ART 4
2-DAY 19
October |
MODERN
ART REALLY IS RUBBISH |
DEATH:
1945 WYETH |
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Born on 19 October 1882: Umberto Boccioni,
Italian futurist painter and sculptor who died on 16 August 1916, having
the previous day fallen from his horse and been trampled, in Verona. Umberto Boccioni was born in Reggio Calabria. After falling out with his family he moved to Rome in 1901, learning the rudiments of drawing from a graphic designer. He met Gino Severini and, together, they became students of Giacomo Balla. Boccioni traveled for a couple of years, finally settling in Milan in 1908, which, at the time, was the cultural hotspot of Italy. Umberto Boccioni, I-We-Boccioni by Luca Carra, Milan. Boccioni, already sympathetic with Futurist ideas, met Marinetti in 1910 and within a month had signed the Manifesto of Futurist Painters. By 1912 he had moved towards sculpture and in April issued his Futurist Manifesto of Sculpture. Like other Futurists, Boccioni was heavily influenced by Cubism but in his painting and sculpture he used the Futurist approach to express dynamism of the human or animal form. He was one of the more rational theorists of the group, and his book Futurist Painting and Sculpture of 1914 was a benchmark within the movement. Politically active, in 1914 Boccioni demonstrated and agitated in favor of Italy's entry into the war. He only painted one work on the theme of war - The Charge of the Lancers. When Italy entered the war in 1915, he joined a battalion of cyclist volunteers. … Per quello che riguarda la nostra azione per un rinnovamento della coscienza plastica in Italia, il compito che ci siamo prefisso è quello di distruggere quattro secoli di tradizione italiana che hanno assopito ogni ricerca e ogni audacia, lasciandoci indietro sul progresso pittorico europeo. Vogliamo immettere nel vuoto che ne risulta tutti i germi di potenza che sono negli esempi dei primitivi, dei barbari d’ogni paese e nei rudimenti di nuovissima sensibilità che appaiono in tutte le manifestazioni antiartistiche della nostra epoca: café-chantant, grammofono, cinematografo, affiches luminose, architettura meccanica, grattacieli, dreadnoughts e transatlantici, vita notturna, vita delle pietre e dei cristalli, occultismo, magnetismo, velocità, automobili e aeroplani, ecc. U. Boccioni, Fondamento plastico della scultura e pittura futuriste, 1913 If Futurism embraced the present, it also rejected the past. Whereas De Chirico looked back nostalgically to the remote Mediterranean tradition of art and humanism that had transformed nineteenth-century Italy into a moribund museum, the Futurists iconoclastically attacked this same tradition with verbal and pictorial proclamations. By affirming so emphatically, in the words of their literary leader, Marinetti, that "a roaring motor car, hurtling like a machine gun, is more beautiful than the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Futurists hoped to wrench Italy from her languid, retrospective dream of an antique and Renaissance past into the shrill, dynamic realities of the industrial present. To accomplish this aim, they needed to develop a style as aggressive and contemporary as their new urban environment. For this, Cubism was essential. If, by 1910, Futurism had already written and shouted its dogma in words, its pictures still lacked an appropriately modern language to articulate their new subjects. The City Rises by Boccioni is a case in point. Against the Milanese urban background of smoking chimneys, scaffolding, a streetcar, and a locomotive, enormous draft horses tug at their harnesses, while street workers attempt to direct the animals' explosive strength. Yet the pictorial means of realizing this veneration of titanic energies and industrial activity are, in 1910, as anachronistic as the prominent role given to horse power. Basically, Boccioni still works here within a modified Impressionist technique whose atomizing effect on mass permits the forceful, churning symbols of horse and manpower to slip out of their skins in an Impressionist blur of moving light. By the end of 1911, however, Boccioni, like his fellow Futurists, had visited Paris in order to become acquainted with the avant-garde center of Europe and to prepare for the Futurist exhibition to be held in Paris in 1912. The impact of Cubism on the Futurists was immediate, as may be suggested by Boccioni's scene of railroad-station farewells, the first in his 1911 series, States of Mind. A twentieth-century reinterpretation of Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed or Monet's Gare St.-Lazare series, it plunges the spectator into a raucous, near-hysterical turmoil of machines and people. Yet now, Cubist planes dominate Impressionist dots and yield a metallic harshness far more relevant to the machine world admired by the Futurists. If Monet and Turner interpret the railroad theme as a dazzling luminary spectacle, Boccioni, with his newly acquired Cubist vocabulary, sees it as a collisive confusion in which mass emotions are harshly contrasted with the impersonal automatism of the machine. In the center, the glistening metal engine, with bumpers and headlights, presides over the human scene in which embracing figures flow irregularly around the mechanical sentinel in pulsating waves of emotion reminiscent of the Symbolists use of line around 1890. By employing the Cubist interlocking of angular, fragmented planes, Boccioni creates, not the homogeneous glitter of Impressionism, but a dissonant joining and separation of forms almost audible in their clangorous reverberations. The silent, cerebral dissection of form in Analytic Cubism is converted here into the noisy, assaulting ambiance of acoustic, optical, and kinetic sensations of a modern railroad terminus. Even the engine number, 6943, has a dramatic quality that portends the emotional cleavage of imminent departure rather than suggesting the intellectual quality of metaphysical wit that such numbers have in the works of Picasso and Braque. LINKS Study of a Female Face (1910) Street Noises Invade the House (1911) States of Mind I: Those who Leave (1911) States of Mind II: Those who Stay (1911) The City Rises |
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Born on 19 October 1927: Pierre Alechinsky,
Belgian painter, draftsman, printmaker, and film maker. — He studied book illustration and typography at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et des Arts Décoratifs from 1944 to 1946. In 1947 he became a member of the Jeune Peinture Belge group and had his first one-man exhibition in the Galerie Lou Cosyn in Brussels. In 1949 he became a founder-member of the Cobra movement after meeting Christian Dotremont. With a number of artist friends he set up a type of research centre and meeting-place in Brussels, the Ateliers du Marais. Towards the end of 1951 he went to Paris, moving to Japan in 1955 to study the art of calligraphy, also making the film Calligraphie japonaise (1956). He adopted the Oriental manner of painting, whereby the paper is spread on the floor and the artist leans over the work holding the bottle of ink, allowing a greater freedom of movement. In 1957 he made his first large works on paper in Indian ink and afterwards mounted the paper on canvas. Pintor belga adscrito al Grupo Cobra [¿no hace nada gratuito, siempre cobra?], nacido en Bruselas. En 1944 se inscribe en la Escuela Nacional Superior de Arquitectura y Artes Decorativas de Bruselas, donde estudia ilustración de libros y tipografía. Pinta en un estilo postcubista y más tarde recordando a Ensor [Belgian Expressionist Painter, 13 Apr 1860 19 Nov 1949]. En 1947 hace su primera exposición individual en la galería Lou Cosyn de Bruselas. En ese mismo año entra en el grupo Joven Pintura Belga. En 1949 se une al grupo Cobra, en el que asume un papel fundamental. En 1951 organiza la segunda exposición internacional del grupo en Lieja; este mismo año se traslada a París con una beca para estudiar técnicas de estampación. En esta época se interesa por la caligrafía japonesa y en 1955 visita Tokio y Kioto. (Véase Caligrafía Japonesa en Shodô) En los años sesenta Alechinsky viaja mucho por Europa, Estados Unidos y México y participa en diversas exposiciones internacionales. En 1965 el Art´s Club de Chicago le organiza una retrospectiva itinerante por los Estados Unidos. En 1976 recibe el premio Andrew W. Melon y en 1977 hace una gran retrospectiva en el Carnegie Institute de Pittsburg. Actualmente vive en Bougival, Francia. La obra de Alechinsky revela interés por la expresión espontánea y por la figuración a un tiempo, combinando efectos gráficos y pictóricos. LINKS — Prenez La Porte (1960, 50x65cm; 300x400pix, 62kb) — Untitled {spilled colored inks?} (color lithograph 41x30cm; full size) _ Lower third of page has two columns of printed words, of which here is a small sample: again lonely come back little old cottage stroke wild grass wild flowers wild butterfly wild bird old shoes old pipe old table old cat old heart sing old song look old roof knock old wood look old moon think think think It is page 81 of the “poetry”{?} book 1 Cent Life (1964) by Walasse Ting [1929~], issued in an edition of 2100 copies, with images including over 60 original lithographs by Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Enrico Baj, Alan Davie, Jim Dine, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Sam Francis, Robert Indiana, Alfred Jensen, Asger Jorn, Allan Kaprow, Alfred Leslie, Roy Lichtenstein [1923-1997] (Girl — Spray Can), Joan Mitchell, Kiki O.K., Claes Oldenburg, Mel Ramos, Robert Rauschenberg [22 Oct 1925~] (page 115), Reinhoud, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, Antonio Saura, Kimber Smith, K.R.H. Sonderberg, Bram Van Velde, Andy Warhol [06 Aug 1928 – 22 Feb 1987], Tom Wesselmann, and one by Walasse Ting. From the same book, here are other pages with lithographs (all untitled) by Alechinsky: — page 134 {severed heads?} (color lithograph 41x30cm; 2/3 size) — page 23 {Tongue Wrestling?} — page 148 {Kiss of Death?} — page 149 {Observer of the Kiss?} |
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Died on 19 October 1945: Newell
Convers Wyeth, born on 22 October 1882, US painter famous
for his illustrations of Treasure Island and Robin Hood.
He dies together with his grandson when the car he is driving is struck
by a train. Not to be confused with his son Andrew
Wyeth [12 July 1917~] — N. C. Wyeth was the head of several generations of US artists. He was the father of Andrew, Henriette, and Carolyn Wyeth, the grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, the father-in-law of Peter Hurd, etc. He was born the same year as Bauer, Dulac, and Pogany. An inveterate "drawer" as a child, Wyeth began his formal art training very sporadically, jumping from school to school (including a short stay at the Eric Pape School) and instructor to instructor until, at age 20, he was accepted into the Howard Pyle School for the 1902 sessions. Under Pyle's tutelage, Wyeth's innate talent blossomed. Within a year he had his first illustration published and it was a cover for a 1903 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Another early market was Success Magazine. Soon he was a regular contributor to Harpers, McClures, Scribners and others, and a steady feature at The Saturday Evening Post. Wyeth was graduated from the Pyle School of Art in 1904, which simply meant that he no longer had to attend classes. He continued to paint in a studio at the school for several years. In 1904 and 1906 he took two trips out West to soak up the ambiance. By the time the March 1906 issue of McClures appeared, Wyeth was established as a Western Adventure illustrator. He was much more, but a goodly portion of his early commissions were for paintings to accompany classics like Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White and the original Hopalong Cassidy yarns by Clarence Mulford. In 1907, Outing featured A Wyeth Portfolio, The Indian in his Solitude, which was probably influenced by pictures by George De Forest Brush (see some side-by-side comparisons). Then the publisher Charles Scribner's Sons had Wyeth illustrate books (in the years indicated), with from 8 to 16 color plates each (links with * have the Wyeth illustrations): _ by Robert Louis Stevenson: *Treasure Island (1911), Kidnapped (1913), The Black Arrow (1916), David Balfour (1924) _ by James Fenimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans (1919), The Deerslayer (1925) _ by Jules Verne (translated): The Mysterious Island (1918), Michael Strogoff (1927) _ by Sidney Lanier: The Boy's King Arthur (1917) _ by Charles Kingsley: Westward Ho! (1920) _ by Jane Porter: The Scottish Chiefs (1921) _ by James Boyd: Drums (1928) _ by Philip Ashton Rollins: Jinglebob (1930) _ by John Fox, Jr.: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1931) _ by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: The Yearling (1939) _ an anthology: Poems of American Patriotism (1922) For other publishers, Wyeth illustrated: _ Pike County Ballads by John Hay (1912) _ The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain (1916) _ *Robin Hood and His Adventures by Paul Creswick (1917) _ The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1920) _ *Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1920) _ Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving (1921) _ The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle (1922) _ Legends of Charlemagne by Thomas Bullfinch (1924) _ The Odyssey of Homer by George Herbert Palmer (1929) _ Men of Concord by Henry David Thoreau (1936) Wyeth also wanted to be a "fine artist" - an easel painter who would command the respect of the artistic community. But whenever he applied himself to this "serious" art, the life seems to go out of the painting. Thus his fame is as an illustrator and the fine art honors are given to his son Andrew, whose handling of landscape resembles nevertheless more closely N.C.'s illustrations than his easel work. In addition to books, Wyeth did illustrations for magazines, calendars, posters, murals, and painted maps for the National Geographic Society. Like many illustrators (Abbey, Brangwyn, Cornwell, etc.) Wyeth chose murals as one path to lasting fame. He painted scenes in the Missouri State Capitol building, images for several banks and hotels and for the National Geographic Society. His most ambitious project was a set of murals for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. He was working on these at the time of his death. — Photo of N. C. Wyeth LINKS — Self-Portrait — Cream of Wheat Bronco Buster (1907, 105x71cm; 800x542pix, 349kb; ZOOM to 2000x1355pix, 2126kb) — Tam On The Craig Face (86x63cm) — We Were Three Days Taking Out Even What Gold And Gems We Could Load On Ourselves And Our Beasts, The Treasure Of Three Queens' Pardons (76x99cm) |
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Born on 19 (17?) October 1754: Jean~Baptiste Regnault
“Renaud de Rome”, French baron, painter who died on 12 November
1829. — His first teacher was the history painter Jean Bardin, who took him to Rome in 1768. Back in Paris in 1772, Regnault transferred to the studio of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié. In 1776 Regnault won the Prix de Rome with Alexander and Diogenes and returned to Rome, where he was to spend the next four years at the Académie de France in the company of Jacques-Louis David and Jean-François-Pierre Peyron. Joseph-Marie Vien was one of his teachers. While witnessing at first hand Peyron’s development of a manner indebted to Poussin and David’s conversion to Caravaggesque realism, Regnault inclined first towards a Late Baroque mode in a Baptism of Christ, then, in Perseus Washing his Hands (1779), to the static Neo-classicism of Anton Raphael Mengs. Until 1787 he would sign his pictures Renaud de Rome, to disassociate himself from the mannered taste of French painting before the time of David. — Robert Lefèvre was an assistant of Regnault. — Regnault's students included Jean Victor Schnetz, Lenoir, Théodore Caruelle d' Aligny, Merry-Joseph Blondel, Louis-Charles-Auguste Couder, William Etty, George Foggo, Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Bon-Thomas Henry, Louis Hersent, Charles Paul Landon, Hippolyte Lecomte, Jules-Eugène Lenepveu, Édouard Henri Théophile Pingret, Jacques Réattu, Stendhal, Pierre-Antoine-Auguste Vafflard, Georg Friedrich Eberhard Wächter. LINKS — La liberté ou la mort (1795; 2566x2091pix, 3347kb) — Allégorie de la proclamation des Droits de l'Homme (1790; 1796x2930pix, 2051kb) L'éducation d'Achille par le centaure Chiron (1785; 700x569pix, 56kb) _ détail des bustes (495x768pix, 52kb) _ détail du visage d'Achille (700x609pix, 56kb) |
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Baptized as an infant on 19 October 1633: Benedetto
Gennari II, Italian Britishified artist who died on 09 December
1715. Gennari was baptised in Cento, a market-town near Bologna, and spent his youth in Bologna. Coming from a family of painters, he trained under his uncle, Guercino, who influenced his early style. When Guercino died, Benedetto and his brother Cesare took over direction of the studio. An admirer of the French king Louis XIV, Gennari travelled to France in March 1672 with his cousin Francesco Riva, and stayed for over sixteen months painting commissions for the nobility. His records indicate that he painted about fifteen pictures, including religious and mythological subjects and portraits. He journeyed on to London in September 1674, presenting to the King his painting Diana and Endymion, which he had painted for the Duc de Richelieu but not delivered, fearing he would not be paid for it. Gennari spent fourteen years in England as a court painter for Charles II and his successor James II, producing over a hundred pictures for Charles and another thirty-five for James. One of his early commissions was for a portrait of Queen Catherine, for whom he also painted altarpieces and other devotional subjects, and four large pictures of scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. He also painted several erotic pictures for Charles II, such as Sleeping Shepherd (1682). When the papists were ordered from London in 1689, Gennari followed the Catholic court of James II into exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, producing another thirty pictures for the monarch. In Gennari's twenty years away from Italy, his style underwent such change that he appeared almost to be a northern painter. He returned to Bologna in 1692, and in 1709 he was a founder-member of the Bolognese Accademia Clementina. Gennari, the nephew and student of the Italian painter Guercino, settled in England in 1674. He was much patronized by Charles II’s court, painting mythological and religious images as well as portraits. Catherine of Braganza and Mary of Modena, consorts of Charles II and James II respectively, relied on him in particular for devotional images for their Roman Catholic chapels. In 1689 he joined the deposed James II’s exiled Stuart court at Saint Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. Gennari holds a significant place in the history of religious and political art patronage in Britain. — Gennari was taught by Guercino in Bologna, and his early works, such as The Investiture of Saint Chiara (1657), are close to the style of Guercino. On Guercino’s death he and his brother Cesare Gennari [12 Oct 1637 – 11 Feb 1688] directed the studio. In March 1672, motivated by his admiration for Louis XIV, he journeyed to Paris, where commissions from the French nobility encouraged him to extend his stay over 16 months. In Paris he began to keep a diary, which lists his works in chronological sequence. In September 1674 he went to London, where commissions to paint royal portraits inaugurated a lengthy period of residence at the court of Charles II and subsequently of James II (reg 1685–1689). His mythological paintings include four large pictures of scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Tasso’s Rinaldo and Armida (1678). For the Catholic Queen Catherine he painted devotional pictures and altarpieces, among them The Annunciation (1675) and a series of pictures to commemorate important feast days of the Virgin. A full-length portrait of James II (1686) marked his appointment as First Painter to that monarch. For this court, which zealously promoted the Catholic faith, he continued to paint the traditional subjects of Catholicism, as for example an Annunciation (1686), painted as an altarpiece for the chapel in the palace at Whitehall, London. In 1689 he followed James II in exile to the court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, remaining there until his return to Bologna (1692). In 1709 he became one of the founder-members of the Bolognese Accademia Clementina. Apart from having the most eventful career of the Gennari family, Benedetto II developed, as a portrait painter, an intriguing eccentricity of style and iconography, diverging considerably from its origins in Guercino. — Giuseppe Gambarini was an assistant of Gennari. LINKS Orpheus Playing His Lyre (123x140cm) _ The story of Orpheus and his love for Eurydice is recorded in Book X of the Metamorphoses by Ovid. Gennari retells the story in three moving paintings. The first of the three paintings depicts Orpheus pleading with Pluto, god of the underworld, to allow him to descend into the Inferno to rescue Eurydice. The second painting captures the tragic fate of Eurydice trapped in flames after Orpheus breaks his oath to Pluto and looks back on Eurydice before they are safely out of the Inferno. This, the last painting shows us the lonely, love struck Orpheus playing his lyre for the lost Eurydice. Elizabeth Panton, Later Lady Arundell of Wardour, as Saint Catherine (1689, 127x102cm) _ The sitter, Elizabeth Panton [–1700], was the eldest daughter of Colonel Thomas Panton, a member of Charles II's life-guards and foot-guards. Panton's success at gambling enabled him to buy property in Herefordshire and London's west end, where he built what is now Panton Street. In July 1681 Elizabeth, with her mother and brother, left England, claiming health reasons but in actuality to escape the persecution they faced as Roman Catholics. The exiled Catholic court of James II at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France became a natural focal point for English papists abroad. Gennari followed the Stuart court into exile in 1689, and his notebook records that this was the first work he produced from there. Elizabeth Panton is portrayed, in a statement of her Catholicism, as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, holding a martyr's palm and the spiked wheel on which, according to legend, Saint Catherine's body was broken. This theme is seen in portraits of Charles II's queen, Catherine of Braganza, some twenty-five years earlier. It was a popular subject with English court sitters, even used by Lely in paintings of Charles's mistress, Barbara, Lady Castlemaine. Elizabeth returned to England in October 1690, presumably taking her portrait with her. In 1691 she married Henry, fifth Lord Arundell of Wardour. Gennari's combination of French and Italian influences sets him apart from his British contemporaries, and is exemplified in this portrait by the Italianate coloring and strong lighting. — Saint Roch Implores the Virgin Mary to Free Ferrara from the Plague (1668 engraving; 3541x2174pix; 6729kb) _ Saint Roch [1295-1327] cured the plague-stricken and made the plague disappear from many Italian cities. |