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Tim Forbes On Sale

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Forbes Tulip Purple _2
By Tim Forbes
Located in Staten Island, NY
LIMITED EDITION Forbes Wall Tulip Series by Canadian photo-artist Tim Forbes. “What more hopeful imagery than classic portraits of spring tulips shot in the natural light of the arti...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Canvas, Photographic Paper

Forbes Tulips Yellow
By Tim Forbes
Located in Staten Island, NY
LIMITED EDITION Forbes Wall Tulip photo-art by Canadian visual artist Tim Forbes. “What more hopeful imagery than classic portraits of spring tulips shot in the natural light of the ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Forbes Tulip Petals
By Tim Forbes
Located in Staten Island, NY
LIMITED EDITION Wall Tulip Series by Canadian photo-artist Tim Forbes. “What more hopeful imagery than classic portraits of spring tulips shot in the natural light of the artist’s st...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Canvas, Photographic Paper

Wall Tulip Series
By Tim Forbes
Located in Staten Island, NY
LIMITED EDITION Wall Tulip Series by Canadian photo-artist Tim Forbes. “What more hopeful imagery than classic portraits of spring tulips shot in the natural light of the artist’s st...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Canvas, Photographic Paper

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Tim Forbes for sale on 1stDibs

Born in Nova Scotia and precocious from the outset, Forbes dropped out of high school and shifted into the entertainment industry at seventeen years of age. He worked as an agent to musicians at the age of eighteen and started a comprehensive design company in Nova Scotia when he was twenty-four. He attended NSCAD during those years, but he was not interested in their conceptual emphasis at that time. He has since circled back to this. Moving to Toronto in 1978 Forbes soon launched an award-winning design company and collaborated with an astounding range of clients, from Royal Commissions and Provincial government organizations to Canada’s leading law firms, public and private corporations, as well as performing arts organizations and the Canadian film and television industry. Ironically, among the myriad of projects Forbes has undertaken, he is perhaps best unknown internationally for the original One-of-a-Kind Show logo, which is in fact his own thumbprint. Stretching beyond the confines of an urban design studio, in 2006 Forbes created an annex studio at a 1920’s rural schoolhouse in Creemore, Ontario, investigating the haptic aspects of sculpture as a personal new dimension, soon after releasing a first edition of bronze works. With his painting, he explores scale and form. They reflect contemporary minimalist modeling and are concerned with notions of repetition, patterning, and permanence. They are imbued with the quality of essential form. Forbes approaches each medium slightly differently. “In sculpture I work in maquette forms, small scale models in clay or metal that are then scaled proportionally using state-of-the art technology. I then rely on a team to realize the fabrication of large-scale works in resin, fiberglass, bronze, or steel. With paintings I tend to plot digitally to best understand the tension and relationships of the form, and how it reflects on others in a series. But once on the canvas the paint takes over. Photography becomes more capricious counting on a career as an art director and designer with peripheral vision that quickly edits the mind’s eye. Images can be complex compositions of massive digital files. Or not. My preference is shooting in a single-point perspective to imply the dimension of a subject rather than exposing it." And of his art historical inspiration, this is how Forbes responds: “I tend not to have heroes but am moved by the power and purview of generations of artists: Cimabue, Etruscan bronze, permission from Picasso or Bacon, electrification from Mary Weatherford, sex from Ken Price, immersion from Julie Mehretu, tempo from Twombly, climax in Riopelle, transcendence from Soulages. The amalgam informs the subconscious.”-Forbes. After sharing his studio time between Toronto and his native Nova Scotia for many years, Forbes set up a permanent studio in Blue Rocks Nova Scotia in 2019.

A Close Look at contemporary Art

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

Finding the Right photography for You

Find a broad range of photography on 1stDibs today.

The first permanent image created by a camera — which materialized during the 1820s — is attributed to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The French inventor was on to something for sure. Kodak introduced roll film in the 1880s, allowing photography to become more democratic, although cameras wouldn’t be universally accessible until several decades later. 

Digital photographic techniques, software, smartphone cameras and social-networking platforms such as Instagram have made it even easier in the modern era for budding photographers to capture the world around them as well as disseminate their images far and wide. 

What might leading figures of visual art such as Andy Warhol have done with these tools at their disposal?

Today, when we aren’t looking at the digital photos that inundate us on our phones, we look to the past to celebrate the photographers who have broken rules as well as records — provocative and prolific artists like Horst P. Horst, Lillian Bassman and Helmut Newton, who altered the face of fashion and portrait photography; visionary documentary photographers such as Gordon Parks, whose best-known work was guided by social justice; and pioneers of street photography such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who shot for revolutionary travel magazines like Holiday with the likes of globetrotting society lensman Slim Aarons.

Find photographers you may not know in Introspective and The Study — where you’ll read about Berenice Abbott, who positioned herself atop skyscrapers for the perfect shot, or “conceptual artist-adventurer” Charles Lindsay, whose work combines scientific rigor with artistic expression, or Massimo Listri, known for his epic interiors of opulent Old World libraries. Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron was given a Kodak camera as a child. Later, she shot on Polaroid film before buying her first 35mm camera in her teens. Barron's stunning portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol and other artists chronicle a crucial chapter of New York’s cultural history.

Throughout the past two centuries, photographers have used their medium to create expressive work that has resonated for generations. Shop a voluminous collection of this powerful fine photography on 1stDibs. Search by photographer to find the perfect piece for your living room wall, or spend some time with the work organized under various categories, such as landscape photography, nude photography and more.