People who excel at more than one artform

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).