The Unsmiling Tsarena, 1926 by Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926)
Edward Hopper, especially that painting of the gas station at night—Gas (1940)—was my inspiration for a lot of the songs I made up with my band The Modern Lovers when I was a kid. Especially “Roadrunner” owes to that gas station painting, but any songs I made up about lonely nights on lonely highways and the way lights were like friends in the dark. This is what “Roadrunner” was about. The Velvet Underground covered this kind of stark, lonely feeling of wonder and had a sound which, with its drowning darkness, felt right for my explorations into bleak, modern-world terror. That plus Hopper was a big part of my starting music.
From the Art News Muses column by Jonathan Richman.
The Listening Room, 1952 by Rene Magritte (1898-1967)
Sorrow, by Hans Graeder (1919-1999)
Venus and Time, 2013 by Jacob Hicks (b. 1985)
The Escape, 1961 by Remedios Varo (1908-1963)
Annie Reading, 1961 by Lucian Freud (1922-2011)
I somehow missed Cristiano Siqueira’s series of posters for Twin Peaks: The Return. Siqueira did a poster for each episode of David Lynch’s 2017 sequel—19 posters in all, including a bonus poster depicting Audrey. Check out all nineteen posters here.
Great America, 1994 by Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955)
Untitled (Pinball Machine), 1971 (from Troubled Waters) by William Eggleston (b. 1939)
An Allegory of Folly, early 16th century by Quentin Matsys (1456/1466–1530)
The Reader, 1861 by Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
The Last Judgment (detail) by Alart du Hameel (c. 1478-c. 1506)
The God Zeus Is Moved by Orpheus’ Grief, 2016 by Alex Kuno
Darlene Reading, 1982 by Janet Fish (b. 1938)
Don Quixote Defeated, 1990 by Gely Korzhev (1925-2012)
Hoge Raad (High Council), 2015 by Helen Verhoeven (b. 1974)
Biblioklept 