At the current moment, I am tempted to say Phantom of the Opera.
Grand gilded opera houses, layrinthine underground tunnels and lakes, strange personages living in catacomb-like darkness (The Rat Catcher included) Little unassuming towns in France, circus freak shows, Persian death-trap castles which are architectural wonders used for torture, pretty sopranos in exaggerated hoop skirts, or backstage in a dressing room buried in flowers, elegant monsters in masks, organ music, candles, velvet drapery, intrigue and murder, mannequins, props, backstage ropes and rigging, ballerinas, stage hands
..... Really now, what else could you ever possibly want to draw?
If I could apprentice with any two artists in the history of the world:
Klimt, because his work was so very inspirational to me in my younger years. Also, because through his career he himself morphed through at least three distinct artistic metamorphoses, from highly realistic detailed scenes, to a flattening of the figure with pattern and abstraction, to his later impressionist landscapes. Also, he's a cat person, and Vienna in that time was probably a very happening place. Additionally, Schiele studied under Klimt, and look how great his work was. Probably not excessively the credit of Klimt, but it couldn't have hurt.
Fritz Lang might be a good choice,too. His films are so stunningly visual, and expressionistic, his use of light and shadow are exceptional, his silent storytelling and striking characterizations are brilliant. It would be a lesson in story creation, writing, sculpture (as with the sets in Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis) and composition, as well as timing. He was brilliant in his time, and his films always inspire me visually.
If I were banned from the art world, my alternate career choice would be:
Entomologist. Whether stuck in an office studying bug diagrams or exploring the amazon with a butterfly net, if it were bug related, I'd be happy. Plenty of new species to discover, after all. Alternately, I wouldn't mind being a history or anthropology scholar.
1. If I had one month and one thousand dollars to spend on art costs only:
I would do a graphic novel. It wouldn't be very expensive to do material-wise, so I would self-publish all the copies I could get on the rest of the thousand dollars.
2. Six months and ten thousand dollars:
I would spend it building fabulously elaborate fine-art costume pieces. I would hire people to do the more laborious sewing, off of patterns I made or altered, and spend my time thinking up concepts, and doing finishing touches/elaborations/changes to the rudimentary garmets, once they were sewn. I would spend some of that time and money, after I'd done one or two, seeking out parties who might be interested: art galleries, embarassingly rich drag queens (which possibly don't exist), private collectors of couture, high-end fashion stores....
3. One year and one hundred thousand dollars
I would put on a ballet of some sort, perhaps, or a movie, or musical. It might be enough time/money (though I'm not sure, really) to come up with a full concept, review work of songwriters and lyricists, look up coreographers, hire actors or dancers, design stage sets, design costumes, find a venue, advertise, etc. I imagine it would be based off of some existing form of literature, or a painting, or a moment from history, or a movement (Les Miserables, Hair the Musical, Wicked, Jekyll and Hide, etc, being examples of adaptations of the former list)
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