in a hyperrealist mode, conjured up cheeky send-ups of art history, such as a picture of two superheroes and a Russian mobster ogling the barmaid in Edouard Manet's iconic ''A Bar at the Folies-Bergere'' (1882), or a version of Diego Velazquez's ''Las Meninas'' (1656) featuring a disco ball. At the fair, Dennis's new paintings fill canvases with explosions of luscious flowers, like classic still lifes on steroids.''
Marc Dennis was born in Danvers, Massachusetts in 1971 to a family with five sons. He obtained a BFA degree from Temple University's Tyler School of Art and later an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin. His solo and group exhibitions have been presented in Houston, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Aspen, among other places. Works by Marc Dennis reside in the collections of establishments such as The Neuberger Berman Collection in New York; The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; The Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. His paintings are also in high demand among private collectors, with owners including John and Amy Phelan, Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, Bill and Maria Bell, Beth DeWoody, Carl and Donna Hessel and Larry Gagosian. Marc Dennis is currently based in Brooklyn, NY, where he lives with his wife and their two children.
Marc Dennis' work can be viewed on his website: http://www.marcdennis.com
Marc Dennis (@darcmennis) - Instagram photos and videos: https://www.instagram.com/darcmennis/
Marc Dennis (@marcdennis) - Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/marcdennis
Contact Information
MarcDennis.com
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http://www.marcdennis.com
SOURCE: Marc Dennis