People who excel at more than one artform

I'm curious if people can think of examples of this. Logically there is no reason why someone who is good at one artform cannot do great work in another too, but given that the best artists are often the ones who put the most time in it is perhaps less likely.

William Blake is one example, a lot of people really like his poems and also his paintings. Captain Beefheart's paintings are well regarded as far as I'm aware, but I have to say I much prefer his music.

I am sure there are many more examples that I am not thinking of, so I submit this question to the collective hivemind for further consideration.

noam chomsky (linguistics, political theory)

Leonardo Da Vinci

Chomsky's interesting because linguistics and political theory are heavily intertwined.

And also aren't art in the sense that mirostones is asking about.

Jared Leto.

Jokes

Chomsky's interesting because linguistics and political theory are heavily intertwined.

― doglato dozzy (dog latin)

Also neither are artforms.

Richard McGuire - bass player in Liquid Liquid, writer/artist of acclaimed comic strips like 'Here' (big influence on Chris Ware etc)

what is an artform?

Steve McQueen? Though he doesn't do conceptual art any more so maybe doesn't count.

Leonard Cohen – writes songs, novels and poetry
Nick Cave – has written two well reviewed novels

i'm interested in the ways that Chomsky's linguistic theories underpin the kind of realities his political theories seek to challenge

xxxpost you're an artform

http://forallsaints.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/hildegard-of-bingen.jpg

Hermann Nitsch – painter, composer, performance artist

i am also interested in the way a community of disparate minds interprets the word "excel"

Are poems and novels and plays all different artforms? Sculpture and painting? Cos there's loads of super-obvious examples crossing over between those disciplines

Oh, Richard McGuire reminded me - Peter Blegvad is also an excellent musician and cartoonist.

I quite liked Nick Cave's first novel but I'm not sure I'd say he "excelled" at it. And I dislike his current music. But he's still someone who I would say is good at both.

what is an artform?

― clouds, Friday, January 31, 2014 2:24 PM (1 minute ago)

This could lead into a longer discussion, but from the OP I'm guessing the intent is to cover music, visual art, literature and maybe film.

are two separate books different artforms?

dancing and singing?

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyo6dovgN41qlghi3o1_500.jpg

i'm interested in the ways that Chomsky's linguistic theories underpin the kind of realities his political theories seek to challenge

― regret it? nope, said it? yep (Noodle Vague), Friday, January 31, 2014 2:25 PM (10 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is taking me back to my degree going back over a decade now so my memory's very patchy. I bet Branwell could help out. For a start there's the whole bridging of language, politics and art in postructuralist theory. But Chomsky's whole schtick was about language acquisition and the idea of an innate ability to learn grammatical rules and I swear I had a point here but it's so long ago...

poems, novels, plays = writing = 1 artform

as for "excelling", I would say that if something has been generally well received by reputable critics/reviewers then that is excelling, regardless of whether or not I personally like it

Joss Whedon is well regarded as both a screen and comics writer. I think they are reasonably similar disciplines though.

Dancing and singing is interesting, because I bet if you have someone who does the two disciplines separately they'd count, whereas if you have someone who does the two together (e.g. most pop artists) they'd be discounted.

As in, "no, that's just part of the same act", not necessarily "no, they don't excel".

Dante Gabriel Rossetti? I don't that he "excelled" esp. though.

I mean, he was better than me at both, that's true

There must have been some good actor/musicians. Frank Sinatra? David Bowie?

Anne Magnuson?

e

David Bowie, lol

Oops, that was meant to indicate I put an extra e in her name where there is none.

xp

Well I think he's a decent (if very idiosyncratic) actor, but he doesn't excel at it like he does at music, no.

xpost

He's a Crap Actor

how dare you Tom, Bowie is nearly brilliant at portraying stilted, wooden, slightly pop-star-like characters

Dancing and singing is interesting, because I bet if you have someone who does the two disciplines separately they'd count, whereas if you have someone who does the two together (e.g. most pop artists) they'd be discounted.

Ha, this is a good point! Tempted to say James Brown? but yes, that's not quite what you mean.

Dudley Moore

Michael Jackson - equally good at dancing and singing

He's not that good a dancer

along the dudley moore lines, jeff goldblum plays a mean piano iirc

satyajit ray - world class filmmaker, excellent illustrator/graphic designer:

http://caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/v-063-black-and-white-illustration-for-a-prof.-shonku-book_0.jpg

Flight of the conchrds, tim minchin, billy connolly all have musical/comedy chop but i mean whats excellent, whats 'surprisingly good for a comedian' etc

Neil innes is shit at everything tho

That is bollocks

how you have the balls to slag off Neil Innes and describe Tim Minchin as being involved in comedy

Or music

Cos ive heard urban spaceman.

Woody allen btw

E.E. Cummings also created paintings (and I think cartoons too, but I might be wrong). I think some of them are pretty great: http://www.eecummingsart.com/

do bluegrass people think that Steve Martin is a notably good banjo player, or just surprisingly good?

ariel pink got into calarts on the strength of his drawings, not sure if has really done anything else w/ visual arts though

Antonin Artaud - poet, actor, painter

Paul Robeson!

(As a singer and actor, I guess 'activist' isn't an artform)

Bill Dixon - painter, musician/composer

in a very similar vein to Steve Martin, Jean Cocteau was pretty hot at a lot of things.

Wait he plays the banjo......and what else?

Wyndham Lewis

David ginola

Haircare?

Acteeeng

must've missed that. can't be worse than Cantona

Ok u pedant, acteeng in service to airecare and biscuits

http://i.imgur.com/vfd5Rix.jpg

^^ A.S. = Arnold Schoenberg ^^

he's not hugely recognised for it but i like john cage's visual art:

http://media.tumblr.com/389776a89c796fbed83e91a506d34f9d/tumblr_inline_mh1dgnakj31qd384p.jpg

but with that kind of thing i wonder how much you can reasonably say they're excelling at more than one artform rather than having an artistic practice that isn't bound by a single artform.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikalojus_Konstantinas_%C4%8Ciurlionis

xpost

There was an exhibition of Cage's artwork at the Hunterian in Glasgow a couple of years ago; it was p good, tho the random/zen elements in the pictures made them seem all of a piece with Cage's compositions, rather than as work in an entirely distinct 'artform', if that makes sense.

Dennis Hopper - acting, and later acclaimed for his visual art

alasdair gray

has anyone heard any of ishmael reed's music?

Cant think of anyone who writes and draws as well as Mervyn Peake. His linework is really beautiful in a way I dont see often.

another example - lonnie holley - renowned for visual art and sculpture but is also a touring musician

troll answer: Vincent Gallo

james franco

crispin glover

has anyone heard any of ishmael reed's music?

― wins, Friday, January 31, 2014 11:58 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I heard some snippets of a record he did with Steve Swallow and I can't remember who else. It was a long time ago, but I remember it being mostly recitation, and the occasional sung lines were meh.

George W Bush

Surprised no-one's said Hugh Laurie yet.

http://www.makara.us/04mdr/01writing/03tg/bios/Tagore_files/tagore1.jpg
TAGORE

michelangelo - sculptor, painter, poet, party dude

Robert Crumb, cartoonist + banjo player
Brian Eno, music + video/visual artworks
Laurie Anderson, music + sculpture, illustration, probably lots of visual art I don't know about

akhbar the great, jackie chan, suleyman the magnificent, henry flynt, jennifer lopez, derek jarman, helene cixous, raphael, madonna, john fahey, samuel beckett, billie piper, zhang heng, andy kaufman, richard long, brian chippendale, some of my friends.... feel like mb 5-10% of artists try something else to some degree of success

Hisham Bharoocha and that other noise dude whose art looks a lot like Hisham Bharoocha's.

Justine Frischmann - was a Britpopper, now a painter.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2013/11/10/the-unknown-art-of-miles-davis.html#viewAll

Those are pretty good!

Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th century was a hive of multi-talented ppl.

Kolo Moser was a terrific visual artist and an equally terrific furniture maker. Wittgenstein took time out from philosophy to design and build his sister a house. Rudolph Steiner built fantastical houses and furniture on the side. When he wasn't doing architecture, Josef Hoffman made great chairs. Alfred Kubin was a fine author and graphic illustrator. Kokoschka wrote plays, and so on.

Dennis Hopper - acting, and later acclaimed for his visual art

I think he had a pretty good career as a photographer before his acting really took off didn't he?

William Blake is one example, a lot of people really like his poems and also his paintings.

― mirostones, Friday, January 31, 2014 2:15 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WB is one of my alltimers but I dispute the claim that his poems and paintings can be separated; I view them all as part of the same complementary artistic process

(and the success of this synthesis is one of the reasons for his greatness)

Sam Shepherd as an actor/playwright?

Bo Jackson, late-80s edition

James Burke

Harrison Ford as carpenter/actor

Tom Waits

That Liquid Liquid bass player's comic in full:

http://imgur.com/a/EeNpT

That comic was fucking amazing

Yoko Ono, music + conceptual/performance art

I expect quite a few Chinese poets were also adept at calligraphy and ink brush painting.

Sparkle, isn't it - possibly best thing I've seen this year so far

there was a headline in the paper when a bunch of political fans came to see chomsky speak, something to the effect of, "Unsuspecting Chomsky Fans Trapped in Linguistics Lecture"

samuel morse was a painter and invented the morse code.

seriously, guys, read that amazing comic linked by cardamon above

Also: there's a guy called Stephen Tunney and he was in King Missile and I read a novel by him which was weird and kind of great

I've wanted to see something like that for so long. (xpost to cardamon)

I think he had a pretty good career as a photographer before his acting really took off didn't he?

I don't know the full story, but he's been doing photography since the early 1960s as a parallel career to his acting. He's very good at it. I used "visual art" to cover the photography and his painting and sculpture.

seriously, guys, read that amazing comic linked by cardamon above

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, January 31, 2014 9:42 PM (11 minutes ago)

^^^, seriously, that's really good

if you guys like that comic, you should try to get your hands on this anthology where it's reprinted:
http://driftlessareareview.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/new_comics_anthology.jpg

it's kind of great (and a little sad) that most of the artists there are still mainstays of the "best of" anthologies today. it also has an early chris ware contribution that's only 25% as depressing as modern chris ware!

actually i'm looking at that scan again and i might be mixing up this and the raw anthology, but it's still a good anthology!

I don't know the full story, but he's been doing photography since the early 1960s as a parallel career to his acting. He's very good at it. I used "visual art" to cover the photography and his painting and sculpture.

Yeah, I just thought it was interesting. When I first found out about his art I assumed that he was the typical famous actor who dabbled in something else, but actually he was quite an accomplished photographer before anyone really knew who he was as an actor. Obviously he had some roles pretty early on but he wasn't really famous until Easy Rider, right?

Yeah, supporting roles in two James Dean movies isn't bad, and some other stuff. But Easy Rider brings up another thing - he was also a director and a screenwriter, if we consider those separate art forms.

nice to see the reactions to "here". i think it's an amazing work, and testament to the possibilities of the comics artform.

Need to get Black Hole and Like A Velvet Glove and all sorts of stuff like that.

Ice Cube - maybe the best rapper alive from 1990-1993; mostly in bad movies now but Friday is a stone classic and he was good in Boyz n the Hood & Three Kings.

If Ive missed someone else sayig this sorry, but I cant help wonder if the better question is "people who excel at more than one discipline". Like, astrophysicists who are musicians, teachers who are tennis champs.

(my first example of course referred to Brian Cox, and Branwell will be all over that hee hee :D)

Brian May
Terry Jones
Michael Palin

David Duchovny seems to've found things p easy

Leonora Carrington - surrealist artist & author, excelled at both imo

that isn't Here "in full" btw - the 1989 version has been under expansion over the last decade or so, for eventual book-length publication by Pantheon

(McGuire has also done lots of other graphic design and 3D design and toys and illustration and film, and two other comics, btw)

Klaus Voorman - bassist (Plastic Ono Band), visual artist (Revolver)

Yeah Klaus rules, he should've been in the Beatles but it would have been too amazing even for a decade which concluded with the moon landing.

Leonora Carrington - surrealist artist & author, excelled at both imo

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Saturday, February 1, 2014 11:52 AM (5 hours ago)

Can't believe I didn't think of this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Frequency-hopping_spread-spectrum_invention

Reg Presley, musician and inventor:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/05/from-rocks-backpages-troggs-reg-presley
"Reg, however, has another string to his bow: in 1974 he designed and patented for a year an automatic fog-warning device. When the patent expired, the system was adopted for the end of the runway at Heathrow..."

Oh Carrington is a good one! Was trying to think of some of the multi-disciplinary surrealists, I know I enjoyed De Chirico's novel but it would be pushing it to claim literary greatness.

DH Lawrence's paintings were pretty good

Hermann Hesse too

Ha, didn't know that about Reg Presley! That's so cool!

Also Tom Scholz, musician (Boston) and inventor (the Rockman).

noam chomsky (linguistics, political theory)

computer science too

Louis CK comedian + filmmaking

I think it's fair to claim mathematics as a humanity, so, John von Neumann.

was going to log in and offer von neumann earlier

Billy Childish, super-prolific garage band musician, plus good painter/woodcut-maker in a bit of german expressionist style. http://www.billychyldish.com/billy_chyldish/home.html

one more vote for that comic is great

Vanessa Mae (violinist, olympic skier) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa-Mae#Olympic_career

which reminds me:
Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden, fencing, commercial pilot, author) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_dickinson#Other_work

McGuire's "Here", which was in one of the Raw Vol 2 digests, was huge, and there's a chris ware strip that came later that he admits is a homage/rip to that. I think that above New Comic Anthology got destroyed in the reviews when it came out...really bad reproductions and weird stuff like taking what was originally and amazing Gary Panter spread and breaking it over two back to back pages. Maybe I'm thinking of a different collection though.

Speaking of Dickinson, Pere Ubu's Allen Ravenstine is also a commercial pilot.

xp

some more writers/visual artists: strindberg, hans arp, henri michaux

also if you count his films: robbe-grillet

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pdFG93jw1LI/SoYuUmfp7mI/AAAAAAAAFww/EtieeWUYU6k/s400/cmurder%2Bbook%2Bcover.jpg

& from nz, film/kinetic sculpturalist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Lye (also music sort of since there was a release of the sounds made by his sculptures awhile back)

I like Thurber's drawn cartoons, does that count?

New Comic Anthology got destroyed in the reviews when it came out...really bad reproductions and weird stuff like taking what was originally and amazing Gary Panter spread and breaking it over two back to back pages. Maybe I'm thinking of a different collection though.

You're not. It's horrible, and some of the terrible repro is down to Callahan str8 bootlegging stories

You wouldn't know him, but Ville Pirinen is one of the best known, most distinctive Finnish comic artists to have debuted in the 90s:

http://www.bananapress.fi/images/kuvat/s2055B.jpg

http://www.kvaak.fi/images/articles/29092005204338-1.jpg

But he also has a music career as a guitarist and singer, most notably in the bands Black Audio and Steel Mammoth, and as a solo artist called "Garfield Steel":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfocVppi7hM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2PbBVBb8y8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFoz-EvalAY

What's remarkable is that his two careers are almost completely separate: the comic fans don't know him as "that musician", nor the music fans as "that comic book guy". Personally, I'd dug his comics for years before I found out that he's a musician too, as the sort of rock records he produces aren't my thing.

Takeshi Kitano!

I don't remember the panter spread in new comics anthology, but the reproductions are at least on par with current anthologies,
Or even better! (I saw a recent "best of" anthology with weird moire patterns from scanning)

Gary Panter is a good dual art example though.

it would be hard to buy any book containing imagery that chose to clothe itself in such a cover tho. like, how would you know what looks good?

how has Carrie Brownstein not made it here btw

I think Joni Mitchell is a great songwriter and a very talented painter. Jeffrey Lewis is a really good songwriter and comic artist. Also, as someone who has played bluegrass banjo for 30+ years, I think Steve Martin is fuckin' great.

Schoenberg's paintings, on the other hand, are garbage.

Steve Martin hasn't been funny in 30+ years in fairness.

<I>Dancing and singing is interesting, because I bet if you have someone who does the two disciplines separately they'd count, whereas if you have someone who does the two together (e.g. most pop artists) they'd be discounted.</I>

I kind of feel comic book writers get this - like even as he falls off the cliff of his own mind, Dave Sim is a great writer and also a great cartoonist.

Willy Vlautin - great songwriter, great novelist.

John Carpenter?

Is architecture an artform? If so, Xenakis.

Steve Martin hasn't been funny in 30+ years in fairness.

Incorrect, Bowfinger was 19 years ago. (also some of his New Yorker pieces were good, and he would do bits on Letterman in the early '00s that I remember as being drily funny.)

I kind of feel comic book writers get this - like even as he falls off the cliff of his own mind, Dave Sim is a great writer and also a great cartoonist.

contrarily, Sim is a terrible writer (of both prose and comics) now and has been for well over a decade*. He could still manage one decent panel cartoon or page every year or two (before his hand stopped working), but has almost stopped cartooning altogether, and most of the cartooning in glamourpuss & SDOAR was weak to poor.

*his poor prose writing is related to his mindset / mental health / brain function etc: he no longer has the ability to make and support (or bluff) an argument, and almost any ongoing exchange will get diverted by paranoid defensiveness. And his sense of humour has been operating intermittently, to a max of abt 5% effectiveness, since his mini-stroke [my diagnosis] / demonic possession incident [his diagnosis]

hello googlers, these are all personal interpretations of his writing, no need to fax Mr Sim about it

demonic possession incident

pl tell us more!

Jon Wurster

Yeeeeessssssssssss...

Wait, are you Best Show caller Chris L? Holy cow.

Bluff called - I haven't seen much that Sim has done in the last decade.

What seems really rare is people who can do two artforms and actually be *known* for both in a way that feels independent, like you really think of the person as both an A and a B. There are a lot of musicians for example where you're like "hey her/his paintings are also good!" But there aren't many where you feel like you'd want to go see a show of their paintings independent of their name in music.

Kris Kristofferson comes to mind as someone I think of as both a musician and an actor. Not that I think he's like the greatest actor who ever lived, but he's pretty good and doesn't just come off as some musician who's also trying his hand at film. I'd say the same about Ice Cube.

There seem to be a fair number of musicians who manage as actors. There aren't as many actors who are convincing as musicians (Jeff Daniels and Kevin Bacon come to mind as good actors with terrible music).

but it's still performing arts. when you get on stage to play a show you are pretty much acting.

i've always been impressed by John Carpenter tho. making music and directing movies seem like totally different fields that require totally different skills.

when you get on stage to play a show you are pretty much acting.

That's all the more reason it seems weird to me that Jeff Daniels' music sucks so much, it's not like he lacks in musical ability.

Boris Vian

Dean O. Torrence from Jan & Dean had a booming side job doing album covers:

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/dial35/dean_o__torrence_album_covers/

satyajit ray

Schoenberg's paintings, on the other hand, are garbage.

― hats to all the angles on their heads and surely many, many of blings (ledge), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 10:02 AM (7 hours ago)

I think there's one painting of his I really like, otherwise OTM.

has anyone mentioned william blake?

oh wait, it's in OP

There are a lot of musicians for example where you're like "hey her/his paintings are also good!" But there aren't many where you feel like you'd want to go see a show of their paintings independent of their name in music.

Closest one that comes to mind is Teebs (music & painting are both great).

tony conrad

william morris

Wesley Stace / John Wesley Harding has written a couple of novels. I read one and it was okay.

John Updike drew and cartooned in addition to writing.

A lot of yr old-timey Britisher adventure dudes seem to have been able to draw well (if not artistically). Churchill painted as an enthusiastic amateur. Kipling did some interesting illustrations. Patrick Lee Fermor could draw semi-professionally, and I'm pretty sure T.E. Lawrence did too. Dudes like that seem to have come out of a genteel renaissance-man tradition in which it was normal to write, paint, and play music whilst also climbing mountains and subduing primitive peoples or whatever.

Also Ethan Hawke wrote a novel and I am told Molly Ringwald is on a singing tour; I don't know if either of those efforts excel.

Was idly wondering if I'd actually repped for Schoenberg upthread, not quite but he is mentioned. I think when I first discovered his paintings I was quite excited, but the more I have investigated the more I find him unsatisfactory as a visual artist.

Have Iost my mind here or is it possible that no-one has mentioned Pasolini?

ha wow that is glaring.

wtf tbh

Mind you, two years ago the best I could come up with was Dudley Moore.

yes, i've quite enjoyed dudley moore's sound installations, too.

if chico buarque's novels are any good then him

April March = animator & singer-songwriter

stuart moxham is another animator + singer-songwriter!!

two good ones:

1) vinicius de moraes: poet, musician, playwright, essayist... and diplomat!

2) paul robeson: singer, actor, lecturer, football player, lawyer, etc.

paul robeson was basically superman

1) vinicius de moraes: poet, musician, playwright, essayist... and diplomat!

I think he mostly just wrote lyrics? So it's the same artform as in poetry and playwriting. The one album I know where he actually sings ("Os Afro sambas") wouldn't really convince anyone that he "excelled" as a vocalist.

Wait, Paul Robeson hadn't already been mentioned in this thread? FFS what were we all thinking?

We were covered:)

Ha! Well done, er, me.

I hear Robeson also punched out Hitler and cured polio.

Was Peter Brotzmann mentioned upthread? Obviously best known as a saxophonist, but also a trained artist (studied under Joseph Beuys IIRC) who's designed about 90 percent of his own album covers, posters, etc. He's had exhibits of his work here and there.

scarjo