Thanks for the Kara Walker references. Fascinating!

Thanks, Jay, I hadn’t even realized Close was a hyperrealist in his early days, I only knew some of his later work. I think of hyperrealists as in the upper half of the diagram, having Classical concerns with perfection of technique, but Animist desire to render a scene from “real life” as exactly as possible. Close’s later use of other techniques took him away from that realism and toward more Formal interests.

Martha, I agree with your assessments of Sherman and Walker. I’m not quite sure why McCloud chose the term “Animist,” but he was using it to mean someone concerned with depicting life in an essentially traditional, straightforward way. In that sense, I don’t think it applies to most of Mondrian or Kandinsky; I think of them as fitting into the Formal camp, very concerned with art and beauty, but of a new sort (for their time).

Regarding artists who cross diagonally, I think of Mondrian and Kandinsky as formalists who were also animists, if you follow the def of animist as one who believes that objects have souls.
On the other diagonal, I think of Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker as iconoclasts yes but with feet firmly in Classicism (rational, non-emotive).

Meant to delete that comment and come at the subject from another direction. We could dissect a multitude of artists and find in the end that nobody of consequence fits any sector neatly. Actually we could come up with any number of two axis diagrams with differing terms.

Thanks. Would Chuck Close fit the classisist designation? How about the other super realists? (Chuck 0ften gets thrown in with them)

Frank I can see, until he goes off the reservation with his ebullient post-protractor series. But your point is that Frank, exemplifies classicism in his earlier work.

Sure, I’ll stick my neck out with a quick set of examples. Any could be argued about, which might help me with my art history:

Classicist: Ansel Adams, Lucian Freud, our own Hanneke

Formalist: Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko

Animist: Russell Lee (of the LOC photograph of the homesteaders), Van Gogh, the Sunil of his portraits

Iconoclast: Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons

Help me here. Could you cite an example or two of each of the four kinds of artist?