People who excel at more than one artform

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