I remember that style dominating the Olympics one year. 1976 maybe?
Never heard of him, but that look stinks of the late '80s and early '90s to me. There was a lot of similar more “ethnic” looking art around the same time.
Going back to the Fifties, there’s Art Frahm.
He was active during the '80s. He died in '90.
Ed “big daddy” Roth
Syd Mead
HR Geiger
That was probably Nieman himself. He was hired by the network do to artwork about each day’s competition.
Are you thinking of Kokopelli, by any chance?
Sort of, although I don’t recall seeing that figure before. I’m trying to think of google terms that might get me some examples.
You might not recognize the name, you’ve seen the work of Sam Butcher.
Nagel’s work is alive and well at every nail salon. He is the patron saint of nail salons. I’ve never been to a nail salon, and haven’t even had a haircut in 20+ years, but as I walk down the street, I see fake Nagels in shop windows.
He was also very popular with early computer graphics enthusiasts. Any computer that could display 265 colors could display a Nagel credibly.
In the comic book world at least, the art of Todd McFarlane is quite distinctive. I remember people swooning over his attention to detail: “Spider Man’s web isn’t just a line, it’s a bundle of cords wrapped with more cords!”
Oh yeah, and R. Crumb.
My wife is a huge fan of Micheal Parkes. We have a few prints in our house. Very easy to tell they are by the same artist.
Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley were largely responsible for the late-60s San Francisco psychedelic poster-art look. (Which owed a lot to Alphonse Mucha, mentioned upthread.)
He also gets credited for a lot of the psychadelic pop that he did not do but people assume from the style, he did. Like the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine movie.
It’s surprising how few artists have developed an iconic style. Lots of artist have identifiable styles, but not many are ingrained into popular culture.
In photography Richard Avedon qualifies. Did the cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends. He also did multicolor Beatle portraits, although he’s famous for his black and white, straight on, minimal background portraits.
Another anal bum cover artist: Roger Dean
A couple of years ago, Shepard Fairey’s look was everywhere.
Much longer ago, Charles Dana Gibson’s work was distinctive.
Those practitioners of the visual arts that I like have already been mentioned. All I can think of is an example from the plastic arts: Juan, José and Vicente Lladró Dolz. (FWIW, I can’t stand these figurines; the style is jes so pweh-shus it hurts to look at them. YMMV.)
Anyone who’s spent any time at all in the F&SF aisle of their local bookstore in the 80s and 90s will recognize these folks’ work, if not their names:
Michael Whelan (Lord of Dragons and Whales)
Gerald Brom (who basically created the look of D&D’s Dark Sun setting)