- published: 14 Jun 2008
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- author: MaireMc
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-
Barnes Foundation
Coordinates: 39°59′53″N 75°14′26″W / 39.99796°N 75.24059°W / 39.99796; -75.24059
The Barnes Foundation is an American educational art and horticultural institution with locations in Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and Logan Square, Philadelphia. It was founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, a chemist who collected art after making a fortune by co-developing an early antigonorrhea drug marketed as Argyrol.
Today, the foundation possesses more than 2,500 objects – including 800 paintings – estimated to be worth about $25 billion. These are primarily works by Impressionist and Modernist masters, but the collection includes many by leading European and American artists, as well as ancient works from other cultures.
The foundation became embroiled in controversy due to a financial crisis in the 1990s, partially related to longstanding restrictions related to the original trust and to its location in a residential neighborhood. The relocation of the gallery from Merion to the site in downtown Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, for enhanced public access, occurred on May 19, 2012. A 2009 documentary makes the case that the foundation was the subject of a takeover by other non-profit institutions, in violation of Barnes' will and of his wish that the gallery remain outside the hands of the Philadelphia establishment.
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Belle Île
Belle-Île, Belle-Île-en-Mer, or Belle Isle (ar Gerveur in Modern Breton; Guedel in Old Breton) is a French island off the coast of Brittany in the département of Morbihan, and the largest of Brittany's islands. It is 14 km from the Quiberon peninsula.
Administratively, the island forms a canton: the canton of Belle-Île. It is divided into four communes:
The island measures 17 km by 9 km and has an average altitude of 40 m. The area is about 84 km2. The coasts are a mixture between dangerously sharp cliff edges on the southwest side, the Côte Sauvage (Wild coast), and placid beaches, the largest being les Grands Sables (The great sands) and navigable harbours on the northeast side. The island's climate is oceanic, having less rain and milder winters than on the mainland.
The two main ports are Le Palais (accessible by ferry from Quiberon) and Sauzon (accessible by ferry from Quiberon and Lorient).
There used to be forests on the island, but these have long disappeared due to increasing agricultural use of the land.
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Brittany
Brittany (French: Bretagne [bʁətaɲ] (
listen); Breton: Breizh, pronounced [brɛjs]; Gallo: Bertaèyn) is a cultural region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain). Brittany is considered as one of the six Celtic nations.
Brittany occupies the northwest peninsula of continental Europe in northwest France. It is bordered by the English Channel to the north, the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Its land area is 34,023 km² (13,136 sq mi). The historical province of Brittany is divided into five departments: Finistère in the west, Côtes-d'Armor in the north, Ille-et-Vilaine in the north east, Loire-Atlantique in the south east and Morbihan in the south on the Bay of Biscay.
In 1956, French regions were created by gathering departments between them. The Region of Brittany comprises, since then, four of the five Breton departments (80% of historical Brittany), while the remaining area of the old Brittany, the Loire-Atlantique department, around Nantes, forms part of the Pays de la Loire region. This territorial organisation is regularly contested. The Kingdom and the Duchy of Brittany, the province of Brittany, and the modern Region of Brittany cover the Western part of Armorica, as it was known during the period of Roman occupation.
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Brooklyn
Coordinates: 40°41′34″N 73°59′25″W / 40.69278°N 73.99028°W / 40.69278; -73.99028
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with approximately 2.5 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County (Manhattan). It is also the westernmost county on Long Island.
Brooklyn was an independent city until it was annexed by New York City in 1898. It continues to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves where particular ethnic groups and cultures predominate.
Brooklyn's official motto is Eendraght Maeckt Maght. Written in the (early modern spelling of the) Dutch language, it is inspired by the motto of the United Dutch Provinces and translated "Unity makes strength". The motto is displayed on the borough seal and flag, which also feature a young robed woman bearing fasces, a traditional emblem of republicanism. Brooklyn's official colors are blue and gold.
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Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III (1760–1820), Brown is the third oldest institution of higher education in New England and seventh oldest in the United States.
Brown was the first college in the nation to accept students regardless of religious affiliation. Academically, Brown consists of The College, Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, and the School of Engineering. Brown's international programs are organized through the Watson Institute for International Studies. The New Curriculum, instituted in 1969, eliminated distribution requirements and allows any course to be taken on a satisfactory/no credit basis. In addition, there are no pluses or minuses in the letter grading system. The school has the oldest undergraduate engineering program in the Ivy League (1847). Pembroke College, Brown's women's college, merged with the university in 1971. While Brown is considered a small research university with 689 full-time faculty and 2,000 graduate students, five of its professors and two of its alumni have been honored as Nobel Laureates. The faculty added 100 new professors in the past 10 years under the Boldly Brown campaign.
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Hermitage Museum
Coordinates: 59°56′28″N 30°18′46″E / 59.941°N 30.3129°E / 59.941; 30.3129
The State Hermitage (Russian: Госуда́рственный Эрмита́ж; IPA: [gəsʊˈdarstvʲɪnɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ]) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise nearly 3 million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since 1990, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.
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Marseille
Coordinates: 43°17′47″N 5°22′12″E / 43.2964°N 5.37°E / 43.2964; 5.37
Marseille (
/mɑrˈseɪ/; also Marseilles in English; French: [maʁsɛj], locally: [mɑχˈsɛjə]; Occitan: Marselha [maʀˈsejɔ, maʀˈsijɔ]), known in antiquity as Massilia or Massalia (from Greek: Μασσαλία), is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of 240.62 km2 (93 sq mi). The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of 1,204 km2 (465 sq mi). 1,530,000 or 1,601,095 people live in the Marseille metropolitan area, ranking it third among French metropolitan areas after Paris and Lyon. Located on the southeast coast of France, Marseille is France's largest city on the Mediterranean coast and largest commercial port. Marseille is the capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, as well as the capital of the Bouches-du-Rhône department. Its inhabitants are called Marseillais.
Marseille is the second largest city in France after Paris and the centre of the third largest metropolitan area in France after Paris and Lyon. To the east, starting in the small fishing village of Callelongue on the outskirts of Marseille and stretching as far as Cassis, are the Calanques, a rugged coastal area interspersed with small fjords. Further east still are the Sainte-Baume, a 1,147 m (3,763 ft) mountain ridge rising from a forest of deciduous trees, the town of Toulon and the French Riviera. To the north of Marseille, beyond the low Garlaban and Etoile mountain ranges, is the 1,011 m (3,317 ft) Mont Sainte Victoire. To the west of Marseille is the former artists' colony of l'Estaque; further west are the Côte Bleue, the Gulf of Lion and the Camargue region in the Rhône delta. The airport lies to the north west of the city at Marignane on the Étang de Berre.
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Museum of Modern Art
Coordinates: 40°45′41″N 73°58′40″W / 40.761484°N 73.977664°W / 40.761484; -73.977664
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media.
MoMA's library and archives hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, as well as individual files on more than 70,000 artists. The archives contain primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art. It also houses a restaurant, The Modern, run by Alsace-born chef Gabriel Kreuther.
The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. They became known variously as "the Ladies", "the daring ladies" and "the adamantine ladies". They rented modest quarters for the new museum in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue (corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street) in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to become president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it was America's premier museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism.
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New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km2), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km2), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
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Adolf Loos
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austro-Hungarian architect. He was influential in European Modern architecture, and in his essay Ornament and Crime he repudiated the florid style of the Vienna Secession, the Austrian version of Art Nouveau. In this and many other essays he contributed to the elaboration of a body of theory and criticism of Modernism in architecture.
Born in 1870 in Brünn (Brno) to an ethnically German family, Loos was nine when his father, a stonemason, died. He completed technical school in Liberec, Czech Republic, which is now Technical University Liberec (a plaque located in front of Pavilion H commemorates this) and later studied at Dresden Technical University before moving to Vienna.
Loos stayed in America for three years, where he had an uncle living in Philadelphia. He visited the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and appreciated the work of Louis Sullivan. He visited St. Louis and did odd jobs in New York. Loos returned to Vienna in 1896 a man of taste and intellectual refinement, immediately entering the Viennese intelligentsia. His friends subsequently included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Arnold Schönberg, Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus. He quickly established himself as the preferred architect of Vienna’s cultured bourgeoisie. Searching for marble in 1904 he first visited the island of Skyros and was confrontated with the cubic architecture of the Greek islands.
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Albert Aurier
G. Albert Aurier (5 May 1865 – 5 October 1892) was a poet, art critic and painter, devoted to Symbolism.
Son of a notary born in Châteauroux, Indre, Aurier went to Paris in 1883 to study law, but soon his attention was drawn to art and literature, and he began to contribute to Symolist periodicals. He reviewed the annual Salon in Le Décadent, later he contributed to La Plume, in 1889 to Le Moderniste, and from its foundation in 1890, to the Mercure de France. There the essays were published, on which Aurier's fame as well as the fame of the artists discussed is founded: "Les Isolés: Vincent van Gogh" and "Le Symbolisme en peinture: Paul Gauguin".
After a trip to Marseille, Aurier died at the age of twenty-seven in Paris, October 5, 1892, from a typhus infection. The next day, friends, writers and artists accompanied his coffin to the funeral train departing from the Orléans station (today Musée d'Orsay) for Châteauroux, where Aurier's remains were entombed in the family grave.
Six months after his death, in April 1893, his friends published his collected writings (Œuvres posthumes), edited by the Mercure de France.
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Albert Marquet
Albert Marquet (27 March 1875 – 14 June 1947) was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement.
Marquet was born in 1875 at Bordeaux. In 1890 he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work. Marquet began studies in 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts under Gustave Moreau, a symbolist artist who was a follower of the Romantic tradition of Eugène Delacroix.
In these years, Marquet exhibited paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. Although he did not sell many paintings, the artistic community of Paris became aware of his work. His early compositions were characterised by a clear and painterly Fauvist approach, in which he had a fine control of the drawing and responded to light, not only by intensifying the strongest tones, but also by seeing the weaker ones in coloristic terms.
In 1905 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne where his paintings were put together with those of Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Henri Manguin, Georges Braque, Louis Valtat, Georges Dufrénoy and Jean Puy.
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Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (10 October 1901, Borgonovo, Stampa – 11 January 1966, Chur) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.
Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter. Alberto was the eldest of four children and was interested in art from an early age.
Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, now part of the Swiss municipality of Stampa, near the Italian border. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the Italian Inquisition. His father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a painter. Alberto attended the School of Fine Arts in Geneva.
In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Auguste Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Bror Hjorth and Balthus.
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Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing abstract sculptures he called "mobiles". In addition to mobile and "stabile" sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.
Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1898. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them in Philadelphia. Calder’s grandfather, sculptor Alexander Milne Calder, was born in Scotland and immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868. He is best known for the colossal statue of William Penn on top of Philadelphia's City Hall tower.
Calder’s mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter who studied at the Académie Julian and the Sorbonne in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She then moved to Philadelphia where she met Alexander Stirling Calder while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Calder’s parents were married on February 22,1895.
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Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin (10 August 1878 – 26 June 1957) was a German novelist, essayist, and doctor, best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929). A prolific writer whose œuvre spans more than half a century and a wide variety of literary movements and styles, Döblin is one of the most important figures of German literary modernism. His complete works comprise over a dozen novels ranging in genre from historical novels to science fiction to novels about the modern metropolis; several dramas, radio plays, and screenplays; a true crime story; a travel account; two book-length philosophical treatises; scores of essays on politics, religion, art, and society; and numerous letters—his complete works, republished by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag and Fischer Verlag, span more than thirty volumes. His first published novel, Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lung (The Three Leaps of Wang Lun), appeared in 1915 and his final novel, Hamlet oder Die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende (Tales of a Long Night) was published in 1956, one year before his death.
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Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry (8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side.
Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (e.g. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, "Merdre!", has been translated into English as "Pshit!", "Shitteth!", "Shittr!", "Shikt!", "Shrit!", "Pschitt!", and "Shitsky!"), he invented a pseudoscience called 'Pataphysics.
A precociously brilliant student, Jarry enthralled his classmates with a gift for pranks and troublemaking.
At the lycée in Rennes when he was 15, he led of a group of boys who devoted much time and energy to poking fun at their well-meaning, but obese and incompetent physics teacher, a man named Hébert. Jarry and classmate Henri Morin wrote a play they called Les Polonais and performed it with marionettes in the home of one of their friends. The main character, Père Heb, was a blunderer with a huge belly; three teeth (one of stone, one of iron, and one of wood); a single, retractable ear; and a misshapen body. In Jarry's later work Ubu Roi, Père Heb would develop into Ubu, one of the most monstrous and astonishing characters in French literature.
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Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley (French pronunciation: [al.fʁɛd sis.lɛ]) (30 October 1839 – 29 January 1899) was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air (i.e., outdoors). He never deviated into figure painting and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, never found that Impressionism did not fulfill his artistic needs.
Among his important works are a series of paintings of the River Thames, mostly around Hampton, executed in 1874, and landscapes depicting places in or near Moret-sur-Loing.
Sisley was born on 30 October 1839 in Paris to affluent British parents. His father, William Sisley, was in the silk business, and his mother Felicia Sell was a cultivated music connoisseur.
In 1857 at the age of 18 Sisley was sent to London to study for a career in business; but he abandoned it after four years and returned to Paris in 1861. From 1862 he studied at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts within the atelier of Swiss artist Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, where he became acquainted with Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Together they would paint landscapes en plein air rather than in the studio, in order to realistically capture the transient effects of sunlight. This approach, innovative at the time, resulted in paintings more colorful and more broadly painted than the public was accustomed to seeing. Consequently, Sisley and his friends initially had few opportunities to exhibit or sell their work. Their works were usually rejected by the jury of the most important art exhibition in France, the annual Salon. During the 1860s, though, Sisley was in a better financial position than some of his fellow artists, as he received an allowance from his father.
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Alice Bailly
Alice Bailly (February 25, 1872 – January 1, 1938) was a radical Swiss painter, known for her interpretation of cubism and her multimedia wool paintings.
Bailly was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where she attended separate classes for women at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under Hugues Bovy and Denise Sarkiss. She also went on to study in Munich, Germany. By 1906 she had moved to Paris, where she befriended a number of notable modernist painters such as Juan Gris, Francis Picabia, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Sonia Lewitska and Marie Laurencin.
While in Paris she became interested in Fauvism, and showed some paintings in the style at the Salon d'Automne alongside principal painters of the movement.
At the beginning of World War I, Bailly returned to Switzerland and invented her signature tableaux-laine or "wool paintings" in which short strands of colored yarn acted as brush strokes. Between 1913 and 1922 she made approximately fifty paintings in this style. She was also briefly involved with the Dada movement.
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Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (February 3, 1898, Kuortane – May 11, 1976, Helsinki) was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware. Aalto's early career runs in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the twentieth century and many of his clients were industrialists; among these were the Ahlström-Gullichsen family. The span of his career, from the 1920s to the 1970s, is reflected in the styles of his work, ranging from Nordic Classicism of the early work, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930s to a more organic modernist style from the 1940s onwards. What is typical for his entire career, however, is a concern for design as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art; whereby he - together with his first wife Aino Aalto - would design not just the building, but give special treatments to the interior surfaces and design furniture, lamps, and furnishings and glassware. The Alvar Aalto Museum, designed by Aalto himself, is located in what is regarded as his home city Jyväskylä.
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Alwin Nikolais
Alwin Nikolais (November 25, 1910 in Southington, Connecticut – May 8, 1993) was an American choreographer.
Nikolais studied piano at an early age and began his performing career as an organist accompanying silent films. As a young artist, he gained skills in scenic design, acting, puppetry and music composition. It was after attending a performance by the German dancer Mary Wigman that he was inspired to study dance. He received his early dance training at Bennington College from the great figures of the modern dance world: Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Louis Horst, and others.
In 1940, in collaboration with Truda Kaschmann, his first modern dance teacher, Nikolais received a commission to create Eight Column Line, his first ballet. The work was presented at one of the events of Hartford social season that counted Salvador Dalí and Léonide Massine as honorary patrons and was well received.
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Ambroise Vollard
Ambroise Vollard (3 July 1866, Saint-Denis, La Réunion – 21 July 1939 in Versailles, France) is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with providing exposure and emotional support to numerous notable and unknown artists, including Paul Cézanne, Aristide Maillol, Renoir, Louis Valtat, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Georges Rouault, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh. He is also well-known as an avid art collector and publisher.
Born and raised in a French colony, after his matura (final exams) in La Réunion, he went to study jurisprudence in France, for a while in Montpellier, then at the École de droit in Paris, where he received his degree in 1888.
Meanwhile, Vollard himself converted into an "amateur-merchant", and in 1893, he established his own art gallery, at Rue Laffitte, then the center of the Parisian market for contemporary art. There Vollard mounted his first major exhibitions: Manet and others were followed by Gauguin and Van Gogh (4 – 30 June 1895); for Gabriel Mourey, French correspondent of The Studio in Paris, this was simply a matter of "Scylla and Charybdis".
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Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (Italian pronunciation: [ameˈdɛo modiʎˈʎani]; July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis, exacerbated by poverty, overwork and addiction to alcohol and narcotics.
Modigliani was born into a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy. A port city, Livorno had long served as a refuge for those persecuted for their religion, and was home to a large Jewish community. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Solomon Garsin, had immigrated to Livorno in the 18th century as a refugee.
Modigliani's mother (Eugénie Garsin) who was born and grew up in Marseille, was descended from an intellectual, scholarly family of Sephardic Jews, generations of whom had resided along the Mediterranean coastline. Her ancestors were learned people, fluent in many languages, known authorities on sacred Jewish texts and founders of a school of Talmudic studies. Family legend traced the Garsin's lineage to the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The family business was believed to be a credit agency with branches in Livorno, Marseille, Tunis, and London. Their financial fortunes ebbed and flowed. At times they enjoyed affluence, at other times they were subject to dire financial crises and reduced circumstances.
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André Breton
André Breton (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃dʁe bʁətɔ̃]; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto (Manifeste du surréalisme) of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
Born to a family of modest means in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, he studied medicine and psychiatry. During World War I he worked in a neurological ward in Nantes, where he met the devotee of Alfred Jarry, Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably. Vaché committed suicide at age 24, and his war-time letters to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled Lettres de guerre (1919), for which Breton wrote four introductory essays.
Breton married his first wife, Simone Kahn, on 15 September 1921. The couple relocated to rue Fontaine # 42 in Paris on 1 January 1922. The apartment on rue Fontaine became home to Breton's collection of more than 5,300 items: modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, books, art catalogs, journals, manuscripts, and works of popular and Oceanic art.
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André Derain
André Derain (10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.
Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. In 1898, while studying to be an engineer at the Académie Camillo, he attended painting classes under Eugène Carrière, and there met Matisse. In 1900, he met and shared a studio with Maurice de Vlaminck and began to paint his first landscapes. His studies were interrupted from 1901 to 1904 when he was conscripted into the French army. Following his release from service, Matisse persuaded Derain's parents to allow him to abandon his engineering career and devote himself solely to painting; subsequently Derain attended the Académie Julian.
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André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃dʁe pɔl ɡijom ʒid]; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation between the two sides of his personality, split apart by a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, even to the point of owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. His political activity is informed by the same ethos, as suggested by his repudiation of communism after his 1936 voyage to the USSR.
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André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson (4 January 1896 – 28 October 1987) was a French artist.
Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris. He fought for France during World War I and was seriously injured.
His early works display an interest in cubism. He later became associated with surrealism, and he was one of the most enthusiastic employers of automatic drawing, making a number of automatic works in pen and ink. Masson would often force himself to work under strict conditions, for example, after long periods of time without food or sleep, or under the influence of drugs. He believed forcing himself into a reduced state of consciousness would help his art be free from rational control, and hence get closer to the workings of his subconscious mind.[citation needed]
From around 1926 he experimented by throwing sand and glue onto canvas and making oil paintings based around the shapes that formed. By the end of the 1920s, however, he was finding automatism rather restricting, and he left the surrealist movement and turned instead to a more structured style, often producing works with a violent or erotic theme, and making a number of paintings in reaction to the Spanish Civil War (he associated once more with the surrealists at the end of the 1930s).
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Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives. It is the largest museum in the United States of America dedicated to a single artist.
Andy Warhol's artwork ranged in many forms of media that include hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. He was a pioneer in computer-generated art using Amiga computers that were introduced in 1985, just before his death in 1987. He founded Interview Magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. Andy Warhol is also notable as a gay man who lived openly as such before the gay liberation movement. His studio, The Factory, was a famous gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons. Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market". Warhol's works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold.
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Anna Sokolow
Anna Sokolow (February 9, 1910, Hartford, Connecticut – March 29, 2000 in New York City, New York) was a Jewish American dancer and choreographer.
Sokolow began studying dance and performing with instructors at the Emanuel Sisterhood Settlement House; in early adolescence, she left school to train full time. She began studying in earnest at what became the Neighborhood Playhouse, where her teachers included Blanche Talmud, Bird Larson, Martha Graham and Louis Horst.
She started her professional career in 1929 as a member of Martha Graham's company. Beginning in the 1930s, she affiliated herself with the politicized "radical dance" movement, out of which developed her work Anti-War Trilogy (1933). By 1936, she had organized her first company, Dance Unit. Sokolow was also associated with the socially conscious collective the New Dance Group and the larger Workers Dance League. According to dance historian Ellen Graff, Sokolow's work with these groups was instrumental in transforming the "agitprop style" associated with early political dance by melding it with "emerging professional and artistic standards in 'new' dance." Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, she performed and choreographed both solo and ensemble works, which tackled subject matter that included the exploitation of workers and growing troubles of Jews in Germany. Several works from this period, including Anti-War Trilogy, were set to music by the composer Alex North.
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Anthony Caro
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro, OM, CBE (born 8 March 1924 in New Malden, then in Surrey) is an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects.
Caro was educated at Charterhouse School and Christ's College, Cambridge, earning a degree in engineering. In 1946, after time in the Royal Navy, he studied sculpture at the Regent Street Polytechnic before pursuing further studies at the Royal Academy Schools from 1947 until 1952.
Anthony Caro found modernism when working as an assistant to Henry Moore in the 1950s. After being introduced to the American sculptor David Smith in the early 1960s, he abandoned his earlier figurative work and started constructing sculptures by welding or bolting together collections of prefabricated metal, such as I-beams, steel plates and meshes. Often the finished piece is then painted in a bold flat colour.
Caro found international success in the late 1950s and for a time was popular in the US. He was also influential as a tutor at St Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London inspiring a younger generation of abstract British Sculptors led by former students and assistants like Phillip King, Tim Scott, William G. Tucker, Peter Hide, and Richard Deacon; as well as a reaction group including Bruce McLean, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long and Gilbert and George. He and several former students were asked to join the seminal 1966 show at the Jewish Museum in New York entitled, Primary Structures representing the British influence on the "New Art". Caro taught at Bennington College from 1963 to 1965, along with painter Jules Olitski and sculptor David Smith.
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Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов, pronounced [ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕexəf]; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practised as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text."
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Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (Catalan pronunciation: [ənˈtɔni ɣəwˈði]; 25 June 1852–10 June 1926) was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.
Much of Gaudí's work was marked by his four life passions: architecture, nature, religion and love for Catalonia. Gaudí studied every detail of his creations, integrating into his architecture a series of crafts in which he was skilled: ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging and carpentry. He introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as trencadís, made of waste ceramic pieces.
After a few years under the influence of neo-Gothic art and Oriental techniques, Gaudí became part of the Catalan Modernista movement which was reaching its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work transcended mainstream Modernisme, culminating in an organic style inspired by nature. Gaudí rarely drew detailed plans of his works, instead preferring to create them as three-dimensional scale models and molding the details as he was conceiving them.
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Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director. Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine "little Anthony", and was among a list of names which Artaud used throughout his writing career.
Antonin Artaud was born in Marseille, France, to Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud. Both his parents were natives of Smyrna (modern-day İzmir), and he was greatly affected by his Greek ancestry. His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and one sister survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis, which gave Artaud a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. He also suffered from neuralgia, stammering and severe bouts of clinical depression, which was treated with the use of opium — resulting in a life-long addiction.
Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium stays for their temperamental son, which were both prolonged and expensive. This lasted five years, with a break of two months in June and July 1916, when Artaud was conscripted into the French Army. He was allegedly discharged due to his self-induced habit of sleepwalking. During Artaud's "rest cures" at the sanatorium, he read Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe. In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed laudanum for Artaud, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiates.
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Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg (help·info) (pronounced [ˈaːɐ̯nɔlt ˈʃøːnbɛɐ̯k]; 13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. He used the spelling Schönberg until after his move to the United States in 1934 (Steinberg 1995, 463), whereupon he altered it to Schoenberg "in deference to American practice" (Foss 1951, 401), though one writer claims he made the change a year earlier (Ross 2007, 45).
Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th-century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking or, in some cases, passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, his music was labeled, alongside jazz, as degenerate art[citation needed].
Schoenberg was widely known early in his career for his success in simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify pioneering innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested the term "atonality" as inaccurate in describing his intentions) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.
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Arshile Gorky
Arshile Gorky ( /ˌɑrʃiːl ˈɡɔrkiː/; born Vostanik Manuk Adoyan; Armenian: Արշիլ Գորկի, Վոստանիկ Մանուկ Ադոյան; April 15, 1904? – July 21, 1948) was an American painter of Armenian descent who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.[clarification needed]
Gorky was born in the village of Khorgom, situated on the shores of Lake Van. It is not known exactly when he was born: it was sometime between 1902 and 1905. (In later years Gorky was vague about even the date of his birth, changing it from year to year.) In 1910 his father emigrated to America to avoid the draft, leaving his family behind in the town of Van.
In 1915 Gorky fled Lake Van during the Armenian Genocide and escaped with his mother and his three sisters into Russian-controlled territory. In the aftermath of the genocide, Gorky's mother died of starvation in Yerevan in 1919. Arriving in America in 1920, the 16-year old Gorky was reunited with his father, but they never grew close. At age 31, Gorky married. In the process of reinventing his identity, he changed his name to "Arshile Gorky", even telling people he was a relative of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky.
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Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger (pronounced [aʁtyʁ ɔnɛɡɛːʁ]; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les Six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.
Born Oscar-Arthur Honegger (the first name was never used) in Le Havre, France, he initially studied harmony and violin in Paris, and after a brief period in Zurich, returned there to study with Charles-Marie Widor and Vincent d'Indy. He continued to study through the 1910s, before writing the ballet Le dit des jeux du monde in 1918, generally considered to be his first characteristic work. In 1926 he married Andrée Vaurabourg, a pianist and fellow student at the Paris Conservatoire, on the condition that they live in separate apartments. They lived apart for the duration of their marriage, with the exceptions of an attempt at living together in 1935, which lasted less than a year, and the last year of Honegger's life, when he could no longer live alone. They had one daughter, Pascale, born in 1932. Honegger also had a son, Jean-Claude (1926–2003), with the singer Claire Croiza.
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Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.
Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York City, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants. His father owned a women's clothing manufacturing business employing some 400 people. He became a wealthy and respected man in the community. (BBC TV Interview; Miller and Yentob; 'Finishing the Picture,' 2004) The family, including his younger sister Joan, lived on East 110th Street in Manhattan and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens. They employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.
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Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (/ræmˈboʊ/ or /ˈræmboʊ/; French pronunciation: [aʁtyʁ ʁɛ̃bo]; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 20. As part of the decadent movement, Rimbaud influenced modern literature, music and art. He was known to have been a libertine and a restless soul, travelling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer just after his 37th birthday.
Arthur Rimbaud was born into the provincial middle class of Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières) in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. He was the second child of a career soldier, Frédéric Rimbaud, and his wife Marie-Catherine-Vitalie Cuif. His father, a Burgundian of Provençal extraction, rose from a simple recruit to the rank of captain, and spent the greater part of his army years in foreign service. Captain Rimbaud fought in the conquest of Algeria and was awarded the Légion d'honneur. The Cuif family was a solidly established Ardennais family, but they were plagued by unstable and bohemian characters; two of Arthur Rimbaud's uncles from his mother's side were alcoholics.
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Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt (born 11 September 1935; Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrvo ˈpært]) is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also takes inspiration from Gregorian chant.
Pärt was born in Paide, Järva County, Estonia. A prolonged struggle with Soviet officials led him to emigrate with his wife and their two sons in 1980. He lived first in Vienna, where he took Austrian citizenship, and then re-located to Berlin. He returned to Estonia around the turn of the 21st century and now lives alternately in Berlin and in Tallinn.
Familiar works by Pärt are Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell (1977) and the string quintet "Fratres I" (1977, revised 1983), which he transcribed for string orchestra and percussion, the solo violin "Fratres II" and the cello ensemble "Fratres III" (both 1980).
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August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg ( pronounced (help·info); 22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed forms of dramatic action, language, and visual composition so innovative that many were to become technically possible to stage only with the advent of film. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel.
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Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.
Newman was born in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. He studied philosophy at the City College of New York and worked in his father's business manufacturing clothing. From the 1930s he made paintings, said to be in an expressionist style, but eventually destroyed all these works.
A well-respected writer and critic who also organized exhibitions and wrote catalogs, Newman later became a member of the Uptown Group.
Barnett Newman wrote catalogue forewords and reviews before having his first solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Newman remarked in one of the Artists' Session at Studio 35: "We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image." Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of the way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter on April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis: ...it is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it."
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Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot (January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.
In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government, and judged by academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. It was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar.
She became the sister-in-law of her friend and colleague, Édouard Manet, when she married his brother, Eugène.
Morisot was born in Bourges, Cher, France into a successful bourgeois family. Both she and her sister, Edma Morisot, chose to become painters. Once Berthe Morisot settled on pursuing art, her family did not impede her career.
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Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht (German: [ˈbɛɐ̯tɔlt ˈbʁɛçt] ( listen); born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (help·info); 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.
An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble – the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel.
Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, (about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of Munich) to a conventionally-devout Protestant mother and a Catholic father (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. Thanks to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would impact on his writing throughout his life. From her, too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied. At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership, Neher designing many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helping to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.
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Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók ( /ˈbɑrtɒk/; Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈbɒrtoːk]; March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer (Gillies 2001). Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology.
Béla Bartók was born in the small Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (since 1920 Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on March 25, 1881. Bartók's family reflected some of the ethno-cultural diversities of the country. His father, Béla Sr., considered himself thoroughly Hungarian, because on his father's side the Bartók family was a Hungarian lower noble family, originating from Borsod county (Móser 2006a, 44; Bartók 1981, 13), though his mother was from a Roman Catholic Serbian family (Bayley 2001, 16). His mother, Paula (born Paula Voit), had German as a mother tongue, but was ethnically of "mixed Hungarian" origin: Her maiden name Voit is German, probably of Saxon origin from Upper Hungary (Since 1920 in Czechoslovakia, since 1993 in Slovakia), though she spoke Hungarian fluently.[citation needed] Among her closest forefathers there were family names like Polereczky (Magyarized Polish or Slovak) and Fegyveres (Magyar). Béla displayed notable musical talent very early in life: according to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences (Gillies 1990, 6). By the age of four, he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano; his mother began formally teaching him the next year.
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Camille Mauclair
Séverin Faust (December 29, 1872, Paris – April 23, 1945), better known by his pseudonym Camille Mauclair, was a French poet, novelist, biographer, travel writer, and art critic.
Mauclair was a great admirer of Stéphane Mallarmé, to whom several works were devoted, as well as Maurice Maeterlinck. He was initially a poet and novelist. His poetry attracted some attention, and was set to music by Ernest Bloch, Gustave Charpentier, and Ernest Chausson and Nadia Boulanger. His best-known novel is Le Soleil des morts (1898), a roman à clef containing fictionalized portraits of leading avant-garde writers, artists, and musicians of the 1890s, that has in retrospect been seen as an important historical document of the fin de siècle. He also wrote several non-fiction books about music including Schumann (1906), The Religion of Music (1909), The History of European Music from 1850-1914 (1914) and The Heroes of the Orchestra (1921) which contributed greatly to French awareness of musical trends in turn-of-the-century Paris.
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Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro (French pronunciation: [kamij pisaʁo]) (10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the “pivotal” figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the “dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality”.Cézanne said "he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord," and he was also one of Gauguin's masters. Renoir referred to his work as “revolutionary”, through his artistic portrayals of the "common man", as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur".
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Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. (3 February 1889 – 20 March 1968) was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.
Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark. His birth mother was an unmarried Scanian maid named Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, and he was put up for adoption by his birth father, Jens Christian Torp, a married Danish farmer living in Sweden who was his mother's employer. He spent the first two years of his life in orphanages until his adoption by a typographer named Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sr., and his wife, Inger Marie (née Olsen). His adoptive parents were emotionally distant and his childhood was largely unhappy. He later recalled that his parents "constantly let me know that I should be grateful for the food I was given and that I strictly had no claim on anything, since my mother got out of paying by lying down to die." But he was a highly intelligent school student, who left home and formal education at the age of sixteen. He dissociated himself from his adoptive family, but their teachings were to influence the themes of many of his films.
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Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (French: [ʃaʁl bodlɛʁ]; April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.
Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of the earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connect it more closely to the work of the contemporary 'Parnassians'. As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of a new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence) and refined sensual and aesthetical pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of 'symbols', (images which take on an expanded function within the poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé, who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard.
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Charles Camoin
Charles Camoin[p] (23 September 1879 – 20 May 1965) was a French painter associated with the Fauves.
Born in Marseille, France, Camoin met Henri Matisse in Gustave Moreau's class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Matisse and his friends (including Camoin, Henri Manguin, Albert Marquet, Georges Rouault, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck), formed the original group of artists labeled the Fauves (meaning "the wild beasts") for their wild, expressionist-like use of color. Camoin always remained close to Matisse. He painted a portrait of Matisse, which is in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Museum in Paris.
Charles Camoin's works have been widely shown in France and are in such major collections as the Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris in addition to the Centre Georges Pompidou and many of the French regional museums. In 1955, he was awarded the Prix du President de la Republique at the Biennale of Menton. He died in Paris on May 20, 1965.
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Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernistcomposer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original". Ives combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music, and was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements, and quarter tones, foreshadowing many musical innovations of the 20th century.
Sources of Ives' tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs, the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.
Charles Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1874, the son of George Ives, a U.S. Army bandleader in the American Civil War, and his wife Mary Parmelee. A strong influence of Charles's may have been sitting in the Danbury town square, listening to his father's marching band and other bands on other sides of the square simultaneously. George Ives' unique music lessons were also a strong influence on Charles; George Ives took an open-minded approach to musical theory, encouraging his son to experiment in bitonal and polytonal harmonizations. It was from his father that Charles Ives also learned the music of Stephen Foster. Ives became a church organist at the age of 14 and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on 'America' .
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Charles Weidman
Charles Weidman (1901 – 1975) is a renowned choreographer, modern dancer and teacher. He is well known as one of the pioneers of Modern Dance in America. He wanted to break free from the traditional movements of dance forms popular at the time to create a uniquely American style of movement. Born in 1901, he choreographed from the 1920s to the 1970s until his death in 1975. While he is most famous for his work with Doris Humphrey, Weidman did a lot of work on his own. He created a bridge to a new range of movement that he only began to explore. His work inspired many and helped to create a whole genre of dance that is still evolving today.
Charles Weidman began choreographing in a time of great change in American Culture. He began his career as a dancer for the Denishawn Company, but soon decided to break free from their exotic style of movement and create a new style that was unique to America. He started the Humphrey-Weidman Company with Doris Humphrey in 1927, right in the midst of the Roaring 20s. During this decade society, art and culture were blossoming and thriving. Jazz music began to flourish, dancing became a popular activity, technology flourished, and the US enjoyed a general sense of economic development. "It was a positive time, one that said yes to human values, a time full of vitality, there was that urgent need to express oneself but also to express the time in which one lived. There was a belief in the future". In a time when change was coming rapidly, where innovations were popular, Weidman brought this to the dance world and changed dance forever. While Weidman began his choreography during this immense time of change, he also choreographed for four decades after he began. He worked through the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II. Although his work is not very political, his themes and ideas were designed to embody American culture.
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Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing them, and from 1918 he was even composing the music for them. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.
Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin was identified with left-wing politics during the McCarthy era and he was ultimately forced to resettle in Europe from 1952.
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Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy (French pronunciation: [klod aʃil dəbysi]) (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. In France, he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. A crucial figure in the transition to the modern era in Western music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers.
His music is noted for its sensory component and for not often forming around one key or pitch. Often Debussy's work reflected the activities or turbulence in his own life. In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
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Claude Monet
Claude Monet (French pronunciation: [klod mɔnɛ/mɔne]) (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).
Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 on the 5th floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians. On 20 May 1841, he was baptized in the local parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as Oscar-Claude, but his parents called him simply Oscar. In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery business, but Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer.
On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts. Locals knew him well for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857, he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting. Both received the influence of Johan Barthold Jongkind.
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Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.
Clyfford Still was a leader in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately following World War II. Still's contemporaries included Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Though the styles and approaches of these artists varied considerably, Abstract Expressionism is marked by abstract forms, expressive brushwork, and monumental scale, all of which were used to convey universal themes about creation, life, struggle, and death ("the human condition"), themes that took on a considerable relevance during and after World War II. Described by many as the most anti-traditional of the Abstract Expressionists,[citation needed] Still is credited with laying the groundwork for the movement. Still's shift from representational painting to abstraction occurred between 1938 and 1942, earlier than his colleagues, who continued to paint in figurative-surrealist styles well into the 1940s.[citation needed]
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Cone sisters
The Cone sisters were Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949) of Baltimore, Maryland. Together they gathered one of the finest collections of modern French art in the United States. They were wealthy socialites during the Gilded Age.
Their parents were Herman (Kahn) Cone and Helen (Guggenheimer) Cone, who were German-Jewish immigrants. Herman, who had immigrated from Altenstadt in Bavaria (South of Ulm) changed the spelling of his last name from Kahn to "Cone" almost immediately upon arrival in the United States in 1845, perhaps to become more American. Until 1871 the family lived in Jonesboro, Tennessee, where they had a successful grocery business. This is where the first five of twelve children were born, including Claribel and Etta. They then moved to Baltimore, Maryland.
The eldest Cone brothers, Moses and Ceasar [the non-classical spelling is correct], later relocated to Greensboro, North Carolina. They established a textile business they named Proximity Manufacturing Company (long known as Cone Mills Corporation, now a unit of International Textile Group). During World War I the textile mills that "Brother Moses" started would again increase their fortunes.
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Constantin Brâncuși
Constantin Brâncuși (Romanian pronunciation: [konstanˈtin brɨnˈkuʃʲ]; surname sometimes spelled Brâncuș; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His abstract style emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Famous Brâncuși works include the Sleeping Muse (1908), The Kiss (1908), Prometheus (1911), Mademoiselle Pogany (1913), The Newborn (1915), Bird in Space (1919) and The Column of the Infinite (Coloana infinitului), popularly known as The Endless Column (1938). Considered the pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture.
Brâncuși grew up in the village of Hobiţa Romania, Gorj, near Târgu Jiu, close to Romania's Carpathian Mountains, an area known for its rich tradition of folk crafts, particularly woodcarving. Geometric patterns of the region are seen in his later works.
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Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪt͡ɕ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович; 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and was one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.
Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).
After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, Shostakovich developed a hybrid style, as exemplified by Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). This single work juxtaposed a wide variety of trends, including the neo-classical style (showing the influence of Stravinsky) and post-Romanticism (after Gustav Mahler). Sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque characterize much of his music.
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Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (circa 1386 – December 13, 1466), also known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence. He is, in part, known for his work in bas-relief, a form of shallow relief sculpture that, in Donatello's case, incorporated significant 15th century developments in perspectival illusionism.
Donatello was the son of Niccolò di Betto Bardi, who was a member of the Florentine Wool Combers Guild, and was born in Florence, most likely in the year 1386. Donatello was educated in the house of the Martelli family. He apparently received his early artistic training in a goldsmith's workshop, and then worked briefly in the studio of Lorenzo Ghiberti.
While undertaking study and excavations with Filippo Brunelleschi in Rome (1404–1407), work that gained the two men the reputation of treasure seekers, Donatello made a living by working at goldsmiths' shops. Their Roman sojourn was decisive for the entire development of Italian art in the 15th century, for it was during this period that Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome and of other Roman buildings. Brunelleschi's buildings and Donatello's sculptures are both considered supreme expressions of the spirit of this era in architecture and sculpture, and they exercised a potent influence upon the artists of the age.
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Doris Humphrey
Doris Batcheller Humphrey (October 17, 1895 – December 29, 1958) was a dancer and choreographer of the early twentieth century. Along with her contemporaries Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham Humphrey was one of the second generation modern dance pioneers who followed their forerunners – including Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn – in exploring the use of breath and developing techniques still taught today. As many of her works were annotated Humphrey continues to be taught, studied and performed to this day.
Humphrey was born in Oak Park, Illinois but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. She was the daughter of Horace Buckingham Humphrey, a journalist and one-time hotel manager, and Julia Ellen Wells, who had trained as a concert pianist. She was a descendant of pilgrim William Brewster. In Chicago, with the encouragement of her mother, she studied with eminent ballet masters as well as with Mary Wood Hinman, who taught dance at her school, the Francis Parker School. While still at high school she undertook a concert tour of the western states as a dancer, with her mother as accompanist, in a group sponsored by the Santa Fe Railroad for its Workman’s Clubs.
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Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works. His best-known works include the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night". Appreciative critics have also noted the craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my Craft or Sullen Art", and the rhapsodic lyricism in "And death shall have no dominion" and "Fern Hill".
Dylan Thomas was born in the Uplands area of Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales, on 27 October 1914 just a few months after the Thomas family had bought the house. Uplands was, and still is, one of the more affluent areas of the city.
His father, David John Thomas (1876–1952), had attained a first-class honours degree in English at University College, Aberystwyth, and was dissatisfied with his position at the local grammar school as an English master who taught English literature. His mother, Florence Hannah Thomas (née Williams) (1882–1958), was a seamstress born in Swansea. Nancy, Thomas's sister, (Nancy Marles 1906–1953) was nine years older than he. Their father brought up both children to speak only English, even though he and his wife were both bilingual in English and Welsh. David was even known to give Welsh lessons at home.
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Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman (Russian: Дави́д А́белевич Ка́уфман) (2 January 1896 – 12 February 1954), better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov (Russian: Дзи́га Ве́ртов), was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary moviemaking and the Dziga Vertov Group, a radical filmmaking cooperative which was active in the 1960s.
Vertov was born David Abelevich Kaufman (Russian: Давид А́белевич Кауфман) into a family of Jewish intellectuals[citation needed] in Białystok, Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire. His father was a librarian. He Russified his Jewish name David and patronymic Abelevich to Denis Arkadievich at some point after 1918.[citation needed] Vertov studied music at Białystok Conservatory until his family fled from the invading German army to Moscow in 1915. The Kaufmans soon settled in Petrograd, where Vertov began writing poetry, science fiction and satire. In 1916-1917 Vertov was studying medicine at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and experimenting with "sound collages" in his free time. He eventually adopted the name "Dziga Vertov", which translates loosely as 'spinning top'.
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Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas (US /deɪˈɡɑː/ or UK /ˈdeɪɡɑː/; French: [ilɛʁ ʒɛʁmɛnɛdɡɑʁ dəɡɑ]; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, 1834–1917), was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist. A superb draftsman, he is especially identified with the subject of the dance, and over half of his works depict dancers. These display his mastery in the depiction of movement, as do his racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and depiction of human isolation.
Early in his career, he wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classic art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.
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Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (French pronunciation: [ɛdɡaːʁ viktɔːʁ aʃil ʃaʁl vaʁɛːz]; also spelled Edgar Varèse; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States.
Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm. He was the inventor of the term "organized sound", a phrase meaning that certain timbres and rhythms can be grouped together, sublimating into a whole new definition of music. Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. His use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music" while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was born in Paris, but when he was only a few weeks old, he was sent to be raised by his great-uncle and other relations in the small town of Le Villars in Burgundy region of France. There he developed a very strong attachment to his maternal grandfather, Claude Cortot. Through his mother's family he was related to the pianist Alfred Cortot. His affection for his grandfather outshone anything he would ever feel for his own parents.
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Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III ( /ˈɔːlbiː/ AWL-bee; born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and a rewrite of the book for the unsuccessful musical version of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1966). His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continues to experiment in new works, such as The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
According to Magill's Survey of American Literature (2007), Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia (the popular belief is that he was born in Washington, D.C.). He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. His adoptive mother, Reed's third wife, Frances tried to raise Albee to fit into their social circles.
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Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈeːro ˈsɑːrinen]) (August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.
Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father, Eliel Saarinen. They emigrated to the United States of America in 1923, when Eero was thirteen. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where his father was a teacher at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and he took courses in sculpture and furniture design there. He had a close relationship with fellow students Charles and Ray Eames, and became good friends with Florence Knoll (née Schust).
Beginning in September 1929, he studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France. He then went on to study at the Yale School of Architecture, completing his studies in 1934. Subsequently, he toured Europe and North Africa for a year and returned for a year to his native Finland, after which he returned to Cranbrook to work for his father and teach at the academy. He became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1940. Saarinen was recruited by his friend, who was also an architect, to join the military service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Saarinen was assigned to draw illustrations for bomb disassembly manuals and to provide designs for the Situation Room in the White House. Saarinen worked full time for the OSS until 1944. After his father's death in 1950, Saarinen founded his own architect's office, "Eero Saarinen and Associates". Eero Saarinen died of a brain tumor in 1961 at the age of 51.
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Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger (5 December 1902 – 5 February 1988) was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a multiple-award-winning partnership known as The Archers and produced a series of classic British films, notably 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1946, also called Stairway to Heaven), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
Imre József Pressburger was born in Miskolc, Hungary of Jewish heritage. Pressburger means someone from the town of Pressburg (Pozsony in Hungarian) He was the only son (he had one elder half-sister from his father's previous marriage) of Kálmán Pressburger, estate manager, and his second wife, Kätherina Wichs. He attended a boarding-school in Temesvár, where he was a good student, excelling at mathematics, literature and music. He then studied mathematics and engineering at the Universities of Prague and Stuttgart before his father's death forced him to abandon his studies.
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Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn (21 March 1887 – 15 September 1953) was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.
Erich Mendelsohn was born in Allenstein (Olsztyn), East Prussia. He was the fifth of six children; his mother was a hatmaker and his father a shopkeeper. He attended a humanist Gymnasium in Allenstein and continued with commercial training in Berlin.
In 1906 he took up the study of national economics at the University of Munich. In 1908 he began studying architecture at the Technical University of Berlin; two years later he transferred to the Technical University of Munich, where in 1912 he graduated cum laude. In Munich he was influenced by Theodor Fischer, an architect whose own work fell between neo-classical and Jugendstil, and who had been teaching there since 1907; Mendelsohn also made contact with members of Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke, two groups of expressionist artists.
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Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (pronounced: [eʁik sati]) (17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925; signed his name Erik Satie after 1884) was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.
An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning "someone who measures sounds") preferring this designation to that of a "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.
In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American culture chronicle Vanity Fair. Although in later life he prided himself on always publishing his work under his own name, in the late nineteenth century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.
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Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1922, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent, and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, was published in 1926.
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Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 in Greifenstein-Ulm – 30 March 1966 in Starnberg) was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal beauty.
Erwin Friedrich Max Piscator was born on December 17, 1893 in the village of Greifenstein-Ulm to Carl Piscator, a merchant, and Antonia Laparose. His family was descended from Johannes Piscator, a Protestant theologian who produced an important translation of the Bible in 1600. The family moved to Marburg where Piscator attended the Gymnasium Philippinum. In 1913, he enrolled at Munich University to study German, philosophy and art history. Piscator also took Arthur Kutscher's famous seminar in theatre history which Bertolt Brecht was also later to attend. He began his acting career in 1914, in small unpaid roles at the Munich Court Theatre, under the directorship of Ernst von Possart. In 1896, Carl Lautenschläger had installed one of the world's first revolving stages at that theatre.
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Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian pronunciation: [e.uˈd͡ʒen i.oˈnesku]; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.
Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania, to a Romanian father of the Orthodox religion and a mother of French and Greek-Romanian heritage, whose religion was Protestant (the religion into which her father was born and to which her originally Greek Orthodox mother had converted). Eugène himself was baptized into the Romanian Orthodox religion. Many sources cite his birthdate as 1912, this error being due to vanity on the part of Ionesco himself.
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Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American expatriate poet, critic and a major figure of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his promotion of Imagism, a movement that derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–1969).
Working in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, Pound helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway. He was responsible for the publication in 1915 of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and for the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway wrote of him in 1925: "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. ... He writes articles about them. He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."
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Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of Pop art.
Léger was born in Argentan, Orne, Basse-Normandie, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Léger initially trained as an architect from 1897–1899 before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles,Yvelines in 1902–1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts; he also applied to the École des Beaux-Arts but was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gérôme and others, while also studying at the Académie Julian. He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of Impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mère (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Léger's work after he saw the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907.
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Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (born François Marie Martínez Picabia, 22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a French painter, poet, and typographist, associated with both the Dada and Surrealist art movements.
Francis Picabia was born in Paris of a French mother and a Spanish-Cuban father who was an attaché at the Cuban legation in Paris. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was seven. Some sources would have his father as of aristocratic Spanish descent, whereas others consider him of non-aristocratic Spanish descent, from the region of Galicia. Financially independent, Picabia studied under Fernand Cormon and others at the École des Arts Decoratifs in the late 1890s.
In 1894, Picabia financed his stamp collection by copying a collection of Spanish paintings that belonged to his father, switching the originals for the copies, without his father's knowledge, and selling the originals. Fernand Cormon took him into his academy at 104 boulevard de Clichy, where Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec had also studied. From the age of 20, he lived by painting; he subsequently inherited money from his mother.
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Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by his design for Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States.
His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright authored 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio. Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time."
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Frank Stella
Frank Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an Italian American painter and printmaker, significant in the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.
Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts, to parents of Italian descent. After attending high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, he attended Princeton University, where he majored in history and met Darby Bannard and Michael Fried. Early visits to New York art galleries influenced his artist development, and his work was influenced by the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. Stella moved to New York in 1958, after his graduation. He is one of the most well-regarded postwar American painters still working today. Frank Stella has reinvented himself in consecutive bodies of work over the course of his five-decade career. Notably, he is heralded for creating abstract paintings that bear no pictorial illusions or psychological or metaphysical references in twentieth-century painting.
Upon moving to New York City, he reacted against the expressive use of paint by most painters of the abstract expressionist movement, instead finding himself drawn towards the "flatter" surfaces of Barnett Newman's work and the "target" paintings of Jasper Johns. He began to produce works which emphasized the picture-as-object, rather than the picture as a representation of something, be it something in the physical world, or something in the artist's emotional world. Stella married Barbara Rose, later a well-known art critic, in 1961. Around this time he said that a picture was "a flat surface with paint on it - nothing more". This was a departure from the technique of creating a painting by first making a sketch. Many of the works are created by simply using the path of the brush stroke, very often using common house paint.
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Frank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (Hanover July 24, 1864 – Munich March 9, 1918), usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism, and he was a major influence on the development of epic theatre.
He was born on July 24, 1864 and lived most of his adult life in Munich, though he had a brief period working in advertising, for the Maggi soup firm, in Switzerland in 1886. He had an affair with Frida Uhl who bore him a child. Having initially worked in business and the circus, Wedekind went on to become an actor and singer. In this capacity he received wide acclaim as the principal star of the satirical cabaret Die elf Scharfrichter (The Eleven Executioners), launched in 1901. It was thanks to Wedekind's success that the tradition of German satirical writing was established in the theatre, producing the cabaret-song satirists Kurt Tucholsky, Walter Mehring, Joachim Ringelnatz and Erich Kästner among others, who invigorated the culture of the Weimar Republic; "all bitter social critics who used direct, stinging satire as the best means of attack and wrote a large part of their always intelligible light verse to be declaimed or sung." At the age of 34, after serving a nine-month prison sentence for "lèse-majesté" (thanks to the publication in Simplicissimus of some of his satirical poems), Wedekind became a dramaturg (a play-reader and adapter) at the Munich Schauspielhaus.
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Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (German pronunciation: [fʁants ˈkafka]; 3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was an influential German-language author of novels and short stories. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century. The term "Kafkaesque" has become part of the English language.
Kafka was born to middle class, German-speaking, Jewish parents, in Prague, Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The house in which he was born, on the Old Town Square next to Prague's Church of St Nicholas, now contains a permanent exhibition devoted to the author.
Most of Kafka's writing, including the large body of his unfinished work, was published posthumously.
Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Prague (now the Czech Republic). His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" and by Kafka himself as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature". Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer, and came to Prague from Osek, a Czech-speaking Jewish village near Písek in southern Bohemia. After working as a traveling sales representative, he established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people and using a jackdaw (kavka in Czech) as his business logo. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous brewer in Poděbrady, and was better educated than her husband.
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Franz Marc
Franz Marc (February 8, 1880 – March 4, 1916) was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement. He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it.
Franz Marc was born in 1880 in Munich, then the capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria. His father, Wilhelm, was a professional landscape painter, and his mother Sophie was a strict Calvinist. In 1900, Marc began to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, where his teachers would include Gabriel von Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez. In 1903 and 1907 he spent time in France, particularly in Paris, visiting the city's museums and copying many paintings, a traditional way that artists studied and developed technique. In Paris, Marc frequented artistic circles, and was able to meet numerous artists, including the actress Sarah Bernhardt. He discovered a strong affinity for the work of Vincent van Gogh.
During his twenties, Marc was involved in a number of stormy relationships, including a years-long affair with Annette von Eckardt, a married antique dealer who was nine years his elder. He married twice, first to Marie Schnuer, then to Maria Franck.
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Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. His most famous films are the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States, his iconic precursor to the film noir genre.
Lang was born in Vienna as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940), an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline "Paula" Lang née Schlesinger (1864–1920). Fritz Lang himself was baptized on 28 December 1890 at the Schottenkirche in Vienna.
Lang's parents were of Moravian[citation needed] descent and practicing Roman Catholics. His mother was born Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism when Fritz was ten. His mother took this conversion seriously and was dedicated to raising Fritz as a Catholic. Lang never had an interest in his Jewish heritage and identified himself as Catholic. Although he was not a particularly devout Catholic, he "regularly used Catholic images and themes [in] his films".
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Félix Fénéon
Félix Fénéon (22 June 1861, Turin, Italy – 29 February 1944, Châtenay-Malabry) was a Parisian anarchist and art critic during the late 19th century. He coined the term "Neo-impressionism" in 1886 to identify a group of artists led by Georges Seurat, and ardently promoted them.
The Fénéon Prize was established in 1949 by his wife based on proceeds from the sale of his art collection.
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George Balanchine
George Balanchine, born Giorgi Balanchivadze (Georgian: გიორგი ბალანჩივაძე, Russian: Георгий Мелитонович Баланчивадзе) (January 22 [O.S. January 9] 1904 – April 30, 1983), was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States and the co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet. He was a choreographer known for his musicality; he expressed music with dance and worked extensively with Igor Stravinsky. Thirty-nine of his more than four hundred ballets were choreographed to music by Stravinsky.
Balanchine was born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother. Balanchine's family comprised largely composers and soldiers. His father was a noted Georgian composer Meliton Balanchivadze (1862–1937), one of the initiators of the Georgian Opera, while his mother was a Russian ballet aficionado. George's brother, Andria Balanchivadze (1906–1992), became a well-known Georgian composer. As a child, Balanchine was not particularly interested in ballet but his mother loved the arts and had the young Giorgi audition with his sister, who shared her mother's passion for ballet.
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George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.
He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council.
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Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] (13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.
Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882, in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he also studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The next year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.
His earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the "Fauves" (Beasts) in 1905, Braque adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors to represent emotional response. Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint.
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Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès (English pronunciation: /mɛ.li.'ez/); (8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938), full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès, a prolific innovator in the use of special effects, accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his work. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first "Cinemagician". Two of his most well-known films are A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Both stories involve strange, surreal voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. Méliès was also an early pioneer of horror cinema, which can be traced back to his Le Manoir du diable (1896).
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Georges Rouault
Georges Henri Rouault[p] (27 May 1871 – 13 February 1958) was a French Fauvist and Expressionist painter, and printmaker in lithography and etching.
Rouault was born in Paris into a poor family. His mother encouraged his love for the arts, and in 1885 the fourteen-year-old Rouault embarked on an apprenticeship as a glass painter and restorer, which lasted until 1890. This early experience as a glass painter has been suggested as a likely source of the heavy black contouring and glowing colours, likened to leaded glass, which characterize Rouault's mature painting style. During his apprenticeship, he also attended evening classes at the School of Fine Arts, and in 1891, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, the official art school of France. There he studied under Gustave Moreau and became his favorite student. Rouault's earliest works show a symbolism in the use of colour that probably reflects Moreau's influence, and when Moreau died in 1898, Rouault was nominated as the curator of the Moreau Museum in Paris.
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Georges Seurat
Georges Pierre Seurat (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ pjɛʁ søʁa]; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism. His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting.
Seurat was born into a wealthy family in Paris, France. His father, Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, was a legal official and a native of Champagne; his mother, Ernestine Faivre, was Parisian. Georges Seurat first studied art with Justin Lequien, a sculptor. Seurat attended the École des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and 1879. After a year of service at Brest Military Academy, he returned to Paris in 1880. He shared a small studio on the Left Bank with two student friends before moving to a studio of his own. For the next two years he devoted himself to mastering the art of black-and-white drawing. He spent 1883 on his first major painting—a huge canvas titled Bathers at Asnières.
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Gerrit Rietveld
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (24 June 1888–25 June 1964) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect. One of the principal members of the Dutch artistic movement called De Stijl, Rietveld is famous for his Red and Blue Chair and for the Rietveld Schröder House, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Rietveld was born in Utrecht in 1888 as the son of a joiner. He left school at 11 to be apprenticed to his father and enrolled at night school before working as a draughtsman for C. J. Begeer, a jeweller in Utrecht, from 1906 to 1911. By the time he opened his own furniture workshop in 1917, Rietveld had taught himself drawing, painting and model-making. He afterwards set up in business as a cabinet-maker.
Rietveld designed his famous Red and Blue Chair in 1917. Hoping that much of his furniture would eventually be mass-produced rather than handcrafted, Rietveld aimed for simplicity in construction. In 1918, he started his own furniture factory, and changed the chair's colors after becoming influenced by the 'De Stijl' movement, of which he became a member in 1919, the same year in which he became an architect. The contacts that he made at De Stijl gave him the opportunity to exhibit abroad as well. In 1923, Walter Gropius invited Rietveld to exhibit at the Bauhaus. He designed his first building, the Rietveld Schröder House, in 1924, in close collaboration with the owner Truus Schröder-Schräder. Built in Utrecht on the Prins Hendriklaan 50, the house has a conventional ground floor, but is radical on the top floor, lacking fixed walls but instead relying on sliding walls to create and change living spaces. The design seems like a three-dimensional realization of a Mondrian painting. The house has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. His involvement in the Schröder House exerted a strong influence on Truus' daughter, Han Schröder, who became one of the first female architects in the Netherlands.
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Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.
Gertrude Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (merged with Pittsburgh in 1907) to upper-class German Jewish parents, Daniel and Amelia Stein. Her father was a railroad executive whose investments in streetcar lines and real estate made the family wealthy.
When Gertrude was three years old she and her family moved to Vienna and then Paris. They returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school.
Her mother died in 1888, and her father in 1891. Michael, her eldest brother, took over the family business holdings. He arranged for Gertrude, and another sister, Bertha, to live with their mother's family in Baltimore after the deaths of their parents. In 1892, she lived with her uncle David Bachrach. Bachrach had married Fanny Keyser, sister of Gertrude's mother Amelia, in 1877.
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Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒordʒo deˈkiːriko]; July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978) was a Greek-born Italian artist. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. After 1919 he became interested in traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work.
He was born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. After studying art in Athens, mainly under the guidance of the influential Greek painter Georgios Roilos, and Florence, De Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he read the writings of the philosophers Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger and studied the works of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger.
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Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting apparently simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, bowls, flowers, and landscapes.
Giorgio Morandi was born in Bologna to Andrea and Maria Maccaferri. Little Giorgio lived first on via Lame where his brother Giuseppe (who died in 1903) and his sister Anna were born. The family then moved to via Avesella n. 30, where his two other sisters were born, Dina in 1900 and Maria Teresa in 1906. From 1907 to 1913 he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Bologna. After the death of his father in 1909, the family moved to via Fondazza n. 36, and Morandi became the head of the family.
At the Accademia, which based its traditions on 14th-century painting, Morandi taught himself to etch by studying books on Rembrandt. He was excellent at his studies, although his professors disapproved of the changes in his style during his final two years at the Accademia. Morandi, even if he lived his whole life in Bologna, was influenced by the works of Cézanne, Derain, and Picasso. However, in particular after a trip to Florence in 1910, he was also influenced by past artists such as Giotto, Masaccio, Piero Della Francesca, and Paolo Uccello. He also had a brief digression into a Futurist style in 1914. In that same year, Morandi was appointed instructor of drawing for elementary schools in Bologna—a post he held until 1929.
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Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈmaːlɐ]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up.
As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
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Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau (6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898) was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.
Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect, who recognized his talent. His mother was Adele Pauline des Moutiers. Moreau initially studied under the guidance of François-Édouard Picot and became a friend of Théodore Chassériau, whose work strongly influenced his own. Moreau had a 25-year personal relationship, possibly romantic, with Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux, a woman whom he drew several times. His first painting was a Pietà which is now located in the cathedral at Angoulême. He showed A Scene from the Song of Songs and The Death of Darius in the Salon of 1853. In 1853 he contributed Athenians with the Minotaur and Moses Putting Off his Sandals within Sight of the Promised Land to the Great Exhibition.
Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864.
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György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (Hungarian: Ligeti György Sándor, [ˈliɡɛti ˈɟørɟ ˈʃaːndor]; May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006) was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating and becoming an Austrian citizen.
Ligeti was born in Dicsőszentmárton, which was renamed Târnăveni in 1945, in Transylvania to a Hungarian Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to Kolozsvár (Cluj) with his family when he was 6, and he was not to return to the town of his birth until the 1990s.
Ligeti received his initial musical training in the conservatory at Kolozsvár (Cluj), and during the summers privately with Pál Kadosa in Budapest.
In 1940, Northern Transylvania was occupied by Hungary following the Second Vienna Award. In 1944, Ligeti's education was interrupted when he was sent to a forced labor brigade by the Horthy regime. His brother, age 16, was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, and both of his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His mother was the only other survivor of his immediate family.
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Hannah Höch
Hannah Höch (November 1, 1889 – May 31, 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage.
Hannah Höch was born Anna Therese Johanne Höch in Gotha, Germany. From 1912 to 1914 she studied at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin under the guidance of Harold Bergen. She chose the curriculum glass design and graphic arts, rather than fine arts, to please her father. In 1914, at the start of World War I, she left the school to work with the Red Cross. In 1915 she returned to schooling, entering the graphics class of the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Also in 1915, Höch began an influential friendship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement. Höch's involvement with the Berlin Dadists began in earnest in 1919. After her schooling, she worked in the handicrafts department for Ullstein Verlag [The Ullstein Press], designing dress and embroidery patterns for Die Dame [The Lady] and Die Praktische Berlinerin [The Practical Berlin Woman]. The influence of this early work and training can be seen in her later work involving references to dress patterns and textiles. From 1926 to 1929 she lived and worked in the Netherlands. Höch made many influential friendships over the years, with Kurt Schwitters and Piet Mondrian among others. Hausmann, along with Höch, was one of the first pioneers of the art form that would come to be known as photomontage.
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Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.
Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich. Here his father took a job with the government.
Starting at a young age, Hofmann gravitated towards science and mathematics. At age sixteen, he started work with the Bavarian government as assistant to the director of Public Works where he was able to increase his knowledge of mathematics. He went on to develop and patent such devices as the electromagnetic comptometer, a radar device for ships at sea, a sensitized light bulb, and a portable freezer unit for military use. Even with such great abilities in science and mathematics, Hofmann became interested in creative studies, beginning educational art training after the death of his father.
In 1932 he immigrated to the United States, where he resided until the end of his life.
Hofmann's art work is distinguished by a rigorous concern with pictorial structure, spatial illusion, and color relationships.
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Hans Poelzig
Hans Poelzig (30 April 1869 Berlin – 14 June 1936 Berlin) was a German architect, painter and set designer.
Poelzig was born in Berlin in 1869 to the countess Clara Henrietta Maria Poelzig (daughter of Alexander von Hanstein, Count of Pölzig and Beiersdorf) while she was married to George Acland Ames, an Englishman. Uncertain of his paternity, Ames refused to acknowledge Hans as his son and consequently he was brought up by a local choirmaster and his wife. In 1899 he married Maria Voss with whom they had four children.
In 1903 he became a teacher and director at the Breslau Academy of Art and Design (Kunst- und Gewerbeschule Breslau; today Wrocław, Poland). From 1920-1935 he taught at the Technical University of Berlin (Technische Hochschule Berlin). Director of the Architecture Department of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin.
After finishing his architectural education around the turn of the century, Poelzig designed many industrial buildings. He designed the 51.2 m tall Upper Silesia Tower in Posen (today Poznań) for an industrial fair in 1911. It later became a water tower. He was appointed city architect of Dresden in 1916. He was an influential member of the Deutscher Werkbund.
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Hanya Holm
Hanya Holm (born March 3, 1893, Worms, Germany – died November 3, 1992, New York City) is known as one of the “Big Four” founders of American modern dance. She was a dancer, choreographer, and above all, a dance educator.
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Harry Partch
Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) just intonation.
Partch was born on June 24, 1901 in Oakland, California soon after his parents, both Presbyterian missionaries, fled the Boxer Rebellion in China. He spent his childhood in small, remote towns in Arizona and New Mexico, where he heard and sang songs in Mandarin, Spanish, and American Indian languages.
As a child, he learned to play the clarinet, harmonium, viola, piano, and guitar. He began to compose at an early age, using the equal-tempered chromatic scale, the tuning system most common in Western music. However, Partch grew frustrated with what he felt were imperfections of the standard system of musical tuning, believing that this system was unsuitable for reflecting the subtle melodic contours of dramatic speech and, as a result, he burned all of his early works.
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Hart Crane
Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem, in the vein of The Waste Land, that expressed a more optimistic view of modern, urban culture than the one that he found in Eliot's work. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has come to be seen as one of the most influential poets of his generation.
Hart Crane was born in Garrettsville, Ohio. His father, Clarence, was a successful Ohio businessman who invented the Life Savers candy and held the patent, but sold it for $2,900 before the brand became popular. He made other candy and accumulated a fortune from the candy business with chocolate bars. Crane's mother and father were constantly fighting, and early in April, 1917, they divorced. Hart dropped out of high school during his junior year and left for New York City, promising his parents he would attend Columbia University later. His parents, in the middle of divorce proceedings, were upset. Crane took various copywriting jobs and jumped between friends’ apartments in Manhattan. Between 1917 and 1924 he moved back and forth between New York and Cleveland, working as an advertising copywriter and a worker in his father’s factory. From Crane's letters, it appears that New York was where he felt most at home, and much of his poetry is set there.
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Helen Tamiris
Helen Tamiris (24 April 1905 – 4 August 1966) was an American choreographer, modern dancer, and teacher.
A founder of American Modern Dance, Tamiris originally trained in free movement at the Henry Street Settlement. She danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and the Bracale Opera Company before studying briefly with Michel Fokine and with a disciple of Isadora Duncan. In 1927, she made her premiere as a solo modern dancer and two years later formed her own school and company. Concerned with establishing modern dance as a viable art form, Tamiris was active in organizing the young artists through the Concert Dancers League, Dance Repertory Theatre, Dancers Emergency Association, and American Dance Association. She also played an integral role in establishing the Federal Dance Project under the WPA.
Tamiris believed that each dance must create its own expressive means and as such did not develop an individual style or technique. She was one of the first choreographers to use jazz and spiritual music to explore social themes via dance. She is probably best known for her suite of dances called Negro Spirituals which was created between 1928 and 1941 and for How Long Brethren? (1937), a dance for the Federal Dance Project of the WPA that explored the problems facing African-Americans and won Dance Magazine's first award for group choreography. Tamiris also made works based on American themes working in concert dance (including Walt Whitman Suite and Salut au Monde) and musical theatre, including Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Touch and Go (1949), Flahooley (1951), Carnival in Flanders (1953), Fanny (1954), and Plain and Fancy (1955). She won a Tony Award for Touch and Go.
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Henri Evenepoel
Henri-Jacques-Edouard Evenepoel (3 October 1872, Nice – 27 December 1899, Paris) was a Belgian artist whose most important works are associated with Fauvism.
Evenepoel first studied art in Brussels at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts between 1889 and 1890, and entered Paris's Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1892. Evenepoel entered the atelier of Gustave Moreau in 1893, which put him in contact with Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, Edgar Maxence, Charles Milcendeau, and Léon Printemps.
The artist debuted a portrait of his cousin (Louise in Mourning) at the 1894 Salon des Artistes Français. He showed four portraits at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1895 and continued to exhibit there until his death. His first solo exhibition came at the Brussels Cercle Artistique (December 1897 – January 1898). Family and friends were the artist's preferred subjects; his full-length portraits, often against a neutral background, show the influence of Edouard Manet and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. His Parisian scenes were influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jean-Louis Forain. Though his early scenes had a somber palette, his paintings while in Algeria (where he first wintered during his solo exhibition) were very different in style, anticipating the bold colours of Fauvism (e.g., Orange Market, Blidah).
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Henri Manguin
Henri Charles Manguin[p] (Paris, 23 March 1874 – Saint-Tropez, 25 September 1949) was a French painter, associated with Les Fauves.
Manguin entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study under Gustave Moreau, as did Matisse and Charles Camoin with whom he became close friends. Like them, Manguin made copies of Renaissance art in the Louvre.
Manguin was very much influenced by impressionism, as is seen in his use of bright pastel hues.
He married in 1899 and made numerous portraits of his wife, Jeanne, and their family. In 1902, Manguin had his first exhibition at the Salon des Independants and d'Automne. Many of his paintings were of Mediterranean landscapes; these represented the height of his career as a Fauve artist.
He traveled extensively with Albert Marquet throughout Southern Europe. In 1949, Manguin left Paris to settle in Saint-Tropez, where he died soon after, on September 25, 1949.
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Henri Matisse
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art. While most widely recognized for his paintings, Matisse actively worked in a variety of media throughout his career.
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Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi ʒyljɑ̃ feliks ruso]) (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector. Ridiculed during his life, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality.
Henri Rousseau was born in Laval, France in 1844 in the Loire Valley into the family of a tinsmith. He attended Laval High School as a day student and then as a boarder, after his father became a debtor and his parents had to leave the town upon the seizure of their house. He was mediocre in some subjects at the high school but won prizes for drawing and music. He worked for a lawyer and studied law, but "attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army," serving for four years, starting in 1863. With his father's death, Rousseau moved to Paris in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. In 1868, he married Clémence Boitard, his landlord's 15 year-old daughter, with whom he had six children (only one survived). In 1871, he was appointed as a collector of the octroi tax on goods entering Paris. His wife died in 1888 and he married Josephine Noury in 1898. He started painting seriously in his early forties, and by age 49 he retired from his job to work on his art full time.
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Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈhɛnɾɪk ˈɪpsən]; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder.
Several of his plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theater was required to model strict mores of family life and propriety. Ibsen's work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. The poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements.
Ibsen is often ranked as one of the truly great playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare". He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Eugene O'Neill. Many critics consider him the greatest playwright since Shakespeare.
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Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell (March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:
Henry Cowell's music covers a wider range in both expression and technique than that of any other living composer. His experiments begun three decades ago in rhythm, in harmony, and in instrumental sonorities were considered then by many to be wild. Today they are the Bible of the young and still, to the conservatives, "advanced."... No other composer of our time has produced a body of works so radical and so normal, so penetrating and so comprehensive. Add to this massive production his long and influential career as a pedagogue, and Henry Cowell's achievement becomes impressive indeed. There is no other quite like it. To be both fecund and right is given to few.
Born in rural Menlo Park, California, to two bohemian writers—his father was an Irish immigrant and his mother, a former schoolteacher, had relocated from Iowa—Cowell demonstrated precocious musical talent and began playing the violin at the age of five. After his parents' divorce in 1903, he was raised by his mother, Clarissa Dixon, author of the early feminist novel Janet and Her Dear Phebe. His father, with whom he maintained contact, introduced him to the Irish music that would be a touchstone for Cowell throughout his career. While receiving no formal musical education (and little schooling of any kind beyond his mother's home tutelage), he began to compose in his mid-teens.
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Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art.
His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moore's works are usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire.
Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a coal miner. He became well-known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy. Yet he lived frugally and most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts.
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Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch (November 1, 1886 – May 30, 1951) was a 20th century Austrian writer, considered one of the major Modernists.
Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately. He was predestined to work in his father’s textile factory in Teesdorf, therefore, he attended a technical college for textile manufacture and a spinning and weaving college.
In 1909 he converted to Roman Catholicism and married Franziska von Rothermann, the daughter of a knighted manufacturer. The following year, their son Hermann Friedrich Maria was born. Later, Broch began to see other women and the marriage ended in divorce in 1923.
He was acquainted with Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elias Canetti, Franz Blei and his devoted friend and inspiration, writer and former nude model Ea von Allesch and many others. In 1927 he sold the textile factory and decided to study mathematics, philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna. He embarked on a full-time literary career only around the age of 40. At the age of 45, he published his first novel, The Sleepwalkers.
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Hilary Spurling
Hilary Spurling, CBE, FRSL (born 25 December 25 1940) is a British writer, known as a journalist and biographer. She won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006. Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China was published in March 2010.
She is married to playwright John Spurling, and has three children (Amy, Nathaniel and Gilbert) and six grandchildren.
Spurling was educated at Clifton High School, an independent school in Bristol in South West England, followed by the University of Oxford.
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Hippolyte Petitjean
Hippolyte Petitjean (11 September 1854, Mâcon – 18 September 1929, Paris) was a French Post-Impressionist painter who practiced the technique of pointillism.
When he was 13, Petitjean began his art studies at the Ecole de dessin in Mâcon. The town gave him a grant to continue at the École des Beaux-Arts where he studied under Alexandre Cabanel and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. He was later influenced by Georges Seurat whom he met in Paris in 1884. Seurat encouraged him to join the Neo-Impressionists, where he was also influenced by Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro. He adopted the pointillist technique until 1894 when he started to combine it with more feathery strokes. In 1910, he returned to Neo-Impressionism with a series of decorative watercolours of landscapes and people set off by widely-spaced rounded spots of pure colour.
Petitjean exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891 and thereafter at Le Brac de Bouteville together with the symbolists and impressionists. He also exhibited in Brussels in 1893 and 1898, Berlin in 1898, Weimar in 1903, and Wiesbaden in 1921.
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Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis (Greek pronunciation: [ˈʝanis kseˈnakis], Greek: Γιάννης Ξενάκης) (May 29, 1922 – February 4, 2001) was a Greek composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. After 1947, he fled Greece, becoming a naturalized citizen of France. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers. Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances.
Among his most important works are Metastaseis (1953–4) for orchestra, which introduced independent parts for every musician of the orchestra; percussion works such as Psappha (1975) and Pléïades (1979); compositions that introduced spatialization by dispersing musicians among the audience, such as Terretektorh (1966); electronic works created using Xenakis's UPIC system; and the massive multimedia performances Xenakis called polytopes. Among the numerous theoretical writings he authored, the book Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (1971) is regarded as one of his most important. As an architect, Xenakis is primarily known for his early work under Le Corbusier: the Sainte Marie de La Tourette, on which the two architects collaborated, and the Philips Pavilion at Expo 58, which Xenakis designed alone.
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Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (sometimes spelled Strawinsky or Stravinskii; Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский, transliterated: Igorʹ Fëdorovič Stravinskij; Russian pronunciation: [ˌiɡərʲ ˌfʲjodɐrɐvʲɪtɕ strɐˈvʲinskʲɪj]; 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian, and later French and American composer, pianist and conductor. He is acknowledged by many as one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The Rite of Spring, which provoked a riot during its premiere, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His so-called Russian phase was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue and symphony). They frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach and Tchaikovsky. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and clarity of form, of instrumentation and of utterance.
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Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɪŋmar ˈbærjman] ( listen); 14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential film directors of all time.
He directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over one hundred and seventy plays. Among his company of actors were Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in the landscape of Sweden. His major subjects were death, illness, faith, betrayal, and insanity.
Bergman was active for more than six decades. In 1976 his career was seriously threatened as the result of a botched criminal investigation for alleged income tax evasion. Outraged, Bergman suspended a number of pending productions, closed his studios, and went into self-imposed exile in Germany for eight years.
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Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan (May 27, 1877 — September 14, 1927) was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life. She performed to acclaim throughout Europe.
Duncan's fondness for flowing scarves was the cause of her death in an automobile accident in Nice, France when she was passenger in an Amilcar, and her silk scarf, draped around her neck, became entangled around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle, breaking her neck.
Angela Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, California, as the youngest of four siblings. She had three older siblings, two brothers Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan, and Elizabeth Duncan who was her older sister, also a dancer.
Their parents were Joseph Charles Duncan (1819–1898), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849–1922). Soon after Isadora's birth, her father lost the bank and he was publicly disgraced and the family became extremely poor.
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Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi (野口 勇, Noguchi Isamu?, November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold.
In 1947, Noguchi began a collaboration with the Herman Miller company, when he joined with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to produce a catalog containing what is often considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture ever produced, including the iconic Noguchi table which remains in production today His work lives on around the world and at the Noguchi Museum in New York City.
Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles, the illegitimate son of Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet who was acclaimed in the United States, and Léonie Gilmour, an American writer who edited much of Yone Noguchi's work.
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Italo Svevo
Aron Ettore Schmitz (December 19, 1861 – September 13, 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was an Italian writer and businessman, author of novels, plays, and short stories.
Born in Trieste (then in Austria-Hungary) as Hektor Aaron Schmitz to a Jewish family that originated in Germany, Italo Svevo (literally Italian swabian) wrote the classic novel La Coscienza di Zeno (rendered as Confessions of Zeno, or Zeno's Conscience) and self-published it in 1923. The work, showing the author's interest in the theories of Sigmund Freud, is written in the form of the memoirs of one Zeno Cosini, who writes them at the insistence of his psychoanalyst. Schmitz's novel received almost no attention from Italian readers and critics at the time.
The work might have disappeared altogether if it were not for the efforts of James Joyce. Joyce had met Schmitz in 1907, when Joyce tutored him in English while working for Berlitz in Trieste. Joyce read Schmitz's earlier novel Senilità, which had also been largely ignored when published in 1898.
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Ivan Cankar
Ivan Cankar ( pronunciation (help·info)) (10 May 1876 – 11 December 1918) was a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist, poet and political activist. Together with Oton Župančič, Dragotin Kette, and Josip Murn, he is considered as the beginner of modernism in Slovene literature. He is regarded as the greatest writer in the Slovene language, and has sometimes been compared to Franz Kafka and James Joyce.
Ivan Cankar was born in the Carniolan town of Vrhnika near Ljubljana. He was one of the many children of a poor artisan who emigrated to the United States shortly after Ivan's birth. He was raised by his mother, with whom he established a close, but ambivalent relationship. The figure of a self-sacrificing and submissively repressive mother would later become one of the most recognizable features of Cankar's prose. After finishing grammar school in his hometown, he studied at the Technical High School (Realka) in Ljubljana.
During this period, he started writing literature, mostly poetry, under the influence of Romantic and post-Romantic poets such as France Prešeren, Heinrich Heine, Simon Jenko and Simon Gregorčič. In 1893, he discovered the epic poetry of Anton Aškerc, which had a huge influence on the development of his style and ideals. Under Aškerc's influence, Cankar rejected the sentimental post-Romantic poetry and embraced literary realism and national liberalism.
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Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956), known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was well known for his uniquely defined style of drip painting.
During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.
Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident. In December 1956, the year of his death, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, and a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967. More recently, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London.
In 2000, Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award–winning film Pollock directed by and starring Ed Harris.
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James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominently the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
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Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjaroslaf ˈɦaʃɛk]; April 30, 1883 – January 3, 1923) was a Czech humorist, satirist, writer and socialist anarchist best known for his novel The Good Soldier Švejk, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures, which has been translated into sixty languages. He also wrote some 1,500 short stories. He was a journalist, bohemian, and practical joker.
Hašek was born in Prague, Bohemia (then within Austria-Hungary, now part of the Czech Republic), the son of high-school math teacher Josef Hašek and his wife Kateřina. Poverty forced the family, with three children — another son Bohuslav, three years Hašek's younger, and an orphan cousin Maria — to move often, more than ten times during his infancy. He never knew a real home, and this rootlessness clearly influenced his life of wanderlust. When he was thirteen, Hašek's father died from excessive alcohol intake, and his mother was unable to raise him firmly. The teenage boy dropped out of high school at the age of 15 to become a druggist, but eventually graduated from business school. He worked briefly as a bank officer and also as a dog salesman (a profession he was to attribute to his hero Švejk and from which many of the improbable anecdotes told by Švejk are drawn). He preferred, however, the liberated profession of a writer and journalist, though he had entered into the circles of gypsies and vagabonds, taking up many bad habits and becoming unruly and hard to track down.
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Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. (born May 15, 1930) is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.
Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. Recounting this period in his life, he says, "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in." He began drawing when he was three and has continued doing art ever since.
Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.
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Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃n‿anuj]; 23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, and had Basque ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon. Marie-Magdeleine worked the night shifts in the music-hall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations, affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage. He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. He first tried his hand at playwriting here, at the age of 12, though his earliest works do not survive.
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Jean Barraqué
Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (January 17, 1928 – August 17, 1973) was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output of highly complex but passionate works.
Barraqué was born in Puteaux, Hauts-de-Seine. The family moved to Paris in 1931. He studied in Paris with Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen and, through Messiaen, became interested in serialism. After completing his Piano Sonata in 1952, he suppressed or destroyed his earlier works. A book published by the French music critic André Hodeir, titled Since Debussy, created controversy around Barraqué by claiming this work as perhaps the finest piano sonata since Beethoven. As the work had still not been publicly performed, and only two other works by him had at this time, the extravagant claims made for Barraqué in this book were received with some scepticism. Whilst with hindsight it is clear that Hodeir had accurately perceived the exceptional features of Barraqué's music—notably its searing Romantic intensity, which distinguishes it from the contemporaneous works of Boulez or Stockhausen.
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Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ kɔkto]; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants terribles (1929), and the films Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), and Orpheus (1949). His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María Félix, Édith Piaf and Raymond Radiguet.
Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, a village near Paris, to Georges Cocteau and his wife, Eugénie Lecomte; a socially prominent Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. He left home at fifteen. He published his first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at nineteen. Cocteau soon became known in Bohemian artistic circles as The Frivolous Prince, the title of a volume he published at twenty-two. Edith Wharton described him as a man "to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City..."
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Jean Epstein
Jean Epstein (French pronunciation: [ɛpˈʃtajn]) (March 25, 1897 – April 2, 1953) was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. Although he is remembered today primarily for his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, Epstein directed three dozen films and was an influential critic of literature and film from the early 1920s through the late 1940s. He is often associated with French Impressionist Cinema and the concept of photogénie.
Epstein was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a French-Jewish father and Polish mother. After his father died in 1908, the family relocated to Switzerland, where Epstein remained until beginning medical school at the University of Lyon in France. While in Lyon, Epstein served as a secretary and translator for Auguste Lumière, considered one of the founders of cinema.
Epstein started directing his own films in 1922 with Pasteur, followed by L'Auberge rouge and Coeur fidèle (both 1923). Film director Luis Buñuel worked as an assistant director to Epstein on Mauprat (1926) and La Chute de la maison Usher (1928). Epstein's criticism appeared in the early modernist journal L'Esprit Nouveau.
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Jean Genet
Jean Genet (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ ʒəˈnɛ]) ((1910-12-19)December 19, 1910 – April 15, 1986(1986-04-15)) was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing. His major works include the novels Querelle of Brest, The Thief's Journal, and Our Lady of the Flowers, and the plays The Balcony, The Blacks, The Maids and The Screens.
Genet's mother was a young prostitute who raised him for the first year of his life before putting him up for adoption. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provinces by a carpenter and his family who, according to Edmund White's biography, were loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty theft (although White also suggests that Genet's later claims of a dismal, impoverished childhood were exaggerated to fit his outlaw image).
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Jean Puy
Jean Puy (8 November 1876, Roanne, Loire – 6 March 1960, Roanne) was a French Fauvist artist. He studied architecture in Lyon and painting with Jean-Paul Laurens at l'Académie Julian between 1897 and 1898. He met Henri Matisse and other like-minded artists when he transferred to the l'Academie Carriere in 1899. He exhibited his work in 1901, then in an impressionist style, at the Salon des Independants; later, as a Fauvist, he exhibited at the 1905 Salon d'Automne.
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Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir (French pronunciation: [ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His pictures Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Renoir, My Father (1962). Jean Renoir was ranked by the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of critics as the fourth greatest director of all time.
Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer; and the father of Alain Renoir(fr), professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley.
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Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo (26 April 1905, Paris – 5 October 1934) was a French film director, who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s and was a posthumous influence on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Vigo was born to Emily Clero and the prominent Spanish/Catalan militant anarchist Eugeni Bonaventura de Vigo i Sallés (who adopted the name Miguel Almereyda - an anagram of "y'a la merde", which translates as "there's the shit"). Much of his early life was spent on the run with his parents. His father was strangled in his cell in Fresnes Prison on the night of 13 August 1917; allegedly the authorities were responsible. The young Vigo was subsequently sent to boarding school under an assumed name, Jean Sales, to conceal his identity.
Vigo was married and had a daughter, Luce Vigo (a film critic) in 1931. He died in 1934 of complications from tuberculosis, which he had contracted eight years earlier.
Vigo is noted for two films which affected the future development of both French and world cinema: Zéro de conduite (1933) and L'Atalante (1934). Zéro de conduite was approvingly described by critic David Thomson as "forty-four minutes of sustained, if roughly shot anarchic crescendo." L'Atalante was Vigo's only full-length feature; the simple story of a newly-married couple splitting and reuniting is notable for the way it effortlessly merges rough, naturalistic filmmaking with shimmering, dreamlike sequences and effects. Thomson described the result as "not so much a masterpiece as a definition of cinema, and thus a film that stands resolutely apart from the great body of films."
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Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà (Catalan pronunciation: [ʒuˈam miˈɾo]) (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983) was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his birth city in 1975.
Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and famously declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.
Born to the families of a goldsmith and a cabinet-maker, he grew up in the Barri Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona. His father was Miquel Miró Adzerias and his mother was Dolores Ferrà. He began drawing classes at the age of seven at a private school at Carrer del Regomir 13, a medieval mansion. In 1907 he enrolled at the fine art academy at La Llotja, to the dismay of his father. He studied at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc and he had his first solo show in 1918 at the Dalmau Gallery, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. Inspired by Cubist and surrealist exhibitions from abroad, Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris, but continued to spend his summers in Catalonia.
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John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.
Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. The best known of these is Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48).
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John Elderfield
John Elderfield (born 25 April 1943) was the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 2003 to 2008.
Elderfield studied the history of art at the University of Manchester and the University of Leeds. He received his PhD from the University of London in 1975.
In 1974, Elderfield edited and introduced the diary of the Zurich Dada artist Hugo Ball, Hugo Ball: the flight out of time. This publications was revised in 1996.
Elderfield joined the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as Curator of Painting and Sculpture in 1975. He served the Museum as Chief Curator at Large from 1993 to 2003.
Elderfield had published studies of Henri Matisse, Kurt Schwitters, Richard Diebenkorn, Howard Hodgkin, and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. In 1986, Elderfield received the Eric Mitchell Prize for his book on Schwitters. Elderfield received the award of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Government.
In 2005, Time Magazine included Elderfield on their list of the 100 most influential people of 2005.
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John Osborne
John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre.
In a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and TV. His personal life was extravagant and iconoclastic. He was notorious for the ornate violence of his language, not only on behalf of the political causes he supported but also against his own family, including his wives and children.
Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain's purpose in the post-imperial age. He was the first to question the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak (1956–1966), he helped make contempt an acceptable and now even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behaviour and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.[citation needed]
Osborne was born in December 1929 in London, the son of Thomas Godfrey Osborne, a commercial artist and advertising copywriter of South Welsh extraction, and Nellie Beatrice, a Cockney barmaid. He adored his father and hated his mother, who he later wrote taught him "The fatality of hatred … She is my disease, an invitation to my sick room", and described her as "hypocritical, self-absorbed, calculating and indifferent". Thomas died in 1941, leaving the young boy an insurance settlement which he used to finance a private education at Belmont College, a minor public school in Devon. He entered the school in 1943 but was expelled in the summer term of 1945 after whacking the headmaster, who had struck him for listening to a forbidden broadcast by Frank Sinatra. School Certificate was the only formal qualification he acquired, but he possessed a native intelligence.
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John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell (16 June 1858 – 22 April 1930) was an Australian impressionist painter.
John Peter Russell was born at the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, the eldest of four children of John Russell, a Scottish engineer, his wife Charlotte Elizabeth, née Nicholl, from London. J. P. Russell was a nephew of Sir Peter Nicol Russell. After his father's death J. P. Russell enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, on 5 January 1881 and studied under Alphonse Legros for three years. Russell then went to Paris to study painting under Fernand Cormon. (His fellow students there included Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard.) Russell was a man of means and having married a beautiful Italian, Mariana Antoinetta Matiocco, he settled at Belle Île off the coast of Brittany, where he established an artists' colony. He would have 11 children with Matiocco, of whom six survived.
Russell had met Vincent van Gogh in Paris and formed a friendship with him. Van Gogh spoke highly of Russell's work, and after his first summer in Arles in 1888 he sent twelve drawings of his paintings to Russell, to inform him about the progress of his work. Claude Monet often worked with Russell at Belle Île and influenced his style, though it has been said that Monet preferred some of Russell's Belle Île seascapes to his own. Russell did not attempt to make his pictures known.
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Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 Berdichev, Ukraine – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England.
Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honour. Conrad was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.
Films have been adapted from or inspired by Conrad's Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Almayer's Folly.
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Juan Gris
José Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) González-Pérez (March 23, 1887 – May 11, 1927), better known as Juan Gris (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxwaŋ ˈgɾis]), was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life. His works, which are closely connected to the emergence of an innovative artistic genre—Cubism—are among the movement's most distinctive.
Born in Madrid, Gris studied mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904, during which time he contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905, he studied painting with the academic artist José Maria Carbonero. It was in 1905 that José González adopted the more distinctive pseudonym Juan Gris.
In 1906 he moved to Paris and became friends with Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, then in 1915 he was painted by his friend, Amedeo Modigliani. In Paris, Gris followed the lead of another friend and fellow countryman, Pablo Picasso. Although he submitted darkly humorous illustrations to journals such as Le Rire, L'assiette au beurre, Le Charivari, and Le Cri de Paris, Gris began to paint seriously in 1910, and by 1912 he had developed a personal Cubist style. His portrait of Picasso in 1912 is a significant early Cubist painting done by a painter other than Picasso or Braque. Although Gris regarded Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein wrote in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that "Juan Gris was the only person whom Picasso wished away".
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Jørn Utzon
Jørn Oberg Utzon, (Danish pronunciation: [jɶɐ̯n ˈud̥sʌn]), AC (9 April 1918 – 29 November 2008) was a Danish architect, most notable for designing the Sydney Opera House in Australia. When it was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007, Utzon became only the second person to have received such recognition for one of his works during his lifetime. Other noteworthy works include Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen and the National Assembly Building in Kuwait. He also made important contributions to housing design, especially with his Kingo Houses near Helsingør.
Utzon was born in Copenhagen, the son of a naval engineer, and grew up in Aalborg, Denmark, where he became interested in ships and a possible naval career. As a result of his family's interest in art, from 1937 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under Kay Fisker and Steen Eiler Rasmussen. Following his graduation in 1942, he joined Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm where he worked together with Arne Jacobsen and Poul Henningsen. He took a particular interest in the works of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. After the end of World War II and the German Occupation of Denmark, he returned to Copenhagen.
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Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Russian: Казимир Северинович Малевич [kɐzʲɪˈmʲir sʲɪvʲɪˈrʲinəvʲɪt͡ɕ mɐˈlʲevʲɪt͡ɕ], Polish: Kazimierz Malewicz, Ukrainian: Казимир Северинович Малевич [kazɪˈmɪr sɛwɛˈrɪnɔwɪtʃ mɑˈlɛwɪtʃ], German: Kasimir Malewitsch, (February 23, 1879, previously 1878: see below – May 15, 1935) was a Russian painter and art theoretician. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.
Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (today Ukraine). His parents, Seweryn and Ludwika Malewicz, were ethnic Poles who had fled to Ukraine in the aftermath of the January Uprising of 1863 and he was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church. His father managed a sugar factory. Kazimir was the first of 14 children, only nine of whom survived into adulthood. His family moved often and he spent most of his childhood in the villages of Ukraine amidst sugar-beet plantations, far from centers of culture. Until age 12 he knew nothing of professional artists, though art had surrounded him in childhood. He delighted in peasant embroidery, and in decorated walls and stoves. He himself was able to paint in the peasant style. He studied drawing in Kiev from 1895 to 1896.
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Kees van Dongen
Cornelis Theodorus Maria van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968), usually known as Kees van Dongen or just Van Dongen, was a Dutch painter and one of the Fauves. He gained a reputation for his sensuous, at times garish, portraits.
Kees van Dongen was born in Delfshaven, then on the outskirts, and today a borough, of Rotterdam. In 1892, at age 16, Kees van Dongen started his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam. During this period from 1892 to 1897, van Dongen frequented the Red Quarter seaport area, where he drew scenes of sailors and prostitutes.
In 1897, he lived in Paris for several months. In December 1899 he returned to Paris to join Augusta Preitinger ("Guus"), whom he had met at the Academy. They married on 11 July 1901 (they divorced in 1921). He began to exhibit in Paris, and participated in the controversial 1905 exhibition Salon d'Automne, in a room featuring Henri Matisse amongst others. The bright colours of this group of artists led to them being called Fauves ('Wild Beasts'). He was also briefly a member of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke.
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Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul.
Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to the subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, and some essays.
The young Hamsun objected to realism and naturalism. He argued that the main object of modern literature should be the intricacies of the human mind, that writers should describe the "whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow". Hamsun is considered the "leader of the Neo-Romantic revolt at the turn of the century", with works such as Hunger (1890), Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894), and Victoria (1898). His later works—in particular his "Nordland novels"—were influenced by the Norwegian new realism, portraying everyday life in rural Norway and often employing local dialect, irony, and humour. The epic work Growth of the Soil (1917) earned him the Nobel Prize.
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Konstantin Melnikov
Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov (Russian: Константин Степанович Мельников; August 3 [O.S. July 22] 1890, Moscow - November 28, 1974, id.) was a Russian architect and painter. His architectural work, compressed into a single decade (1923–1933), placed Melnikov on the front end of 1920s avant-garde architecture. Although associated with the Constructivists, Melnikov was an independent artist, not bound by the rules of a particular style or artistic group. In 1930s, Melnikov refused to conform with the rising stalinist architecture, withdrew from practice and worked as a portrait painter and teacher until the end of his life.
Konstantin Melnikov was born a fourth child in a family and was a vegetarian. His father, Stepan Illarionovich Melnikov, originally from Nizhny Novgorod region, was a road maintenance foreman, employed by the Moscow Agricultural Academy. Mother, Yelena Grigorievna (née Repkina), came from the peasants of Zvenigorod district. The whole family occupied a single room of a state-managed working class barrack in Hay Lodge (Соломенная Сторожка), then a quiet northern suburb of Moscow. Melnikovs tried hard to rise above bitter poverty, to return to farming and eventually relocated to their own small house and set their own dairy farm. Konstantin Melnikov later praised his father, who noticed little boy's addiction to drawing and regularly brought him scrap paper for drawing from the Academy. However, all the education they could afford was a two-year parish school (completed in 1903).
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Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier (French pronunciation: [lə kɔʁbyzje]; October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was an architect, designer, urbanist,and writer, famous for being one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India and America.
He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities.
Le Corbusier adopted his pseudonym in the 1920s, allegedly deriving it in part from the name of a distant ancestor, "Lecorbésier."
He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal in 1961.
He was born as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small city in Neuchâtel canton in north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, just 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) across the border from France. He attended a kindergarten that used Fröbelian methods.
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Leo Stein
Leo Stein (1872 – July 29, 1947) was an American art collector and critic. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the older brother of Gertrude Stein. He became an influential promoter of 20th-century paintings. Beginning in 1892, he studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for two years. The following year, he traveled the world with his cousin, Fred. In 1897, he transferred to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1898.
Stein spent a number of years living in Paris with his sister, however, in 1914, the two split due to Leo's infatuation with a woman he described as a kind of abnormal vampire. Stein returned to America to work as a journalist but eventually settled near Florence, Italy, with his long-time love interest, Nina Auzias. They eventually married in 1921.
Stein died of cancer in 1947 in Florence. Auzias committed suicide two years later.
New York Times "The Moderns" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/03/specials/stein-sister.html, 1996.
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Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo (formerly called K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat, informally called Pak Cokro).
Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of the music of non-Western cultures into his work, with a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan instruments, including ensembles constructed and tuned by Harrison and his partner William Colvig. The majority of his works are written in just intonation rather than the more widespread equal temperament. Harrison is one of the most prominent composers to have worked with microtones.
Harrison was born in Portland, Oregon, but moved with his family to a number of locations around the San Francisco Bay Area as a child. He graduated from Burlingame High School in Burlingame, California in 1934, then he moved to San Francisco. The diverse music which he was to be exposed to there, including Cantonese opera, Native American music, Mexican music, and jazz as well as classical music, was to have a major influence on him. He also heard recordings of Indonesian music early in life.
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Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky) (February 20, 1901 or 1902 – March 17, 1974) was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Influenced by ancient ruins, Kahn's style tends to the monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. Louis Kahn's works are considered as monumental beyond modernism.
Louis Kahn, whose original name was Itze-Leib (Leiser-Itze) Schmuilowsky (Schmalowski), was born into a poor Jewish family in Pärnu and spent the rest of his early childhood in Kuressaare on the Estonian island of Saaremaa, then part of the Russian Empire. At age 3, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light of the coal. He put the coal in his apron which caught on fire and seared his face. He carried these scars for the rest of his life.
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Louis Sullivan
Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism" He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspiration to the Chicago group of architects who have come to be known as the Prairie School. Along with Henry Hobson Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright, Sullivan is one of "the recognized trinity of American architecture".
Louis Henry Sullivan was born to an Irish-born father, Patrick Sullivan, and a Swiss-born mother, née Andrienne List, both of whom had immigrated to the United States in the late 1840s. He grew up living with his grandmother, Anna Mattheus List, in South Reading (now Wakefield), Massachusetts. Louis spent most of his childhood learning about nature at his grandparent’s farm. In the later years of his primary education, his experiences varied quite a bit. He would spend a lot of time by himself wandering around Boston. He explored every street looking at the surrounding buildings. This was around the time when he developed his fascination with buildings and he decided he would one day become a structural engineer/architect. While attending high school Sullivan met Moses Woolson, whose teachings made a lasting impression on him, and nurtured him until his death. After graduating from high school, Sullivan studied architecture briefly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Learning that he could both graduate from high school a year early and pass up the first two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by passing a series of examinations, Sullivan entered MIT at the age of sixteen. After one year of study, he moved to Philadelphia and talked himself into a job with architect Frank Furness.
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Louis Valtat
Louis Valtat[p] (8 August 1869, Dieppe, Seine-Maritime – 1952) was a French painter associated with the Fauves. Valtat is noted as a key link that accounts for the stylistic transition in painting from Monet to Matisse. Louis Valtat is considered as one of the leaders and founders of the Fauvist movement (meaning "the wild beasts" for their wild, expressionist-like use of color), which did not formally begin until 1905 at the Salon d'Automne. Valtat was involved with the most influential groups of artists, such as Auguste Renoir, Paul Signac, Georges d'Espagnat and Maximilien Luce.
Louis Valtat was born on August 8, 1869 in Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, in the Normandy region of France, into a wealthy family of ship owners. Valtat spent many of his childhood years in Versailles, a suburb of Paris, where he attended secondary school at the Lycée Hoche (near the Palace of Versailles). Encouraged by his father, an amateur landscape painter himself, Valtat became interested in art, and at age 17, deciding to pursue an artistic career, applied to the School of Fine Arts in Paris. After being accepted, in 1887, Valtat moved to Paris to enroll at the École des Beaux Arts de Paris, where he studied with the well-known academic artists Gustave Boulanger (1824–1888), Jules Lefebvre (1836–1911), and later with Benjamin Constant (1845–1902).
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Louis Vauxcelles
Louis Vauxcelles (1 January 1870, Paris – 1943, Paris) was an influential French art critic. He is credited with coining the terms Fauvism (1905), and Cubism (1908).
Vauxcelles coined the phrase 'les fauves' (translated as 'wild beasts') to describe a circle of painters associated with Matisse. As their paintings were exposed in the same room as a classical sculpture, he stated his criticism and disapproval of their works by describing the sculpture as "a Donatello amongst wild beasts" ("Donatello parmi les fauves").
He first used the term cubism or bizarre cubiques in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described it as 'full of little cubes', after which the term quickly gained wide use although the two creators of the new style, Braque and Picasso, did not initially adopt it.
In 1911 he coined the less well-known term Tubism in describing the style of Fernand Léger.
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Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia for voices and orchestra and his series of numbered solo pieces titled Sequenza) and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.
Berio was born at Oneglia (now part of Imperia). He was taught the piano by his father and grandfather who were both organists. During World War II he was conscripted into the army, but on his first day he injured his hand while learning how a gun worked, and spent time in a military hospital. Following the war, Berio studied at the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. He was unable to continue studying the piano because of his injured hand, so instead concentrated on composition. In 1947 came the first public performance of one of his works, a suite for piano. Berio made a living at this time accompanying singing classes, and it was in doing this that he met American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, whom he married shortly after graduating (they divorced in 1964). Berio would write many pieces aimed at exploiting her very distinctive voice.
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Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono (Italian pronunciation: [luˈiːdʒi ˈnɔːno]; January 29, 1924 – May 8, 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.
Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono began music lessons with Gian Francesco Malipiero in 1941 at the Venice Conservatory where he acquired knowledge of the Renaissance madrigal tradition, amongst other styles. After graduating with a degree in law from the University of Padua, he was given encouragement in composition by Bruno Maderna. Through Maderna, he became acquainted with Hermann Scherchen—then Maderna's conducting teacher—who gave Nono further tutelage and was an early mentor and advocate of his music.
It was Scherchen who presented Nono's first acknowledged work, the Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell'op. 41 di A. Schönberg in 1950, at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt. The Variazioni canoniche, based on the twelve-tone series of Arnold Schoenberg's Op. 41, including the Ode-to-Napoleon hexachord, marked Nono as a committed composer of anti-fascist political orientation (Annibaldi 1980). (Variazioni canoniche also used a six-element row of rhythmic values). Nono had been a member of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War (Schoenberg-Nono, 2008). In fact Nono's striking political commitment, while allying him with some of his contemporaries at Darmstadt such as Henri Pousseur and in the earlier days Hans Werner Henze, distinguished him from others, including Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Nevertheless, it was with Boulez and Stockhausen that Nono became one of the leaders of the New Music during the 1950s.
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Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello (Italian pronunciation: [luˈiːdʒi piranˈdɛllo]; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage". Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners for Theatre of the Absurd.
Pirandello was born into an upper-class family in a village with the curious name of Kaos (Chaos), a poor suburb of Girgenti (Agrigento, a town in southern Sicily). His father, Stefano, belonged to a wealthy family involved in the sulphur industry and his mother, Caterina Ricci Gramitto, was also of a well-to-do background, descending from a family of the bourgeois professional class of Agrigento. Both families, the Pirandellos and the Ricci Gramittos, were ferociously anti-Bourbon and actively participated in the struggle for unification and democracy ("Il Risorgimento"). Stefano participated in the famous Expedition of the Thousand, later following Garibaldi all the way to the battle of Aspromonte and Caterina, who had hardly reached the age of thirteen, was forced to accompany her father to Malta, where he had been sent into exile by the Bourbon monarchy. But the open participation in the Garibaldian cause and the strong sense of idealism of those early years were quickly transformed, above all in Caterina, into an angry and bitter disappointment with the new reality created by the unification. Pirandello would eventually assimilate this sense of betrayal and resentment and express it in several of his poems and in his novel The Old and the Young. It is also probable that this climate of disillusion inculcated in the young Luigi the sense of disproportion between ideals and reality which is recognizable in his essay on humorism (L'Umorismo).
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Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo (30 April 1883 – 4 February 1947) was an Italian Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises (1913). He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of "noise concerts" in 1913–14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921.
Luigi Russolo was perhaps the first noise artist. His 1913 manifesto, L'Arte dei Rumori, translated as The Art of Noises, stated that the industrial revolution had given modern men a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. Russolo found traditional melodic music confining and envisioned noise music as its future replacement.
The Art of Noises classified "noise-sound" into six groups:
He designed and constructed a number of noise-generating devices called Intonarumori and assembled a noise orchestra to perform with them. A performance of his Gran Concerto Futuristico (1917) was met with strong disapproval and violence from the audience, as Russolo himself had predicted. None of his intoning devices have survived, though recently some have been reconstructed and used in performances. Although Russolo's works bear little resemblance to modern noise music, his pioneering creations cannot be overlooked as an essential stage in the evolution of the several genres in this category, and many artists are now familiar with his manifesto.
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Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlwis βuˈɲwel]; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-born Mexican filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the United States.
Buñuel was born in Calanda, a small town in the province of Teruel, in Aragón, Spain, to Leonardo Buñuel and María Portolés. He would later describe his birthplace by saying that in Calanda, "the Middle Ages lasted until World War I." The oldest of seven children, Luis had two brothers, Alfonso and Leonardo, and four sisters: Alicia, Concepción, Margarita and María.
When Buñuel was just four and a half months old, the family moved to Zaragoza, where they were one of the wealthiest families in town. In Zaragoza, Buñuel received a strict Jesuit education at the private Colegio del Salvador. After being kicked and insulted by the study hall proctor before a final exam, Buñuel refused to return to the school. He told his mother he had been expelled, which was not true—and what's more, he had received the highest marks on his world history exam. Buñuel finished the last two years of his high school education at the local public school.
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Léonide Massine
Leonid Fyodorovich Myasin (Russian: Леонид Фёдорович Мясин), better known in the West by the French transliteration as Léonide Massine (9 August [O.S. 28 July] 1896 – 15 March 1979) was a Russian choreographer and ballet dancer.
Léonide Massine was born in Moscow and was a ballet student at the Imperial Theater School in that city. From 1915 to 1921 he was the principal choreographer of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Following the departure of Vaslav Nijinsky, the company's first male star, Massine became the preeminent male star and took over Nijinsky's roles. After the death of Diaghilev in 1929 and the disbanding of his company, Massine became the choreographer and male lead dancer of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, one of the companies that succeeded the original Ballets Russes.
Massine created the world's first symphonic ballet, Les Présages, in 1933 using Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. This caused a furore amongst musical purists, who objected to a serious symphonic work being used as the basis of a ballet. Undeterred, Massine continued work on Choreartium, set to Brahms's Fourth Symphony, which had its premiere on 24 October 1933 at the Alhambra Theatre in London. He also choreographed a ballet to Hector Berlioz's 1830 Symphonie Fantastique and danced the role of the Young Musician with Tamara Toumanova as the Beloved at its premiere at Covent Garden, London, on 24 July 1936 with Colonel W. de Basil's Ballets Russes. Two years later he produced Seventh Symphony, to Beethoven's great score. It premiered on 5 May 1938 in Monte Carlo, with Alicia Markova, Nini Theilade, Frederic Franklin, and Igor Youskevitch as the principal dancers.
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Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Described as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements; although his ties to each were informal. Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Ray produced major works in a variety of media and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer, even though he considered himself a painter above all. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, with the artist coining the term "Rayographs" in reference to himself.
Whilst appreciation for Ray's work beyond his fashion and portrait photography was not forthcoming during his lifetime, especially in his native United States, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since.[citation needed]
From the time he began attracting attention as an artist until his death more than sixty years later, Man Ray allowed little of his early life or family background to be known to the public, even refusing to acknowledge that he ever had a name other than Man Ray.
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Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall (/ʃəˈɡɑːl/ shə-GAHL;Russian: Марк Заха́рович Шага́л; (7 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Russian-French artist associated with several major artistic styles and one of the most successful artists of the 20th century. He was an early modernist, and created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.
Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century". According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists". For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist". Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.
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Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968; French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl dyˈʃɑ̃]) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.
Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions. He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it Fountain, though in a 1917 letter to his sister Duchamp indicates that a female friend, possibly the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, conceived of the urinal as sculpture and sent it to him under the pseudonym Richard Mutt. Duchamp produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time.
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Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). It was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.
Proust was born in Auteuil (the southern sector of Paris' then-rustic 16th arrondissement) at the home of his great-uncle, two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. His birth took place during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponds with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Much of In Search of Lost Time concerns the vast changes, most particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes that occurred in France during the Third Republic and the fin de siècle.
Proust's father, Achille Adrien Proust, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist, responsible for studying and attempting to remedy the causes and movements of cholera through Europe and Asia; he was the author of many articles and books on medicine and hygiene. Proust's mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, was the daughter of a rich and cultured Jewish family from Alsace. She was literate and well-read; her letters demonstrate a well-developed sense of humour, and her command of English was sufficient for her to provide the necessary assistance to her son's later attempts to translate John Ruskin. Proust was raised in his father's Catholic faith. He was baptized (on August 5, 1871, at the church of Saint-Louis d'Antin) and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never formally practiced that faith.
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Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.
Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor John Milton Moore and his wife, Mary Warner. She grew up in her grandfather's household, her father having left the family before her birth. In 1905, Moore entered Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and graduated four years later. She taught at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until 1915, when Moore began to publish poetry professionally.
Moore came to the attention of poets as diverse as Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, H.D., T. S. Eliot, Mina Loy, and Ezra Pound beginning with her first publication in 1915. From 1925 until 1929, Moore served as editor of the literary and cultural journal The Dial. This continued her role, similar to that of Pound, as a patron of poetry; much later, she encouraged promising young poets, including Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and James Merrill.
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Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Russian-American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".
Mark Rothko (Marcus Rothkowitz, Mark Rotkovich) was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian Empire (now Daugavpils, Latvia). His father, Jacob Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and an intellectual, who provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, upbringing. Unlike Jews in most cities of Czarist Russia, those in Dvinsk had been spared from violent outbreaks of anti-Semitic pogroms. However, in an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, Rothko’s early childhood was plagued by fear.
Despite Jacob Rothkowitz's modest income, the family was highly educated, and able to speak Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew. Following Jacob's return to Orthodox Judaism, he sent Marcus, his youngest son, to the cheder at the age of 5, where he studied the Talmud although his elder siblings had been educated in the public school system.
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Martha Graham
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts,Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.
She danced and choreographed for over seventy years. Graham was the first dancer ever to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the USA: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable."[citation needed]
Graham was born in Allegheny City, which today is part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1894. Her father George Graham was what in the Victorian era was known as an "alienist", a practitioner of an early form of psychiatry. The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. Dr. Graham was a third generation American of Irish descent and her mother Jane Beers was a tenth generation descendant of Puritan Miles Standish.
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Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt ( /kəˈsæt/; May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot.
Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She was born into an upper-middle-class family: her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator, and her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a banking family. Katherine Cassatt, educated and very well read, had a profound influence on her daughter. To that effect, Cassatt's lifelong friend Louisine Havemeyer wrote in her memoirs: "Anyone who had the privilege of knowing Mary Cassatt's mother would know at once that it was from her and her alone that [Mary] inherited her ability." The ancestral name had been Cossart. Cassatt was a distant cousin of artist Robert Henri. Cassatt was one of seven children, of which two died in infancy. Her family moved eastward, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where she began schooling at age 6.
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Mary Wigman
Mary Wigman (born Marie Wiegmann, 13 November 1886 – 18 September 1973) was a German dancer, choreographer, notable as the pioneer of expressionist dance, dance therapy, and movement training without pointe shoes. She is considered one of the most important figures in the history of European dance. She became one of the most iconic figures of Weimar German culture and her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage.
Karoline Sophie Marie Wiegmann was born in Hanover, Germany.
She came to dance comparatively late after seeing three students of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, who aimed to approach music through movement using three equally-important elements: solfège, improvisation and his own system of movements, eurhythmics. Another key early experience was a solo concert by Grete Wiesenthal.
Wigman’s career was not that of a “virtuoso”. Rather, it was marked by a period of intense study and intellectual awakening in two artists’ colonies of the time. She learned rhythmic gymnastics, and she trained under Laban and became a professional dancer. Wigman successfully completed the program within two years and earned her certificate to become a teacher of Dalcroze’s method of rhythmic gymnastics, but she was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the limited nature of dance in the context of an institution where dance was considered to be a medium for music education.
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Maurice de Vlaminck
Maurice de Vlaminck (4 April 1876 – 11 October 1958) was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 were united in their use of intense color.
Maurice de Vlaminck was born in Paris to a family of musicians. His father taught him to play the violin. He began painting in his late teens. In 1893, he studied with a painter named Henri Rigalon on the Ile de Chatou. In 1894 he married Suzanne Berly. The turning point in his life was a chance meeting on the train to Paris towards the end of his stint in the army. Vlaminck, then 23, met an aspiring artist, André Derain, with whom he struck up a lifelong friendship. When Vlaminck completed his army service in 1900, the two rented a studio together for a year before Derain left to do his own military service. In 1902 and 1903 he wrote several mildly pornographic novels illustrated by Derain. He painted during the day and earned his livelihood by giving violin lessons and performing with musical bands at night.
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Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte (Count) Maeterlinck from 1932, (French pronunciation: [mo.ʁis ma.tɛʁ.lɛ̃ːk] in Belgium, mɛ.teʁ.lɛ̃ːk in France; 29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.
Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, to a wealthy, French-speaking family. His father, Polydore, was a notary who enjoyed tending the greenhouses on their property. His mother, Mathilde, came from a wealthy family.
In September 1874 he was sent to the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, where works of the French Romantics were scorned and only plays on religious subjects were permitted. His experiences at this school influenced his distaste for the Catholic Church and organized religion.
He had written poems and short novels during his studies, but his father wanted him to go into law. After finishing his law studies at the University of Ghent in 1885, he spent a few months in Paris, France. He met some members of the new Symbolism movement, Villiers de l'Isle Adam in particular, who would have a great influence on Maeterlinck's subsequent work.
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Maurice Marinot
Maurice Marinot (born March 20, 1882 in Troyes, France, died 1960, Troyes) was a French artist. He was a painter considered a member of Les Fauves, and then a major artist in glass.
Marinot's father was a bonnet maker. Maurice did poorly in school, but convinced his parents to send him to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris for painting. He left art school after his work wasn't accepted by the standards of the day. In 1905 he returned to Troyes, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
In 1911 he visited his first glass shop, owned by his friends, the Viard brothers. He fell in love with the contrasts between colors, hot and cold, the play of light and fire. He began designing bowls, vases and bottles which his friends made, then he painted enamels on the surface.
In 1912 he had his first exhibition and by 1913 critics were praising his work, saying “It has been a long time since an innovation of such great importance has come to enrich the art of glass” (Leon Rosenthal, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1913). From that year he stopped exhibiting his paintings.
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Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.
Ernst was born on April 2, 1891, in Brühl, near Cologne, the third of nine children of a middle-class Catholic family. His father Philipp Ernst was a teacher of the deaf and an amateur painter. A devout Christian and a strict disciplinarian, he inspired in his son a penchant for defying authority, while his interest in painting and sketching in nature influenced Max Ernst to take up painting himself. In 1909 Ernst enrolled in the University of Bonn, studying philosophy, art history, literature, psychology and psychiatry. He visited asylums and became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill patients; he also started painting this year, producing sketches in the garden of the Brühl castle and portraits of his sister and himself. In 1911 Ernst befriended August Macke and joined his Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group of artists, deciding to become an artist. In 1912 he visited the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, where works by Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin profoundly influenced his approach to art. His own work was exhibited the same year together with that of the Das Junge Rheinland group, at Galerie Feldman in Cologne, and then in several group exhibitions in 1913.
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Max Jacob
Max Jacob (July 12, 1876 – March 5, 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career. On the Boulevard Voltaire, he shared a room with Pablo Picasso who he became great friends with( and was included in his artwork 'Three Musicians'), who introduced him to Guillaume Apollinaire, who in turn introduced him to Georges Braque. He would become close friends with Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Christopher Wood and Amedeo Modigliani, who painted his portrait in 1916. He also befriended and encouraged the artist Romanin, otherwise known as French politician and future Resistance leader Jean Moulin. Moulin's famous nom de guerre Max is presumed to be selected in honor of Jacob.
Jacob, who had Jewish origins, claimed to have had a vision of Christ in 1909, and converted to Catholicism.
Max Jacob is regarded as an important link between the symbolists and the surrealists, as can be seen in his prose poems Le cornet à dés (The Dice Box, 1917 - the 1948 Gallimard edition was illustrated by Jean Hugo) and in his paintings, exhibitions of which were held in New York City in 1930 and 1938.
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Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.
Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod and became an orphan at the age of nine. In 1880, at the age of twelve, he ran away from home in an effort to find his grandmother. Gorky was brought up by his grandmother. Her death deeply affected him, and after an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.
As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida). The name is suggestive of "cloak-and-dagger" by the similarity to the Greek chlamys, "cloak"). He began using the pseudonym Gorky (literally "bitter") in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ (The Caucasus). The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalization, but also their inward spark of humanity.
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Maxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson (15 December 1888 – 28 February 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.
Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent. His family initially lived on his maternal grandmother Sheperd's farm in Atlantic, then moved to Andover, Ohio, where his father became a railroad fireman while studying to become a minister. They moved often, to follow their father's ministerial posts, and Maxwell was frequently sick, missing a great deal of school. He used his time sick in bed to read voraciously, and both his parents and Aunt Emma were storytellers, which contributed to Anderson's love of literature.
During a visit to his grandmother's house in Atlantic, at age 11, he met the first love of his life, Hallie Loomis, a slightly older girl from a wealthier family. His autobiographical tale, Morning, Winter and Night told of rape, incest and sadomasochism on the farm. It was published under a pseudonym, John Nairne Michealson, to prevent offending family. The Andersons bounced between Andover, Ohio, Richmond Center, Ohio, Townville, Pa., Edinboro, Pa., McKeesport, Pa., New Brighton, Pa., Harrisburg, Pa., to Jamestown, North Dakota in 1907, where Anderson attended Jamestown High School, graduating in 1908.
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Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance. He is also notable for his frequent collaborations with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage and David Tudor, artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bruce Nauman, designer Romeo Gigli, and architect Benedetta Tagliabue. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance.
As a choreographer, teacher and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Cunningham had a profound influence on modern dance. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies, and they include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d’Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Floanne Ankah and Jonah Bokaer.
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Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Russian: Михаи́л Афана́сьевич Булга́ков, pronounced [mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈgakəf]; May 15 [O.S. May 3] 1891, Kiev – March 10, 1940, Moscow) was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born on May 15, 1891 in Kiev, at that time in the Russian Empire. He was one of seven children (the oldest of three brothers) of Afanasiy Bulgakov, an assistant professor at the Kiev Theological Academy, and Varvara Mikhailovna, a former teacher. Both of his grandfathers were clergymen in the Russian Orthodox Church. Friendship, respect, and mutual love reigned in Bulgakov's large family and happy home. From childhood Bulgakov was drawn to theater. At home, he wrote comedies, which his brothers and sisters acted out.
In 1901 Bulgakov joined the First Kiev Gymnasium, where he developed an interest in Russian and European literature (his favourite authors at the time being Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Dickens), theatre and opera. The teachers of the Gymnasium exerted a great influence on the formation of his literary taste. After the death of his father in 1907, Mikhail's mother, a well-educated and extraordinary diligent person, assumed responsibility for his education. After graduation from the Gymnasium in 1909, Bulgakov entered the Medical Faculty of St. Vladimir University, which he finished with special commendation to become a physician at the Kiev Military Hospital.
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Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.
Babbitt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Barkin & Brody 2001) to Albert E. Babbitt and Sarah Potamkin. He was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and began studying the violin when he was four but soon switched to clarinet and saxophone. Early in his life he was attracted to jazz and theater music. He was making his own arrangements of popular songs at seven, and when he was thirteen, he won a local songwriting contest (Kozinn 2011).
Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and it was mathematics that Babbitt intended to study when he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1931. However, he soon left and went to New York University instead, where he studied music with Philip James and Marion Bauer. There he became interested in the music of the composers of the Second Viennese School and went on to write a number of articles on twelve tone music, including the first description of combinatoriality and a serial "time-point" technique. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from New York University College of Arts and Science in 1935 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he studied under Roger Sessions, first privately and then later at Princeton University. At the university, he joined the music faculty in 1938 and received one of Princeton's first Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1942 (Barkin & Brody 2001). During the Second World War, Babbitt divided his time between mathematical research in Washington, D.C., and Princeton, where he became a member of the mathematics faculty from 1943 to 1945 (Barkin & Brody 2001).
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Mina Loy
Mina Loy born Mina Gertrude Löwry (December 27, 1882 – September 25, 1966) was an artist, poet, playwright, novelist, Futurist, actress, Christian Scientist, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first generation modernists to achieve posthumous recognition. Her poetry was admired by T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Basil Bunting, Gertrude Stein, Francis Picabia and Yvor Winters, among others.
Mina Loy was born Mina Gertrude Löwry in London, England. Her mother Julia Bryan was English, and her father Sigmund Löwry was a Hungarian Jew. Upon leaving school at age seventeen, she moved to Munich and studied painting for two years. When she returned to London, she continued to study painting, once having Augustus John as a teacher. During her studies, she became familiar with the latest advanced theories in Europe, such as that of Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, and Sigmund Freud, as well as teachings of the East. She moved to Paris with Stephen Haweis, who studied with her at the Académie Colarossi. The couple married in 1903. Loy is first cited using her new last name in 1904, when she exhibited six watercolor paintings at the Salon d'Automne in Paris. Loy and Haweis had their first child, Oda, in 1904. Oda died on her first birthday.
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Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer, born in New York City.
A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown. Feldman's works are characterized by notational innovations that he developed to create his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating; pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused; a generally quiet and slowly evolving music; recurring asymmetric patterns. His later works, after 1977, also begin to explore extremes of duration.
Feldman was born in Brooklyn, New York City into a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants from Kiev. His father was a manufacturer of children's coats. As a child he studied piano with Vera Maurina Press, who, according to the composer himself, instilled in him a "vibrant musicality rather than musicianship." Feldman's first composition teachers were Wallingford Riegger, one of the first American followers of Arnold Schoenberg, and Stefan Wolpe, a German-born Jewish composer who studied under Franz Schreker and Anton Webern. Feldman and Wolpe spent most of their time simply talking about music and art.
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Odilon Redon
Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon (April 20, 1840 – July 6, 1916) was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.
Odilon Redon was born in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, to a prosperous family. The young Bertrand-Jean Redon acquired the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile. Redon started drawing as a child, and at the age of ten he was awarded a drawing prize at school. Aged fifteen, he began the formal study of drawing, but on the insistence of his father he changed to architecture. His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect, although he briefly studied painting there under Jean-Léon Gérôme in 1864. (His younger brother Gaston Redon would become a noted architect.)
Back home in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture, and Rodolphe Bresdin instructed him in etching and lithography. His artistic career was interrupted in 1870 when he joined the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War.
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Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer and producer who worked extensively in theater, radio and film. He is best remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaption of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), the most famous broadcast in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), which many critics and scholars name as the best film of all time.
After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.
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Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (born December 15, 1907) is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture. In the 1940s, '50s and '60s "he established himself as one of Modernism's greatest luminaries," while he “reshaped Brazil’s identity in the popular imagination and mesmerized architects around the globe." During the 1950s while Brasilia was starting to develop, Oscar Niemeyer made incredible amounts of contributions to the country by designing many important buildings in Brasilia. He is a pioneer in exploring the formal possibilities of reinforced concrete solely for their aesthetic impact. He is currently 104 years old and still working.
Niemeyer is most famous for his use of abstract forms and curves that specifically characterize every one of his works; he didn’t stick to traditional straight lines, for he is not attracted to straight angles or lines but rather he is captured by ”free-flowing, sensual curves… [like that] on the body of the beloved woman.” He was able to design and build curved architecture through his revolutionary useage of concrete. His designs are daring: mixing innovation and courage, plastic freedom and invention. His buildings are often characterized by being spacious and exposed, mixing volumes and empty space to create unconventional patterns and often propped up by piloti. His work with concrete is described as elegant and harmonious. Oscar Niemeyer was able to connect the baroque style with modern architecture leading to a new form of architecture, which had never been built in Brazil before.
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Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day.
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Othon Friesz
Achille-Émile Othon Friesz who later called himself just Othon Friesz (6 February 1879 - 10 January 1949), a native of Le Havre, was a French artist of the Fauvist movement.
Othon Friesz was born in Le Havre, the son of a long line of shipbuilders and sea captains. He went to school in his native city. It was while he was at the Lycée that he met his lifelong friend Raoul Dufy. He and Dufy studied at the Le Havre School of Fine Arts in 1895-96 and then went to Paris together for further study. In Paris, Friesz met Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges Rouault. Like them, he rebelled against the academic teaching of Bonnat and became a member of the Fauves, exhibiting with them in 1907. The following year, Friesz returned to Normandy and to a much more traditional style of painting, since he had discovered that his personal goals in painting were firmly rooted in the past. He opened his own studio in 1912 and taught until 1914 at which time he joined the army for the duration of the war. He resumed living in Paris in 1919 and remained there, except for brief trips to Toulon and the Jura Mountains, until his death in 1949.
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Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso], 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are commonly regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.
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Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne (US /seɪˈzæn/ or UK /sɨˈzæn/; French: [pɔl sezan]; 1839–1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne "is the father of us all" cannot be easily dismissed.
Cézanne's often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.
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Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (French pronunciation: [øˈʒɛn ãˈʁi ˌpol ɡoˈɡɛ̃]; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist who was not well appreciated until after his death. Gauguin was later recognized for his experimental use of colors and synthetist style that was distinguishably different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. Gauguin’s art became popular after his death and many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector, Sergei Shchukin. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with coloring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
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Paul Klee
Paul Klee (German pronunciation: [ˈkleː]; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swisspainter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually mastered colour theory, and wrote extensively about it; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are considered so important for modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting had for Renaissance. He and his colleague, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humour and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
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Paul Matisse
Paul Matisse (born 1933) is an artist and inventor. He is known especially for his public art installations, many of which are interactive. He is also inventor of the Kalliroscope.
In 1954, Matisse graduated from Harvard, where he once lived in Eliot House with Stephen Joyce, grandson of James Joyce, and Sadruddin Aga Khan, a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. After college he briefly studied at Harvard's Graduate School of Design before working in product development for Arthur D. Little. In 1962 he set off on his own, manufacturing Kalliroscopes.
From 1977 to 1979 he helped enlarge a sculpture by Alexander Calder (who died in 1976) for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Thereafter, he began his own public art career.
He currently resides in a former Baptist church in Groton, Massachusetts. He is the stepson of artist Marcel Duchamp and grandson of French painter Henri Matisse. Henri Matisse's son, Pierre Matisse, was Paul's father. His daughter Sophie Matisse is a painter in New York.
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Paul Signac
Paul Signac (French pronunciation: [pɔl siɲak]) (11 November 1863 – 15 August 1935) was a French neo-impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the pointillist style.
Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863. He followed a course of training in architecture before deciding at the age of 18 to pursue a career as a painter after attending an exhibit of Monet's work. He sailed around the coasts of Europe, painting the landscapes he encountered. He also painted scenes of cities in France in his later years.
In 1884 he met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat. He was struck by the systematic working methods of Seurat and by his theory of colors and became Seurat's faithful supporter. Under his influence he abandoned the short brushstrokes of impressionism to experiment with scientifically juxtaposed small dots of pure color, intended to combine and blend not on the canvas but in the viewer's eye, the defining feature of pointillism.
Many of Signac's paintings are of the French coast. He loved to paint the water. He left the capital each summer, to stay in the south of France in the village of Collioure or at St. Tropez, where he bought a house and invited his friends.
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Paul Sérusier
Paul Sérusier (9 November 1864 – 7 October 1927) was a French painter who was a pioneer of abstract art and an inspiration for the avant-garde Nabi movement, Synthetism and Cloisonnism.
Sérusier was born in Paris. He studied at the Académie Julian and was a monitor there in the mid 1880s. In the summer of 1888 he travelled to Pont-Aven and joined the small group of artists centered there around Paul Gauguin. While at the Pont-Aven artist's colony he painted a picture that became known as The Talisman, under the close supervision of Gauguin. The picture was an extreme exercise in Cloisonnism that approximated to pure abstraction. He was a Post-Impressionist painter, a part of the group of painters called Les Nabis. Sérusier along with Paul Gauguin named the group. Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis became the best known of the group, but at the time they were somewhat peripheral to the core group.
He later taught at the Académie Ranson and published his book ABC de la peinture in 1921. He died at Morlaix.
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Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (French pronunciation: [pɔl valeʁi]; October 30, 1871 – July 20, 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues) and aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events, he also wrote many misanthropic diatribes on human nature.
Valéry was born of a Corsican father and Genoese-Istrian mother in Sète, a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Hérault, but he was raised in Montpellier, a larger urban center close by. After a traditional Roman Catholic education, he studied law at university, then resided in Paris for most of the remainder of his life, where he was, for a while, part of the circle of Stéphane Mallarmé.
Though his earliest publications date from his mid-twenties, Valéry did not become a full-time writer until 1920, when the man for whom he worked as private secretary, a former chief executive of the Havas news agency, Edouard Lebey, died of Parkinson's disease. Until then, Valéry had, briefly, earned his living at the Ministry of War before assuming the relatively flexible post as assistant to the increasingly impaired Lebey, a job he held for some twenty years.
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Pier Luigi Nervi
Pier Luigi Nervi (June 21, 1891 – January 9, 1979) was an Italian engineer. He studied at the University of Bologna and qualified in 1913. Dr. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946-61. He is widely known as a structural engineer and an architect, and for his innovative use of reinforced concrete.
Pier Luigi Nervi was born in Sondrio and attended the Civil Engineering School of Bologna, from which he graduated in 1913. After graduation, Nervi joined the Society for Concrete Construction. Nervi spent several years in the Italian army during World War I from 1915–1918, when he served in the Corps of Engineering. His formal education was quite similar to that experienced by today's civil engineering student in Italy.
From 1961-1962 Nervi was the Norton professor at Harvard University.
Nervi began practicing civil engineering after 1923, and built several airplane hangars amongst his contracts. During 1940s he developed ideas for a reinforced concrete which helped in the rebuilding of many buildings and factories throughout Western Europe, and even designed and created a boat hull that was made of reinforced concrete as a promotion for the Italian government.
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Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard (3 October 1867 – 23 January 1947) was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.
Bonnard was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses, Hauts-de-Seine. He led a happy and carefree youth as the son of a prominent official of the French Ministry of War. At the insistence of his father, Bonnard studied law, graduating and practising as a barrister briefly. However, he had also attended art classes on the side, and soon decided to become an artist.
In 1891 he met Toulouse-Lautrec and began showing his work at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. His first show was at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1896.
In his twenties he was a part of Les Nabis, a group of young artists committed to creating work of symbolic and spiritual nature. Other Nabis include Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. He left Paris in 1910 for the south of France.
Bonnard is known for his intense use of color, especially via areas built with small brushmarks and close values. His often complex compositions—typically of sunlit interiors of rooms and gardens populated with friends and family members—are both narrative and autobiographical. His wife Marthe was an ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is seen seated at the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal; or nude, as in a series of paintings where she reclines in the bathtub. He also painted several self-portraits, landscapes, and many still lifes which usually depict flowers and fruit.
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Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ bu.lɛːz]) (born 26 March 1925) is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.
Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics. He pursued the latter at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire under Olivier Messiaen and the wife of Arthur Honegger, Andrée Vaurabourg.
Through Messiaen, Boulez discovered twelve-tone technique — which he would later study privately with René Leibowitz — and went on to write atonal music in a post-Webernian serial style. Boulez was initially part of a cadre of early supporters of Leibowitz, but due to an altercation with Leibowitz, their relations turned divisive, as Boulez spent much of his career promoting the music of Messiaen instead.
The first fruits of this were his cantatas Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux for female voices and orchestra, both composed in the late 1940s and revised several times since, as well as the Second Piano Sonata of 1948, a well-received 32-minute work that Boulez composed at the age of 23. Thereafter, Boulez was influenced by Messiaen's research to extend twelve-tone technique beyond the realm of pitch organization, serialising durations, dynamics, mode of attack, and so on. This technique became known as integral serialism.
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Pierre Matisse
Pierre Matisse (June 13, 1900 – August 10, 1989) was an art dealer active in New York City. He was the youngest child of French painter Henri Matisse.
Pierre Matisse was born in Bohain-en-Vermandois on June 13, 1900. He exhibited an early interest in the art market, and took a job at the prestigious Galerie Barbazanges-Hodebert in Paris. In 1924, Pierre came to New York, where he began a distinguished career of 65 years as an art dealer.
In 1931, Matisse opened his own gallery in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street in New York City. The Pierre Matisse Gallery, which existed until his death in 1989, became an influential part of the Modern Art movement in America. Matisse represented and exhibited many European artists and a few Americans and Canadians in New York, often for the first time. Matisse exhibited Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, André Derain, Yves Tanguy, Le Corbusier, Paul Delvaux, Wifredo Lam, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Balthus, Leonora Carrington, Zao Wou Ki, Sam Francis, sculptors Theodore Roszak, Raymond Mason and Reg Butler, and several other important artists, including Henri Matisse.
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Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (
i/piːˈɛər ˈhɛnriː məˈriː ˈʃeɪfər/; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime.
Amongst the vast range of works and projects he undertook, Schaeffer is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music, at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète. The genre emerged out of Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-Nazi Germany era, following the advance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music.
Schaeffer's writings (which include written and radio-narrated essays, biographies, short novels, a number of musical treatises and several plays) are often oriented towards his development of the genre, as well as the theoretics and philosophy of music in general.
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Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpiːt ˈmɔndriaːn], later [ˈmɔndriɔn]; March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944), was a Dutch painter.
He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.
Between his 1905 painting, The River Amstel, and his 1907 Amaryllis, Mondrian changed the spelling of his signature from Mondriaan to Mondrian.
Mondrian was born in Amersfoort in The Netherlands, the second of his parents' children. He was descended from Christian Dirkzoon Monderyan who lived in The Hague as early as 1670. The family moved to Winterswijk when his father, Pieter Cornelius Mondriaan, was appointed head teacher at a local primary school. Mondrian was introduced to art from a very early age: his father was a qualified drawing teacher, and with his uncle, Fritz Mondriaan (a pupil of Willem Maris of the Hague School of artists), the younger Piet often painted and drew along the river Gein.
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Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (German pronunciation: [ˈʁaɪnɐ maˈʁiːa ˈʁɪlkə]; 4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. Among English-language readers, his best-known work is the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland.
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Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy[p] (3 June 1877 – 23 March 1953) was a French Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramics and textiles, as well as decorative schemes for public buildings. He is noted for scenes of open-air social events. He was also a draftsman, printmaker, book illustrator, a theatrical set-dresser, a designer of furniture, and a planner of public spaces.
Raoul Dufy was born into a large family at Le Havre, in Normandy. He left school at the age of fourteen to work in a coffee-importing company. In 1895, when he was 18, he started taking evening classes in art at Le Havre's École d'Art (municipal art school). The classes were taught by Charles Lhuillier, who had been, forty years earlier, a student of the remarkable French portrait-painter, Ingres. There, Dufy met Raymond Lecourt and Othon Friesz with whom he later shared a studio in Montmartre and to whom he remained a lifelong friend. During this period, Dufy painted mostly Norman landscapes in watercolors.
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René Clair
René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981) born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960.
René Clair was born and grew up in Paris in the district of Les Halles, whose lively and picturesque character made a lasting impression on him. His father was a soap merchant; he had an elder brother, Henri Chomette (born 1896). He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1914 he was studying philosophy; his friends at that time included Raymond Payelle who became the actor and writer Philippe Hériat. In 1917, at the age of 18, he served as an ambulance driver in World War I, before being invalided out with a spinal injury. He was deeply affected by the horrors of war that he witnessed and gave expression to this in writing a volume of poetry called La Tête de l'homme (which remained unpublished). Back in Paris after the war, he started a career as a journalist at the left-wing newspaper L'Intransigeant.
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René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fell under the umbrella of surrealism. His work challenges observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.
Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, who was a tailor and textile merchant, and Régina (née Bertinchamps), a milliner until her marriage. Little is known about Magritte's early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. This was not her first attempt at taking her own life; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte's paintings in 1927–1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.
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Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and other orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, An Alpine Symphony, and Metamorphosen. Strauss was also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria.
Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Strauss was born on 11 June 1864, in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, who was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. In his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six, and continued to write music almost until his death.
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Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee. His key influence related to bold use of colour, and a clear love of experimentation of both depth and tone.
Robert Delaunay was born in Paris, the son of George Delaunay and countess Berthe Félicie de Rose. While he was a child, Delaunay's parents divorced, and he was raised by his mother's sister Marie and her husband Charles Damour, in La Ronchère near Bourges. When he failed his final exam and said he wanted to become a painter, his uncle in 1902 sent him to Ronsin's atelier for decorative arts in Belleville. Aged 19 he left Ronsin to focus entirely on painting and contributed six works to the Salon des Indépendants in 1904. He traveled to Brittany where he was influenced by the group of Pont-Aven and in 1906 contributed works he painted in Brittany to the 22nd Salon des Indépendants, where he met Henri Rousseau.
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Robert Musil
Robert Musil (German pronunciation: [ˈmuːzɪl] or [ˈmuːsɪl]; 6 November 1880 – 15 April 1942) was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities (German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels. However, this novel has not been widely read because of its delayed publication and also because of the lengthy and intricate plot that foresaw the impending disaster in Europe after the first world war.
Musil was the son of engineer Alfred Edler von Musil (1846, Temesvár – 1924) and his wife Hermine Bergauer (1853, Linz – 1924), who lived together with an unrelated "uncle" Heinrich Reiter (born 1856), the houseguest in the Musil family. The family moved to Chomutov until October 1881, and in 1891 father was appointed to the chair of Mechanical Engineering at the German Technical University in Brno, and awarded a hereditary nobility in the Austro-Hungarian Empire shortly before it collapsed. He was a second cousin of orientalist Alois Musil.
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Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993.
Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City as well as on Captiva Island, Florida until his death from heart failure on May 12, 2008.
Rauschenberg was born as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, the son of Dora Carolina (née Matson) and Ernest R. Rauschenberg. His father was of German and Cherokee ancestry and his mother of Anglo-Saxon descent. His parents were Fundamentalist Christians. Rauschenberg studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, France, where he met the painter Susan Weil. In 1948 Rauschenberg and Weil decided to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
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Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene (27 April 1873 – 16 June 1938) was an important film director of the German silent cinema.
Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also started to act, at first in small parts on stage. His first involvement with film was in 1912, writing and directing Die Waffen der Jugend.
His most memorable feature films are the 1920 horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Raskolnikow (1923), an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, both of which had a deep influence on the German cinema of that time.
After Hitler took power in Germany, Wiene left Berlin, and went first to Budapest, where he directed One Night in Venice (1934), later to London, and finally to Paris where together with Jean Cocteau he tried to produce a sound remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Wiene died in Paris ten days before the end of production of a spy film, Ultimatum, after having suffered from cancer. The film was finished by Wiene's friend Robert Siodmak.
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Roberta Smith
Roberta Smith is an art critic for the New York Times and a lecturer on contemporary art.
Born in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Smith studied at Grinnell College in Iowa. Her career in the arts started in 1968 while an undergraduate summer intern at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The following year she was awarded a fellowship to participate in the Independent Study Program (ISP) at the Whitney Museum where she met Donald Judd and became interested in Minimal art. After graduation, she returned to New York City in 1971 to take a secretarial job at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by part-time assistant jobs to Judd and Paula Cooper in 1972. While at the Paula Cooper Gallery she wrote exhibition reviews for Artforum, and subsequently for Art in America, the Village Voice and other publications as well. She began writing for the New York Times in 1986.
Smith has written numerous essays for catalogues and monographs on contemporary artists, and wrote the featured essay in the Judd catalogue raisonné published by the National Gallery of Canada in 1975. In 2003, the College Art Association awarded Smith the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism. She was ranked 80 in ArtReview's guide to the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art: Power 100, 2010.
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Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), known as Salvador Dalí (Catalan pronunciation: [səɫβəˈðo ðəˈɫi]), was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres, Spain.
Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.
Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to a self-styled "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.
Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics.
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Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.
The Becketts were members of the Anglican Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel's father, William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays. Beckett's father was a quantity surveyor and his mother a nurse.
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Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (/diˈæɡɨlɛf/; Russian: Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев / Sergei Pavlovich Dyagilev pronounced [sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf]; 31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1872 – 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.
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Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (23 January 1898 – 11 February 1948), né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage". He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958).
Eisenstein was born to a middle-class family in Riga, Latvia but his family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein was of German-Jewish and Swedish descent, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution (1905), bringing Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who later moved to join them around 1910.Divorce followed and Julia deserted the family to live in France.
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Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (Russian: Сергей Сергеевич Прокофьев; 23 April 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His best-known works include the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet – from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken – and Peter and the Wolf. Besides many other works, Prokofiev also composed five piano concertos, nine completed piano sonatas and seven symphonies.
A graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument and his first two piano concertos. Prokofiev's first major success breaking out of the composer-pianist mould was with his purely orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes; Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev – Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son – which at the time of their original production were all highly successful. Prokofiev's greatest interest, however, was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one relative success in that genre during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for Chicago and subsequently performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia.
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Sergei Shchukin
Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (Russian: Серге́й Ива́нович Щу́кин) (27 May 1854, Moscow – 10 January 1936, Paris) was a Russian businessman who became an art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, following a trip to Paris in 1897, when he bought his first Monet. He later bought numerous works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, among others. These paintings decorated the walls of his palatial home in Moscow.
Shchukin was particularly notable for his long association with Matisse, who decorated his mansion and created one of his iconic paintings, La Danse, specially for Shchukin. La Danse is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of modern painting".Henri Matisse created one of his major works La Danse for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission, the other important painting being Music, 1910. An earlier version of La Danse (1909) is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
The collection also featured fifty choice works by Pablo Picasso, including most of his earliest Cubist works, such as Three Women and major landscapes, but some key pieces of the Blue and Rose periods as well. In 1909, Shchukin opened his home on Sundays for public viewings, introducing French avant-garde painting to the Moscovites.
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Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé (pronounced [ste.fan ma.laʁ.me]) (18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.
Stéphane Mallarmé was born in Paris. He worked as an English teacher and spent much of his life in relative poverty; but was famed for his salons, occasional gatherings of intellectuals at his house on the rue de Rome for discussions of poetry, art, philosophy. The group became known as les Mardistes, because they met on Tuesdays (in French, mardi), and through it Mallarmé exerted considerable influence on the work of a generation of writers. For many years, those sessions, where Mallarmé held court as judge, jester, and king, were considered the heart of Paris intellectual life. Regular visitors included W.B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Valéry, Stefan George, Paul Verlaine, and many others.
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Susan Glaspell
Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 27, 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States. She also served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.
Her novels and plays are committed to developing deep, sympathetic characters, to understanding 'life' in its complexity. Though realism was the medium of her fiction, she was also greatly interested in philosophy and religion. Many of her characters make principled stands.
As part of the Provincetown Players, she arranged for the first ever reading of a play by Eugene O'Neill.
Glaspell was born in 1876 to Elmer S. Glaspell and Alice Keating in Davenport, Iowa. (The fabricated birth year of 1882 is sometimes seen.) She attended public schools in Davenport, and went on to graduate from Drake University in Des Moines with a Bachelor's degree in 1899. She worked as a reporter for a Des Moines paper, where she was appointed to report on the murder trial of John Hossack in 1900, which would be the basis for two of Glaspell's best remembered works, "A Jury of Her Peers" (1917), a short story, and the one-act-play Trifles (1916).
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Ted Shawn
Ted Shawn (21 October 1891 — 9 January 1972), originally Edwin Myers Shawn, was one of the first notable male pioneers of American modern dance. Along with creating Denishawn with former wife Ruth St. Denis he is also responsible for the creation of the well known all-male company Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. With his innovative ideas of masculine movement he is one of the most influential choreographers and dancers of his day. He is also the founder and creator of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts.
Ted Shawn was born in Kansas City, Missouri on October 21, 1891. Originally intending to become a minister of religion, he attended the University of Denver. There he caught diphtheria, which led him to take up dance in 1910 to regain his muscle strength. Shawn's dancing was discouraged by the University, which still had a Methodist affiliation, and was the cause of his expulsion the following year.
Shawn did not realize his true potential as an artist until marrying Ruth St. Denis in 1914. St. Denis served not only as partner but an extremely valuable creative outlet to Shawn. Soon after their marriage the couple opened the first Denishawn School in Los Angeles, California, where they were able to choreograph and stage many of their famous vaudeville pieces. A very famous piece of advice that Shawn used to give to his dancers was "When in doubt, twirl."
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Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs. His professional career lasted from the mid 1930s until his death in 1983, and saw the creation of many plays that are regarded as classics of the American stage. Williams adapted much of his best known work for the cinema.
Williams received virtually all of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama, including several New York Drama Critics' Circle awards, a Tony Award for best play for The Rose Tattoo (1951) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). In 1980 he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter and is today acknowledged as one of the most accomplished playwrights in the history of English speaking theater.
Theater scholar Charlotte Canning, of the University of Texas at Austin where Williams' archives are located, has said, "There is no more influential 20th-century American playwright than Tennessee Williams... He inspired future generations of writers as diverse as Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, David Mamet and John Waters, and his plays remain among the most produced in the world."
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Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
Mann was born Paul Thomas Mann in Lübeck, Germany, and was the second son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (a senator and a grain merchant), and his wife Júlia da Silva Bruhns (a Brazilian of partial German ancestry who emigrated to Germany when seven years old). His mother was Roman Catholic, but Mann was baptised into his father's Lutheran faith. Mann's father died in 1891, and his trading firm was liquidated. The family subsequently moved to Munich. Mann attended the science division of a Lübeck Gymnasium (school), then spent time at the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich and Technical University of Munich where, in preparation for a journalism career, he studied history, economics, art history and literature.
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Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth—and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.
Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Amos Parker Wilder, a US diplomat, and Isabella Niven Wilder. All of the Wilder children spent part of their childhood in China because of their father's work.
Thornton Wilder's older brother, Amos Niven Wilder, was Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, a noted poet, and foundational to the development of the field theopoetics. Amos was also a nationally ranked tennis player who competed at the Wimbledon tennis championships in 1922. His sister, Isabel Wilder, was an accomplished writer. Both of his other sisters, Charlotte Wilder, a poet, and Janet Wilder Dakin, a zoologist, attended Mount Holyoke College and were excellent students. Additionally, Wilder had a twin brother who died at birth.
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Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (French pronunciation: [tʁistɑ̃ dzaˈʁa]; Romanian pronunciation: [trisˈtan ˈt͡sara]; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; April 16 [O.S. April 4] 1896 – December 25, 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement. Under the influence of Adrian Maniu, the adolescent Tzara became interested in Symbolism and co-founded the magazine Simbolul with Ion Vinea (with whom he also wrote experimental poetry) and painter Marcel Janco. During World War I, after briefly collaborating on Vinea's Chemarea, he joined Janco in Switzerland. There, Tzara's shows at the Cabaret Voltaire and Zunfthaus zur Waag, as well as his poetry and art manifestos, became a main feature of early Dadaism. His work represented Dada's nihilistic side, in contrast with the more moderate approach favored by Hugo Ball.
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Umberto Boccioni
Umberto Boccioni (Italian pronunciation: [umˈbɛrto botˈtʃoːni]; 19 October 1882 – 17 August 1916) was an Italian painter and sculptor. Like other Futurists, his work centered on the portrayal of movement (dynamism), speed, and technology. He was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy.
A native of Reggio (southern Calabria), Boccioni studied art through the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, beginning in 1901. He also studied design with a sign painter in Rome. Together with his friend Gino Severini, he became a student of Giacomo Balla, a divisionist painter. In 1906, Boccioni studied Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles in Paris. During the late 1906 and early 1907, he shortly took drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. In 1901, Boccioni first visited the Famiglia Artistica, a society for artists in Milan. After moving there in 1907, he became acquainted with fellow Futurists, including the famous poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The two artists would later join with others in writing manifestos on Futurism.
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Vaslav Nijinsky
Vaslav (or Vatslav) Nijinsky (Russian: Ва́цлав Фоми́ч Нижи́нский; Russian pronunciation: [ˌvatslɐf foˌmʲitʃ nʲɪˈʐinskʲɪj]; Polish: Wacław Niżyński; Ukrainian: Ва́цлав Томович Ніжи́нський; March 12, 1889/1890 – April 8, 1950) was a Russian danseur and choreographer of Polish descent, cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. He grew to be celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could perform en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time and his ability to perform seemingly gravity-defying leaps was also legendary. The choreographer Bronislava Nijinska was his sister. He also had a brother, Stassik Nijinsky.
Vaslav Nijinsky was born in 1889 or 1890 in Kiev, Ukraine, a part of Russian Empire as Wacław Niżyński, to ethnic Polish parents, dancers Tomasz Niżyński and Eleonora Bereda. Nijinsky was christened in Warsaw, and considered himself to be a Pole despite difficulties in properly speaking the language as a result of his childhood in Russia's interior where his parents worked.
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Victor Horta
Victor, Baron Horta (6 January 1861 - 8 September 1947) was a Belgian architect and designer. John Julius Norwich described him as "undoubtedly the key European Art Nouveau architect." Indeed, Horta is one of the most important names in Art Nouveau architecture; the construction of his Hôtel Tassel in Brussels in 1892-3 means that he is sometimes credited as the first to introduce the style to architecture from the decorative arts. The French architect Hector Guimard was deeply influenced by Horta and further spread the "whiplash" style in France and abroad.
In 1932 King Albert I of Belgium conferred on Horta the title of Baron for his services to architecture. Four of the buildings he designed have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Born in Ghent, Horta was first attracted to the architectural profession when he helped his uncle on a building site at the age of twelve.[citation needed]
Horta had had a great interest in music since childhood and, in 1873, went to study musical theory at the Ghent Conservatory. After being expelled for bad behaviour he joined the Department of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent instead. In 1878 Horta left for Paris, finding work with architect and designer Jules Debuysson in Montmartre. There he was inspired by the emerging impressionist and pointillist artists, and also by the possibilities of working in iron and glass.
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Victor Sjöström
Victor Sjöström (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈvɪktɔɾ ˈɧœˈstɾœm] ( listen); in the United States sometimes known as Victor Seastrom) (20 September 1879 – 3 January 1960) was a Swedish actor, screenwriter, and film director.
Born in Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, he was only a year old when his father, Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. His mother died when he was seven years old in 1886. Sjöström returned to Sweden where he lived with relatives in Stockholm, beginning his acting career at 17 as a member of a touring theater company.
Drawn from the stage to the fledgling motion picture industry, he made his first film in 1912 under the direction of Mauritz Stiller. Between then and 1923, he directed another forty-one films in Sweden, some of which are now lost. Those surviving include The Sons of Ingmar (1919), Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), all based on stories by the Nobel-prize winning novelist Selma Lagerlöf. They confirm him as one the very greatest of silent film directors, who helped to create a unique idiom with qualities quite different from those of sound cinema. Many of his films from the period are marked by subtle character portrayal, fine storytelling and evocative settings in which the Swedish landscape often plays a key psychological role. The naturalistic quality of his films was enhanced by his (then revolutionary) preference for on-location filming, especially in rural and village settings.
wn.com/Victor_Sjöström -
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (UK /ˌvæn ˈɡɒx/, US /ˌvæn ˈɡoʊ/;Dutch: [vɑŋ ˈɣɔχ] ( listen); 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died at the age of 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.
Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes of flowers, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
wn.com/Vincent_van_Gogh -
Virgil Thompson
Virgil Thompson is an American author. Her first published novel was the 2002 crime drama Final Things: A Novel of Suspense. She lives in Connecticut.
Final Things: A Novel of Suspense, about a man awaiting execution on Connecticut's death row, was published in 2002. The novel is written mainly in the first person to capture, the author has stated, the experience of the condemned protagonist, who, it is established early on, is innocent of the crime for which he is sentenced. Final Things is her first novel.
The author was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on March 23. She lived most of her life in New England, where she raised her son Ryan.
wn.com/Virgil_Thompson -
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (/ˈwʊlf/; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882 to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson).
Virginia's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), was a notable historian, author, critic and mountaineer. He was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work that would influence Woolf's later experimental biographies.
Virginia's mother Julia Stephen (1846–1895) was a renowned beauty, born in India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson. She was also the niece of Julia Margaret Cameron née Pattle, the famous photographer. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones.
wn.com/Virginia_Woolf -
Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin (Russian: Влади́мир Евгра́фович Та́тлин) (December 28 [O.S. December 16] 1885 – May 31, 1953) was a Russian and Soviet painter and architect. With Kazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in the Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became the most important artist in the Constructivist movement. He is most famous for his attempts to create the giant tower, The Monument to the Third International.
Tatlin was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire, the son of a railway engineer and a poet. He worked as a merchant sea cadet and spent some time abroad. He began his art career as an icon painter in Moscow, and attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He was also a professional musician-bandurist, and performed as such at the Paris World Fair in 1906.
Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed the huge Monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin's Tower. Planned in 1920, the monument, was to be a tall tower in iron, glass and steel which would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris (the Monument to the Third International was a third taller at 1,300 feet high). Inside the iron-and-steel structure of twin spirals, the design envisaged three building blocks, covered with glass windows, which would rotate at different speeds (the first one, a cube, once a year; the second one, a pyramid, once a month; the third one, a cylinder, once a day). High prices prevented Tatlin from executing the plan, and no building such as this was erected in his day.
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Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (Russian: Все́волод Илларио́нович Пудо́вкин) (16 February 1893 – 20 June 1953) was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage. Pudovkin's masterpieces are often contrasted with those of his contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, but whereas Eisenstein utilized montage to glorify the power of the masses, Pudovkin preferred to concentrate on the courage and resilience of individuals.
A student of engineering at Moscow University, Pudovkin saw active duty during World War I, being captured by the Germans. After the war, he abandoned his professional activity and joined the world of cinema, first as a screenwriter, actor and art director, and then as an assistant director to Lev Kuleshov.
After a few tries with advertising cinema, he directed in 1926 that which will be considered one of the masterpieces of silent movies: Mother, where he developed several montage theories that would make him famous.
His first feature was followed by The End of St. Petersburg (1927), and Storm Over Asia (also known as The Heir of Genghis Khan), titles which compose a trilogy at the service of the bolshevik revolutionary policy.
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Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and he spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut.
His best-known poems include "Valley Candle", "Anecdote of the Jar", "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Sunday Morning", "The Snow Man", and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", all appear in his Collected Poems, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955.
The son of a prosperous lawyer, Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel (1886–1963, aka Elsie Moll), a young woman who had worked as a saleswoman, milliner, and stenographer. After a long courtship, he married her in 1909 over the objections of his parents, who considered her lower-class. As The New York Times reported in an article in 2009, "Nobody from his family attended the wedding, and Stevens never again visited or spoke to his parents during his father’s lifetime". A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems.
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Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.
Born in Berlin, Walter Gropius was the third child of Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber. Gropius married Alma Mahler (1879–1964), widow of Gustav Mahler. Walter and Alma's daughter, named Manon after Walter's mother, was born in 1916. When Manon died of polio at age 18, composer Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory of her (it is inscribed "to the memory of an angel"). Gropius and Alma divorced in 1920. (Alma had by that time established a relationship with Franz Werfel, whom she later married.) In 1923, Gropius married Ise (Ilse) Frank (d. 1983), and they remained together until his death. They adopted Beate Gropius, also known as Ati.
Walter Gropius, like his father and his great-uncle Martin Gropius before him, became an architect. Gropius could not draw, and was dependent on collaborators and partner-interpreters throughout his career. In school he hired an assistant to complete his homework for him. In 1908 Gropius found employment with the firm of Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school. His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Dietrich Marcks.
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Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky /kænˈdɪnski/ (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Канди́нский, Vasilij Vasil'evič Kandinskij, Russian pronunciation: [vaˈsʲilʲɪj kɐnˈdʲinskʲɪj]; 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.
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Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to as Abstract expressionism or Action painting, and was part of a group of artists that came to be known as the New York School. Other painters in this group included Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford Still.
In September 2011 de Kooning's work was honored with a large-scale retrospective exhibition: de Kooning: A Retrospective September 18, 2011–January 9, 2012 at MoMA in New York City. Organized by John Elderfield it was the first major museum exhibition devoted to the full breadth and depth of de Kooning's career, containing nearly 200 works.
De Kooning's parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced when he was about five years old, and he was raised by his mother and stepfather. His early artistic training included eight years at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques. In the 1920s he worked as an assistant to the art director of a Rotterdam department store. de Kooning was one of the thirty-eight artists chosen from a general invitation to New York City metropolitan artists to design and paint the 105 public murals at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. His fellow muralist, David Margolis later recounted their 1932 trips to the Savoy Ballroom and de Kooning's "keen interest in jazz."
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William Inge
William Motter Inge ( /ˈɪndʒ/;(1913-05-03)May 3, 1913 – June 10, 1973(1973-06-10)) was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize. With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the American heartland, Inge became known as the "Playwright of the Midwest".
Born in Independence, Kansas, Inge attended Independence Community College and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech and Drama. While at the University of Kansas, Inge was a member of the Nu Chapter of Sigma Nu. Offered a scholarship to work on a Master of Arts degree, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend the George Peabody College for Teachers, but later dropped out.
Back in Kansas, he worked as a laborer on the state highway and a Wichita news announcer. In 1937–38 he taught English and drama at Cherokee County Community High School in Columbus, Kansas. After returning and completing his Master's at Peabody in 1938, he taught at Stephens College, in Columbia, Missouri, from 1938 to 1943.
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Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was an English painter and author (he dropped the name 'Percy', which he disliked). He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST. His novels include his pre-World War I-era novel Tarr (set in Paris), and The Human Age, a trilogy comprising The Childermass (1928), Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta (both 1955), set in the afterworld. A fourth volume of The Human Age, The Trial of Man, was begun by Lewis but left in a fragmentary state at the time of his death. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes, Blasting and Bombardiering (1937) and Rude Assignment: A Narrative of my Career Up-to-Date (1950).
Lewis was reputedly born on his father's yacht off the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. His British mother and American father separated about 1893. His mother subsequently returned to England, where Lewis was educated, first at Rugby School, then at the Slade School of Art, University College, London, before spending most of the 1900s travelling around Europe and studying art in Paris.
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Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (US /mæˈneɪ/ or UK /ˈmæneɪ/; French: [edwaʁ manɛ]; 1832–1883) was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.
Born into an upper class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the future originally envisioned for him, and became engrossed in the world of painting. He married Suzanne Leenhoff in 1863. The last 20 years of Manet's life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time, and develop his own style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters.
Édouard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, to an affluent and well connected family. His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince, Charles Bernadotte, from whom the current Swedish monarchs are descended. His father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge who expected Édouard to pursue a career in law. His uncle, Edmond Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and often took young Manet to the Louvre. In 1841 he enrolled at secondary school, the Collège Rollin. In 1845, at the advice of his uncle, Manet enrolled in a special course of drawing where he met Antonin Proust, future Minister of Fine Arts and subsequent life-long friend.
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Édouard Vuillard
Jean-Édouard Vuillard (November 11, 1868 – June 21, 1940) was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Nabis.
Jean-Édouard Vuillard, the son of a retired captain, spent his youth at Cuiseaux (Saône-et-Loire); in 1878 his family moved to Paris in modest circumstances. After his father's death in 1884, Vuillard received a scholarship to continue his education. In the Lycée Condorcet Vuillard met Ker Xavier Roussel (also a future painter and Vuillard's future brother in law), Maurice Denis, musician Pierre Hermant, writer Pierre Véber, and Aurélien Lugné-Poë.
In 1885, Vuillard left the Lycée Condorcet. On the advice of his closest friend, Roussel, he refused a military career and joined Roussel at the studio of painter Diogène Maillart. There, Roussel and Vuillard received the rudiments of artistic training. In 1887, after three unsuccessful attempts, Vuillard passed the entrance examination for the École des Beaux-Arts. Vuillard kept a private journal from 1888–1905 and later from 1907 to 1940.
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Émile Bernard
Émile Henri Bernard (28 April 1868 – 16 April 1941) is known as a Post-Impressionist painter who had artistic friendships with Van Gogh, Gauguin and Eugene Boch, and at a later time, Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism and Synthetism, two late 19th century art movements. Less known is Bernard's literary work, comprising plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as art historical statements that contain first hand information on the crucial period of modern art to which Bernard had contributed.
Emile Henri Bernard was born in Lille, France in 1868. As in his younger years his sister was sick, Emile was unable to receive much attention from his parents; he therefore stayed with his grandmother, who owned a laundry in Lille, employing more than twenty people. She was one of the greatest supporters of his art. The family moved to Paris in 1878, where Émile attended the Collège Sainte-Barbe.
He began his studies at the École des Arts Décoratifs. In 1884, joined the Atelier Cormon where he experimented with impressionism and pointillism and befriended fellow artists Louis Anquetin and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. After being suspended from the École des Beaux-Arts for “showing expressive tendencies in his paintings”, he toured Brittany on foot, where he was enamored by the tradition and landscape.
wn.com/Émile_Bernard
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Fauvist Art - Part 1 of 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:48
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
Part 1 of a slideshow of significant Fauvist work, animated. Matisse, Gaugin, Vlaminck, Braque, Derain, Marquet and more. I just love the Fauves! Music is credited at the end and is Ravel's Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and Strings.
http://wn.com/Fauvist_Art_Part_1_of_2
Part 1 of a slideshow of significant Fauvist work, animated. Matisse, Gaugin, Vlaminck, Braque, Derain, Marquet and more. I just love the Fauves! Music is credited at the end and is Ravel's Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and Strings.
Painting Movements Part XIII Fauvism.wmv
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:07
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Painting Movement Series 1.Part I Renaissance & Baroque Painting www.youtube.com 2.Painting Movements Part II Rococo Painting www.youtube.com 3.Painting Movements, Part III Neoclassical Painting www.youtube.com 4.Painting Movements - Part IV Impressionism www.youtube.com 5.Painting Movements Part V Post Impressionism, Pointillism & Art Nouveau www.youtube.com 6.Painting Movements Part VI Realism www.youtube.com 7.Painting Movements Part VII Naturalism www.youtube.com 8.Painting Movements Part VIII Hudson River School www.youtube.com 9.Painting Movements Part IX American Impressionism www.youtube.com 10.Painting Movements - Part X Neo-Impressionism www.youtube.com 11.Painting Movements - Part XI Expressionism www.youtube.com 12.Painting Movements - Part XII Futurism www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/Painting_Movements_Part_XIII_Fauvismwmv
Painting Movement Series 1.Part I Renaissance & Baroque Painting www.youtube.com 2.Painting Movements Part II Rococo Painting www.youtube.com 3.Painting Movements, Part III Neoclassical Painting www.youtube.com 4.Painting Movements - Part IV Impressionism www.youtube.com 5.Painting Movements Part V Post Impressionism, Pointillism & Art Nouveau www.youtube.com 6.Painting Movements Part VI Realism www.youtube.com 7.Painting Movements Part VII Naturalism www.youtube.com 8.Painting Movements Part VIII Hudson River School www.youtube.com 9.Painting Movements Part IX American Impressionism www.youtube.com 10.Painting Movements - Part X Neo-Impressionism www.youtube.com 11.Painting Movements - Part XI Expressionism www.youtube.com 12.Painting Movements - Part XII Futurism www.youtube.com
- published: 08 Jan 2011
- views: 3629
- author: drmuthomar
Fauvist Art - Part 2 of 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:44
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Second part of an animated slide show of significant Fauvist works from around 1905 - 1907. Matisse, Vlaminck, Derain, Braque, Manguin, Marquet, Gauguin, Camoin, Friesz and others. This is a two part video. Music is credited at the end of Part One and is Ravel's Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and Strings.
http://wn.com/Fauvist_Art_Part_2_of_2
Second part of an animated slide show of significant Fauvist works from around 1905 - 1907. Matisse, Vlaminck, Derain, Braque, Manguin, Marquet, Gauguin, Camoin, Friesz and others. This is a two part video. Music is credited at the end of Part One and is Ravel's Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and Strings.
- published: 14 Jun 2008
- views: 12737
- author: MaireMc
Fauvism
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:29
- Updated: 22 Sep 2012
Please visit my website: www.climate-change-guide.com Music "Georgiana" and "Can't Slow Down" by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Here are some fauvistic paintings from Henri Matisse and André Derain
http://wn.com/Fauvism
Please visit my website: www.climate-change-guide.com Music "Georgiana" and "Can't Slow Down" by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Here are some fauvistic paintings from Henri Matisse and André Derain
- published: 03 Jul 2010
- views: 4377
- author: Cousigreeno
Fauvism Landscape Painting "big shapes with bright colors" (part 2/7).MOV
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 16:41
- Updated: 03 Nov 2012
In this video 4th graders learn about the art history movement of Fauvism. We look at a few examples and talk about color choices and why the Fauvists made the color choices that they did. Then we learn about how to fill in our "big shapes" using a big brush to lay the foundation for the blending and small brush work for the next future sessions.
http://wn.com/Fauvism_Landscape_Painting_big_shapes_with_bright_colors_part_2_7MOV
In this video 4th graders learn about the art history movement of Fauvism. We look at a few examples and talk about color choices and why the Fauvists made the color choices that they did. Then we learn about how to fill in our "big shapes" using a big brush to lay the foundation for the blending and small brush work for the next future sessions.
- published: 02 Mar 2012
- views: 541
- author: mrlundgren1
Andre Derain - Co-founder of Fauvism (Art)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:11
- Updated: 23 Sep 2012
"André Derain--French painter, graphic artist, and designer. After studying in Paris at the Acadmie Carrire and Acadmie Julian, he developed his early style in association with his friends Maurice de Vlaminck and Henri Matisse; the three were the principal exponents of Fauvism. Their landscapes and figure studies featured brilliant colours, broken brushstrokes, and impulsive lines. By the 1920s, however, Derain had turned to the Neoclassical style ( Classicism and Neoclassicism). He produced numerous book illustrations and designs for stage sets, notably for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes."
http://wn.com/Andre_Derain_Co-founder_of_Fauvism_Art
"André Derain--French painter, graphic artist, and designer. After studying in Paris at the Acadmie Carrire and Acadmie Julian, he developed his early style in association with his friends Maurice de Vlaminck and Henri Matisse; the three were the principal exponents of Fauvism. Their landscapes and figure studies featured brilliant colours, broken brushstrokes, and impulsive lines. By the 1920s, however, Derain had turned to the Neoclassical style ( Classicism and Neoclassicism). He produced numerous book illustrations and designs for stage sets, notably for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes."
- published: 27 Jul 2012
- views: 450
- author: muziczone1
The Fauves - Dogs Are The Best People (Recovery)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:51
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
It's true..
http://wn.com/The_Fauves_Dogs_Are_The_Best_People_Recovery
The Fauves - I'll Work When I'm Dead
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:32
- Updated: 07 Nov 2012
First single from The Fauves 2006 album Nervous Flashlights
http://wn.com/The_Fauves_I'll_Work_When_I'm_Dead
First single from The Fauves 2006 album Nervous Flashlights
- published: 12 Sep 2006
- views: 10148
- author: thediscerningviewer
The Fauves Tortured Soul VS Superman
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:46
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
The Fauves old hit, "Tortured Soul", featuring comic writing superstar Grant Morrison! For the video - Old Time Superman action, with giant lizards and the earth going up in flames!
http://wn.com/The_Fauves_Tortured_Soul_VS_Superman
The Fauves old hit, "Tortured Soul", featuring comic writing superstar Grant Morrison! For the video - Old Time Superman action, with giant lizards and the earth going up in flames!
- published: 10 Mar 2008
- views: 10060
- author: SavageHenryLee
The Fauves 20th Anniversary Show @ The Espy 22/11/08
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:01
- Updated: 26 Aug 2010
It is always worth seeing The Fauves live. If not just for their awesome songs, stage presence and banter but because you never know what may happen. Anyone that's seen them will attest to this. In the past, Coxy has been accosted by drunkards yelling for him to play guitar with a five cent piece (no encore that night) and there are often numerous equipment malfunctions. One time, a drunk in a pink feather boa jumped on stage and started singing into the mic and dancing, which was met with an hilariously vitriolic rant via Coxy that resulted in the classic "get off the stage you fuckstain" line. Hell, it could have been wankstain. This is off the top of my head. All I'm saying is, more than any other band I've ever seen live, you are watching real people onstage. You're watching a band of brothers that have gritted their teeth and survived through all the bullshit for 20 years (except Ted who joined later, for he was only 8 when The Fauves first started). In Today's installment of Fauves Live, Ted needs to take a piss through most of the set which makes Coxy angrier than all fuck. You can hear a bit of the anger in his voice on this song. I'm sure that was just the straw that broke the camel's back though. Even at their own anniversary show, Doug had to play drums on the floor like a dog because the "proper" band after them had their drumkit already set up and underneath a white sheet behind them. I love The Fauves. ps The song being played is "Smoking Again" off their ...
http://wn.com/The_Fauves_20th_Anniversary_Show_@_The_Espy_22_11_08
It is always worth seeing The Fauves live. If not just for their awesome songs, stage presence and banter but because you never know what may happen. Anyone that's seen them will attest to this. In the past, Coxy has been accosted by drunkards yelling for him to play guitar with a five cent piece (no encore that night) and there are often numerous equipment malfunctions. One time, a drunk in a pink feather boa jumped on stage and started singing into the mic and dancing, which was met with an hilariously vitriolic rant via Coxy that resulted in the classic "get off the stage you fuckstain" line. Hell, it could have been wankstain. This is off the top of my head. All I'm saying is, more than any other band I've ever seen live, you are watching real people onstage. You're watching a band of brothers that have gritted their teeth and survived through all the bullshit for 20 years (except Ted who joined later, for he was only 8 when The Fauves first started). In Today's installment of Fauves Live, Ted needs to take a piss through most of the set which makes Coxy angrier than all fuck. You can hear a bit of the anger in his voice on this song. I'm sure that was just the straw that broke the camel's back though. Even at their own anniversary show, Doug had to play drums on the floor like a dog because the "proper" band after them had their drumkit already set up and underneath a white sheet behind them. I love The Fauves. ps The song being played is "Smoking Again" off their ...
- published: 07 Dec 2008
- views: 808
- author: Doovies
How our dildo can change your life by LES FAUVES
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:07
- Updated: 05 Oct 2012
Les Fauves Video Clip for more info www.urtovox.it http
http://wn.com/How_our_dildo_can_change_your_life_by_LES_FAUVES
Les Fauves Video Clip for more info www.urtovox.it http
- published: 07 Nov 2006
- views: 17214
- author: urtovox
LES FAUVES "Fava Go Go Dancer"--videoclip
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:49
- Updated: 05 Oct 2012
funny new video for one of the most strong italian indie rock bands. Directed by:Riccardo Corsini and Marcello Bandierini. Fava Go Go Dancer is taken from the new album NALT 1 A Fats Introduction (c)&(p) 2007 Urtovox rec. Fo more info: www.urtovox.it http www.lesfauves.net http
http://wn.com/LES_FAUVES_Fava_Go_Go_Dancer--videoclip
funny new video for one of the most strong italian indie rock bands. Directed by:Riccardo Corsini and Marcello Bandierini. Fava Go Go Dancer is taken from the new album NALT 1 A Fats Introduction (c)&(p) 2007 Urtovox rec. Fo more info: www.urtovox.it http www.lesfauves.net http
- published: 07 Sep 2007
- views: 8727
- author: urtovox
Color - Fauvism - Henri
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:40
- Updated: 21 Dec 2012
http://wn.com/Color_Fauvism_Henri
The Fauves.wmv
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:21
- Updated: 19 Nov 2012
Paintings of the Fauves.
http://wn.com/The_Fauveswmv
AH 438 Midterm Review - Fauvism, Matisse
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:45
- Updated: 29 Oct 2012
AH 438 Midterm Review Munch Redon Art's and Crafts - Morris, Beardsley, Toulouse-Lautrec Art Nouveau - Belgium: Horta, Guimard; Spain: Gaudi ; US: Tiffany Vienna: City of Freud Pablo Picasso: Early work, Blue period, rose period, Primitive period, Analytical Cubism (Braque), Synthetic Cubism Fauvism- Matisse German Expressionism - Dir Brucke, Social Realism, Der Blaue Reiter Italy: The metaphysical school - Kirchner Italian Futurism- Boccciioni
http://wn.com/AH_438_Midterm_Review_Fauvism,_Matisse
AH 438 Midterm Review Munch Redon Art's and Crafts - Morris, Beardsley, Toulouse-Lautrec Art Nouveau - Belgium: Horta, Guimard; Spain: Gaudi ; US: Tiffany Vienna: City of Freud Pablo Picasso: Early work, Blue period, rose period, Primitive period, Analytical Cubism (Braque), Synthetic Cubism Fauvism- Matisse German Expressionism - Dir Brucke, Social Realism, Der Blaue Reiter Italy: The metaphysical school - Kirchner Italian Futurism- Boccciioni
- published: 29 Oct 2012
- views: 32
- author: StubzIsDrunk
Bob Marley, Steve Martin and Fauvism
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:29
- Updated: 31 Mar 2012
Gallery owner and artist Steve Martin discussed an art style called Fauvism, and how it is used to bring an image of Bob Marley to 'life.' Check out SteveMartinFineArt.com. The painting is $4200.ArtBaselOnline.com for more art-oriented information leading up to Art Basel Miami Beach in December.
http://wn.com/Bob_Marley,_Steve_Martin_and_Fauvism
Gallery owner and artist Steve Martin discussed an art style called Fauvism, and how it is used to bring an image of Bob Marley to 'life.' Check out SteveMartinFineArt.com. The painting is $4200.ArtBaselOnline.com for more art-oriented information leading up to Art Basel Miami Beach in December.
- published: 25 Jul 2007
- views: 1608
- author: Ken English
Fauvism and Expressionism
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:46
- Updated: 27 Aug 2010
Fauvism: The Fauves emerged as a reaction against Impressionism and Post-Impressionism soon after the beginning of the twentieth century. In this program, early modern art is explored through the vibrant colors, bold distortion, and dynamic brush strokes of Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Vlaminck and others. Expressionism: This program looks at the development of Expressionism during the early twentieth century in Germany and its influence on other styles and movements in other countries.
http://wn.com/Fauvism_and_Expressionism
Fauvism: The Fauves emerged as a reaction against Impressionism and Post-Impressionism soon after the beginning of the twentieth century. In this program, early modern art is explored through the vibrant colors, bold distortion, and dynamic brush strokes of Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Vlaminck and others. Expressionism: This program looks at the development of Expressionism during the early twentieth century in Germany and its influence on other styles and movements in other countries.
- published: 27 Aug 2010
- views: 969
- author: CrystalArtResources
MaryLeigh and the Fauves (Rehearsal/ Banter Bus)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:14
- Updated: 03 Aug 2012
Exclusive look inside a MaryLeigh and the Fauves rehearsal. Here's a little taste of what Candy Man sounds like with the full band. Sorry to be a tease... well not really. Let us know what you think!
http://wn.com/MaryLeigh_and_the_Fauves_Rehearsal_Banter_Bus
Exclusive look inside a MaryLeigh and the Fauves rehearsal. Here's a little taste of what Candy Man sounds like with the full band. Sorry to be a tease... well not really. Let us know what you think!
- published: 13 Oct 2010
- views: 1044
- author: maryleighmusic
Fauvist London
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:21
- Updated: 11 Apr 2012
The Fauves were a small group of artists who are famous for their wild, vibrant art style. As part of my Photography GCSE Mock exam we are asked to re-create this extremely unique art style using the medium of Photography. Not an easy task but here's my attempt at creating a set of unique fauvist images. All my photographs are based around the city of London (UK). The individual images can be viewed on my DeviantART Page mrfivefingers.deviantart.com This video was produced in High Definition and can be viewed in True 720p HD resolution by clicking on View in HD If you have a free moment please visit my website at www.frankie-productions.com Video (C) Karl Birrane 2008 Music used under Creative Commons
http://wn.com/Fauvist_London
The Fauves were a small group of artists who are famous for their wild, vibrant art style. As part of my Photography GCSE Mock exam we are asked to re-create this extremely unique art style using the medium of Photography. Not an easy task but here's my attempt at creating a set of unique fauvist images. All my photographs are based around the city of London (UK). The individual images can be viewed on my DeviantART Page mrfivefingers.deviantart.com This video was produced in High Definition and can be viewed in True 720p HD resolution by clicking on View in HD If you have a free moment please visit my website at www.frankie-productions.com Video (C) Karl Birrane 2008 Music used under Creative Commons
- published: 31 Dec 2008
- views: 719
- author: frankieproduction
Németh Miklós 1934 the Hungarian fauvist , new expressionist painter the new Picasso
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:47
- Updated: 04 Nov 2012
Miklos Nemeth.(1934 ) works, with their richness in colour, are sweeping away the present Eastern opinion of Europe states a Tokyo newspaper about the 1991 Tokyo-exhibition. Heated with unique colourism, his images of colours would attach him to Matisse, if this volcanic power, fall would not be emerging from inside. Nemeths' painter's soul draws the attention on himself with not only his rich colour-experience but also with his style free of boundaries. One looking at Nemeth's paintings can hardly escape from the view's suggestiveness. Nemeth's painting cannot be and it is not even worth comparing to anybodys as what he is representing is Mikos Nemeth's style itself.
http://wn.com/Németh_Miklós_1934_the_Hungarian_fauvist_,_new_expressionist_painter_the_new_Picasso
Miklos Nemeth.(1934 ) works, with their richness in colour, are sweeping away the present Eastern opinion of Europe states a Tokyo newspaper about the 1991 Tokyo-exhibition. Heated with unique colourism, his images of colours would attach him to Matisse, if this volcanic power, fall would not be emerging from inside. Nemeths' painter's soul draws the attention on himself with not only his rich colour-experience but also with his style free of boundaries. One looking at Nemeth's paintings can hardly escape from the view's suggestiveness. Nemeth's painting cannot be and it is not even worth comparing to anybodys as what he is representing is Mikos Nemeth's style itself.
- published: 26 Jul 2011
- views: 1546
- author: David Gambiannti
Fauves Painting
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:10
- Updated: 19 Jun 2012
Painting inspired by the fauves
http://wn.com/Fauves_Painting
photo: US Navy / HMC Josh Ives
27 Dec 2012
Imperial adventures are nothing new in the Middle East. Neither is their glorification, as Peter O’Toole’s pained Lawrence of Arabia eternally reminds us. But for a decade or so now, things have been heating up, as if to coincide with climate change and fears of declining petroleum reserves ... The Belly for Belligerence? ... The question loomed over beltway intelligentsia like an ephemeral Gordian knot ... We’re All Hawks Now ... While George W ... ....(size: 9.3Kb)
photo: WN / Janice Sabnal
27 Dec 2012
Washington. Six people, including two young children, were left dead in weather-related accidents, as winter snowstorms complicated travel for many Americans in the Midwest and Northeast on Wednesday. Snow totals in parts of Indiana ranged from 6 to 12 inches, CNN reported. About 350 snowploughs were clearing roads throughout the city. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told residents they should avoid nonessential travel ... IANS ... ....(size: 2.2Kb)
photo: AP / Ben Curtis
28 Dec 2012
The president of Central African Republic (CAR) has urgently called on France and other foreign powers to help his government fend off rebels who are quickly seizing territory and approaching the capital. Speaking to crowds in Bangui, a city of some 600,000, Francois Bozize on Thursday pleaded with foreign powers to do what they could. He pointed in particular to France, Central African Republic's former colonial ruler ... 516 Share ... News ... ....(size: 19.5Kb)
photo: AP / K.M.Chaudary
27 Dec 2012
Large crowds of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) supporters are gathering to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Ms Bhutto died in a gun and bomb attack during her 2007 election campaign. Hundreds of thousands of people have set up camp near the Bhutto family's ancestral home in Sindh province ... He cannot contest an election until his 25th birthday. Show of strength ... ....(size: 2.4Kb)
photo: AP / Maya Alleruzzo
27 Dec 2012
CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt took responsibility on Wednesday for “mistakes” during the run-up to ratification of the new Constitution and urged Egyptians to appreciate the fierce disagreements about it as a “healthy phenomenon” of their new democracy. Times Topic. Egypt News — Revolution and Aftermath. Related. Egypt Opposition Gears Up After Constitution Passes (December 24, 2012) ... Twitter List....(size: 11.8Kb)
Bloomberg
28 Dec 2012
Mickalene Thomas’s large-scale photographs of a regal black woman greet visitors at Lehmann Maupin gallery in Chelsea ... This is the artist’s mother and muse, Sandra Bush, who passed away this year at age 61 ... Thomas makes that dream come true ... The artist’s solo debut at Cheim & Read, “The Shlomo,” features fictional characters and is peppered with references to early-20th-century art movements Fauvism, Symbolism and Expressionism ... ....(size: 4.6Kb)
San Francisco Chronicle
13 Dec 2012
I am stunned - but not - to learn of the uprising against the new logo of the University of California. I am a UC graduate, and I applaud the change from the outmoded, lifeless "Let there be light" emblem ... In the modern era, people turned away from Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, to name a few ... Imagine if artists weren't bold and experimental ... Valuable debate ... 12) ... ....(size: 5.1Kb)
The Independent
02 Dec 2012
'A picture must not be invented, it must be felt," claimed the 19th-century Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich ... This monumental slip-cased volume illustrates with beautiful reproductions all the drama and spiritual contemplation of his work ... From Fauvism to formaldehyde via Minimalism, Conceptualism and Surrealism, this book gives you the theories, players and timelines, and lets you decide whether you think it's art or nonsense ... ....(size: 4.2Kb)
The New York Times
29 Nov 2012
The great French modernist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was not a joiner ... Connect With Us on Twitter. Follow @nytimesarts for arts and entertainment news ... In the case of two 1906 “Young Sailor” paintings, the first can be read as an overworked farewell to Fauvism, while the second cuts to the chase, conveying its subject with consummate abbreviating ease against a flat pink background as if dispatched in a single work session ... ....(size: 11.3Kb)
Vogue
26 Nov 2012
Ravishing colors, flowing lines, sinuous bodies. Henri Matisse made it all look effortless. But it wasn’t ... Extraordinary insights into his process of creation are laid bare in the eye-opening new exhibition “Matisse ... The Met's show is equally innovative ... In 1906, for example, after visiting the French fishing village of Collioure, he painted a sailor with the free brushstrokes and bright colors of Fauvism ... “Matisse ... ....(size: 2.4Kb)
The Examiner
30 Oct 2012
Related topics. HalloweenpolaroidpumpkinsJack-O'-Lanterns. Advertisement ... More Halloween days are forthcoming. However, Polaroid Company no longer manufactures instant cameras. The most representative subjects for Halloween are pumpkins ... Photo credit. . Fotolia ... What is that Chicago Thing?Transitory art in ChicagoTouch of the abstractLooking for Fauvism art in all the right Chicago placesCan Chicago's bears create art?. Tweet ... ....(size: 7.8Kb)
Sacramento Bee
08 Oct 2012
Lexington Herald-Leader
08 Oct 2012
That was just after an important exhibition of the influential Fauvism movement known for its strong used of color....(size: 0.9Kb)
Seattle Post
08 Oct 2012
That was just after an important exhibition of the influential Fauvism movement known for its strong used of color ... ____....(size: 0.9Kb)
The Washington Post
08 Oct 2012
That was just after an important exhibition of the influential Fauvism movement known for its strong used of color. Loading... Comments Weigh In Corrections?. Recommend. Personal Post ... ____ ... Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved ... ....(size: 1.6Kb)
The Examiner
28 Sep 2012
Related topics. watercolor artwatercolor. Advertisement. Chicago artists, who intend to create watercolor artwork, could don oxygen tanks and moor themselves to the bottom of Lake Michigan. In such aquatic spots, these artists could attempt to create watercolor paintings by depicting the water’s color ... Suggested by the author.. Looking for Fauvism art in all the right Chicago placesOther than diptychs and triptychsArt of automobiles ... Tweet....(size: 7.9Kb)
The Examiner
15 Sep 2012
Related topics. Abstractionismabstractionism artArt Styles. Advertisement. Some art objects may have touches of the abstract ... Of course, touches of the abstract mean touches of the Abstractionism style. Phantom Limb ... Location. Museum of Contemporary Art ... Touches of the abstract are sometimes in art objects along with touches of Expressionism, Surrealism, Realism, Fantasy, Fauvism, Impressionism, Baroque, Modernism and Futurism ... Tweet. 0 Email....(size: 7.9Kb)
Huffington Post
31 Aug 2012
Keeping track of all the movements in art history can be a difficult thing. We know Impressionism predated Post-Impressionism, but what did Fauvism or Futurism look like? And where does De Stijl fit into the mix? Thankfully, we need not rack our brains any longer, because one graphic designer has created the perfect series of posters to help jump start our memories ... Loading Slideshow. Renaissance. 14th-17th century Expressionism ... Fauvism....(size: 4.3Kb)
File:Matisse - Green Line.jpeg
Henri Matisse, Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Stripe), 1906, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions.[1][2] The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.[1]
Contents |
Artists and style[link]
Besides Matisse and Derain, other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Louis Valtat, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Maurice Marinot, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, the Swiss painter Alice Bailly, and Georges Braque (subsequently Picasso's partner in Cubism).[1]
The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction.[3] Fauvism can be classified as an extreme development of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat[3] and other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac. Other key influences were Paul Cézanne[4] and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated color—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work at Collioure in 1905.[5] In 1888 Gauguin had said to Paul Sérusier:[6]
| “ | How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermilion. | ” |
Fauvism can also be seen as a mode of Expressionism.[3]
Origins[link]
File:Matisse-Woman-with-a-Hat.jpg
Henri Matisse. Woman with a Hat, 1905. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Gustave Moreau was the movement's inspirational teacher;[7] a controversial professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and a Symbolist painter, he taught Matisse, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault and Camoin during the 1890s, and was viewed by critics as the group's philosophical leader until Matisse was recognized as such in 1904.[8] Moreau's broad-mindedness, originality and affirmation of the expressive potency of pure color was inspirational for his students.[9] Matisse said of him, "He did not set us on the right roads, but off the roads. He disturbed our complacency."[9] This source of empathy was taken away with Moreau's death in 1898, but the artists discovered other catalysts for their development.[9]
In 1896, Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited the artist John Peter Russell on the island of Belle Île off Brittany.[10] Russell was an Impressionist painter; Matisse had never previously seen an Impressionist work directly, and was so shocked at the style that he left after ten days, saying, "I couldn't stand it any more."[10] The next year he returned as Russell's student and abandoned his earth-colored palette for bright Impressionist colors, later stating, "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me."[10] Russell had been a close friend of Vincent van Gogh and gave Matisse a Van Gogh drawing.[10]
In 1901, Maurice de Vlaminck encountered the work of Van Gogh for the first time at an exhibition, declaring soon after that he loved Van Gogh more than his own father; he started to work by squeezing paint directly onto the canvas from the tube.[9]
In parallel with the artists' discovery of contemporary avant-garde art came an appreciation of pre-Renaissance French art, which was shown in a 1904 exhibition, French Primitives.[9] Another aesthetic feeding into their work was African sculpture, which Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse were early collectors of.[9]
Many of the Fauve characteristics first cohered in Matisse's painting, Luxe, Calme et Volupté ("Luxury, Calm and Pleasure"), which he painted in the summer of 1904, whilst in Saint-Tropez with Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross.[9]
Salon D'Automne 1905[link]
The artists shared their first exhibition at the 1905 Salon d'Automne. The group gained their name, after critic Louis Vauxcelles described their show of work with the phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" ("Donatello among the wild beasts"), contrasting the paintings with a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them.[11] Henri Rousseau was not a Fauve, but his large jungle scene The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope was exhibited near Matisse's work and may have had an influence on the pejorative used.[12] Vauxcelles' comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage.[11][13] The pictures gained considerable condemnation, such as "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" from the critic Camille Mauclair (1872–1945), but also some favorable attention.[11] The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, which was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein: this had a very positive effect on Matisse, who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work.[11]
Gallery[link]
-
Self-portrait in studio by André Derain.jpg
André Derain, Self-portrait in the Studio, 1903, National Gallery of Australia, Sydney, Australia
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Matisse Les toits.jpg
-
Matissetoits.gif
Henri Matisse, Les toits de Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
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Matisse-Open-Window.jpg
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Bonheur Matisse.jpg
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Young Sailor II.jpg
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Derain CharingCrossBridge.png
André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
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SeineChatou.JPG
Maurice de Vlaminck, The River Seine at Chatou, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Dongen-Hat.jpg
Kees van Dongen, Woman with Large Hat, 1906
-
Matisse Souvenir de Biskra.jpg
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La Petite Lima.jpg
Charles Camoin, La Petite Lina 1907, Oil on canvas, Le Musée Cantini, Marseille
-
Landscape in Provence (Paysage de Provence) - André Derain.jpg
André Derain, Landscape in Provence (Paysage de Provence) (c. 1908), Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn
See also[link]
Further reading[link]
- Gerdts, William H. (1997). The Color of Modernism: The American Fauves. New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries. pp. 160 p. http://www.hollistaggart.com/publications/index.htm#fauves.
- Whitfield, Sarah (1991). Fauvism. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-20227-3.
Notes and references[link]
- ^ a b c John Elderfield, The "Wild Beasts" Fauvism and Its Affinities, 1976, Museum of Modern Art, p.13, ISBN 0-87070-638-1
- ^ Freeman, Judi, et al., The Fauve Landscape, 1990, Abbeville Press, p. 13, ISBN 1-55859-025-0.
- ^ a b c Tate (2007). Glossary: Fauvism. Retrieved on 2007-12-19 from http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=102.
- ^ Freeman, 1990, p. 15.
- ^ Teitel, Alexandra J. (2005). "History: How did the Fauves come to be?". "Fauvism: Expression, Perception, and the Use of Color", Brown University. Retrieved on 2009-06-18 from http://www.brown.edu/Courses/CG11/2005/Group149/history.htm.
- ^ Collins, Bradley, Van Gogh and Gauguin: Electric Arguments and Utopian Dreams, 2003, Westview Press, p. 159, ISBN 0-8133-4157-4.
- ^ Freeman, p. 243
- ^ Freeman, p. 243.
- ^ a b c d e f g Dempsey, Amy (2002). Styles, Schools and Movements: An Encyclopedic Guide to Modern Art, pp. 66-69, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
- ^ a b c d "Book talk: The Unknown Matisse...", ABC Radio National, interview with Hilary Spurling, 8 June 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2008.
- ^ a b c d Chilver, Ian (Ed.). "Fauvism", The Oxford Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved from enotes.com, 26 December 2007.
- ^ Smith, Roberta (2006). "Henri Rousseau: In imaginary jungles, a terrible beauty lurks" The New York Times, 14 July 2006. Accessed 29 December 2007
- ^ Elderfield,p.43
External links[link]
- Fauve Painting from the Permanent Collection at the National Gallery of Art
- Fauvism: The Wild Beasts of Early Twentieth Century Art
- Rewald, Sabine. Fauvism. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2004)
- Gelett Burgess, The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves, 1910
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http://wn.com/Fauvism
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Fauves
http://cs.wn.com/Fauvismus
http://es.wn.com/Fovismo
http://ru.wn.com/Фовизм
http://nl.wn.com/Les Fauves
http://id.wn.com/Fauvisme
http://pl.wn.com/Fowizm
http://fr.wn.com/Fauvisme
http://de.wn.com/Fauvismus
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For the American comedian, see Bob Marley (comedian).
| Bob Marley | |
|---|---|
 Bob Marley performing in concert, circa 1980. |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Robert Nesta Marley |
| Also known as | Tuff Gong |
| Born | (1945-02-06)6 February 1945 Nine Mile, Saint Ann, Jamaica |
| Died | 11 May 1981(1981-05-11) (aged 36) Miami, Florida, U.S. |
| Genres | Reggae, ska, rocksteady |
| Occupations | Singer-songwriter, musician |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar, piano, saxophone, harmonica, percussion |
| Years active | 1962–1981 |
| Labels | Studio One, Upsetter, Tuff Gong |
| Associated acts | Bob Marley & The Wailers, Wailers Band, The Upsetters, I Threes |
| Website | bobmarley.com |
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers (1963–1981). Marley remains the most widely known and revered performer of reggae music, and is credited with helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement to a worldwide audience.[1]
Marley's music was heavily influenced by the social issues of his homeland, and he is considered to have given voice to the specific political and cultural nexus of Jamaica.[2] His best-known hits include "I Shot the Sheriff", "No Woman, No Cry", "Could You Be Loved", "Stir It Up", "Get Up Stand Up", "Jamming", "Redemption Song", "One Love" and, "Three Little Birds",[3] as well as the posthumous releases "Buffalo Soldier" and "Iron Lion Zion". The compilation album Legend (1984), released three years after his death, is reggae's best-selling album, going ten times Platinum which is also known as one Diamond in the U.S.,[4] and selling 25 million copies worldwide.[5][6]
Contents |
Early life and career[link]
Bob Marley was born in the village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica as Nesta Robert Marley.[7] A Jamaican passport official would later swap his first and middle names.[8] His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was a white Jamaican of mixed and English descent whose family came from Sussex, England. Norval was a captain in the Royal Marines,[citation needed] as well as a plantation overseer, when he married Cedella Booker, an Afro-Jamaican then 18 years old.[9] Norval provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw them, as he was often away on trips. In 1955, when Bob Marley was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at age 70.[10] Marley faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life. He once reflected:
I don't have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't deh pon nobody's side. Me don't deh pon the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me deh pon God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.[11]
Although Marley recognised his mixed ancestry, throughout his life and because of his beliefs, he self-identified as a black African, following the ideas of Pan-African leaders. Marley stated that his two biggest influences were the African-centered Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie. A central theme in Bob Marley's message was the repatriation of black people to Zion, which in his view was Ethiopia, or more generally, Africa.[12] In songs such as "Black Survivor", "Babylon System", and "Blackman Redemption", Marley sings about the struggles of blacks and Africans against oppression from the West or "Babylon".[13]
Marley and his step brother Bunny Wailer (Bob's mother had a daughter with Bunny's father, younger sister to both of them) started to play music while he was still at school, which he left at the age of 14 to make music with Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout Rastafari. At a jam session with Higgs and Livingston, Marley met Peter McIntosh (later known as Peter Tosh), who had similar musical ambitions.[14] In 1962, Marley recorded his first two singles, "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee", with local music producer Leslie Kong. These songs, released on the Beverley's label under the pseudonym of Bobby Martell,[15] attracted little attention. The songs were later re-released on the box set Songs of Freedom, a posthumous collection of Marley's work. Marley was also known to use an Epiphone guitar for much of his career.
Bob Marley & The Wailers[link]
Main article: Bob Marley & The Wailers
1963–1974[link]
In 1963, Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, and Cherry Smith formed a ska and rocksteady group, calling themselves "The Teenagers". They later changed their name to "The Wailing Rudeboys", then to "The Wailing Wailers", at which point they were discovered by record producer Coxsone Dodd, and finally to "The Wailers". By 1966, Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith had left The Wailers, leaving the core trio of Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh.[16]
In 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, and moved near his mother's residence in Wilmington, Delaware in the United States for a short time, during which he worked as a DuPont lab assistant and on the assembly line at a Chrysler plant, under the alias Donald Marley.[17]
Though raised in the Catholic tradition, Marley became captivated by Rastafarian beliefs in the 1960s, when away from his mother's influence.[18] Formally converted to Rastafari after returning to Jamaica, Marley began to wear his trademark dreadlocks (see the religion section for more on Marley's religious views). After a conflict with Dodd, Marley and his band teamed up with Lee "Scratch" Perry and his studio band, The Upsetters. Although the alliance lasted less than a year, they recorded what many consider The Wailers' finest work. Marley and Perry split after a dispute regarding the assignment of recording rights, but they would remain friends and work together again.
Between 1968 and 1972, Bob and Rita Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer re-cut some old tracks with JAD Records in Kingston and London in an attempt to commercialise The Wailers' sound. Bunny later asserted that these songs "should never be released on an album ... they were just demos for record companies to listen to". Also in 1968, Bob and Rita visited the Bronx to see Johnny Nash's songwriter Jimmy Norman.[21] A three-day jam session with Norman and others, including Norman's co-writer Al Pyfrom, resulted in a 24-minute tape of Marley performing several of his own and Norman-Pyfrom's compositions. This tape is, according to Reggae archivist Roger Steffens, rare in that it was influenced by pop rather than reggae, as part of an effort to break Marley into the American charts.[21] According to an article in The New York Times, Marley experimented on the tape with different sounds, adopting a doo-wop style on "Stay With Me" and "the slow love song style of 1960's artists" on "Splish for My Splash".[21] An artist yet to establish himself outside his native Jamaica, Marley lived in Ridgmount Gardens, Bloomsbury, London during 1972.[19][20]
In 1972, the Wailers entered into an ill-fated deal with CBS Records and embarked on a tour with American soul singer Johnny Nash. Broke, the Wailers became stranded in London. Marley turned up at Island Records founder and producer Chris Blackwell's London office, and asked him to advance the cost of a new single. Since Jimmy Cliff, Island's top reggae star, had recently left the label, Blackwell was primed for a replacement. In Marley, Blackwell recognized the elements needed to snare the rock audience: "I was dealing with rock music, which was really rebel music. I felt that would really be the way to break Jamaican music. But you needed someone who could be that image. When Bob walked in he really was that image."[22] Blackwell told Marley he wanted The Wailers to record a complete album (essentially unheard of at the time). When Marley told him it would take between £3,000 and £4,000, Blackwell trusted him with the greater sum. Despite their "rude boy" reputation, the Wailers returned to Kingston and honored the deal, delivering the album Catch A Fire.
Primarily recorded on eight-track at Harry J's in Kingston, Catch A Fire marked the first time a reggae band had access to a state-of-the-art studio and were accorded the same care as their rock'n'roll peers.[22] Blackwell desired to create "more of a drifting, hypnotic-type feel than a reggae rhythm",[23] and restructured Marley's mixes and arrangements. Marley travelled to London to supervise Blackwell's overdubbing of the album, which included tempering the mix from the bass-heavy sound of Jamaican music, and omitting two tracks.[22]
The Wailers' first major label album, Catch a Fire was released worldwide in April 1973, packaged like a rock record with a unique Zippo lighter lift-top. Initially selling 14,000 units, it didn't make Marley a star, but received a positive critical reception.[22] It was followed later that year by Burnin', which included the standout songs "Get Up, Stand Up", and "I Shot the Sheriff", which appealed to the ear of Eric Clapton. He recorded a cover of the track in 1974 which became a huge American hit, raising Marley's international profile.[24] Many Jamaicans were not keen on the new "improved" reggae sound on Catch A Fire, but the Trenchtown style of Burnin' found fans across both reggae and rock audiences.[22]
During this period, Blackwell gifted his Kingston residence and company headquarters at 56 Hope Road (then known as Island House) to Marley. Housing Tuff Gong Studios, the property became not only Marley's office, but also his home.[22]
The Wailers were scheduled to open 17 shows for the number one black act in the States, Sly and the Family Stone. After 4 shows, the band was fired because they were more popular than the acts they were opening for.[25] The Wailers broke up in 1974 with each of the three main members pursuing solo careers. The reason for the breakup is shrouded in conjecture; some believe that there were disagreements amongst Bunny, Peter, and Bob concerning performances, while others claim that Bunny and Peter simply preferred solo work.
1974–1981[link]
Despite the break-up, Marley continued recording as "Bob Marley & The Wailers". His new backing band included brothers Carlton and Aston "Family Man" Barrett on drums and bass respectively, Junior Marvin and Al Anderson on lead guitar, Tyrone Downie and Earl "Wya" Lindo on keyboards, and Alvin "Seeco" Patterson on percussion. The "I Threes", consisting of Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths, and Marley's wife, Rita, provided backing vocals. In 1975, Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, "No Woman, No Cry", from the Natty Dread album. This was followed by his breakthrough album in the United States, Rastaman Vibration (1976), which spent four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.[26] On 3 December 1976, two days before "Smile Jamaica", a free concert organised by the Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in an attempt to ease tension between two warring political groups, Marley, his wife, and manager Don Taylor were wounded in an assault by unknown gunmen inside Marley's home. Taylor and Marley's wife sustained serious injuries, but later made full recoveries. Bob Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm.[27] The shooting was thought to have been politically motivated, as many felt the concert was really a support rally for Manley. Nonetheless, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt. When asked why, Marley responded, "The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?" The members of the group Zap Pow, which had no radical religious or political beliefs, played as Bob Marley's backup band before a festival crowd of 80,000 while members of The Wailers were still missing or in hiding.[28][29]
Marley left Jamaica at the end of 1976, and after a month-long "recovery and writing" sojourn at the site of Chris Blackwell's Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, arrived in England, where he spent two years in self-imposed exile. Whilst there he recorded the albums Exodus and Kaya. Exodus stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks. It included four UK hit singles: "Exodus", "Waiting in Vain", "Jamming", and "One Love" (a rendition of Curtis Mayfield's hit, "People Get Ready"). During his time in London, he was arrested and received a conviction for possession of a small quantity of cannabis.[30] In 1978, Marley returned to Jamaica and performed at another political concert, the One Love Peace Concert, again in an effort to calm warring parties. Near the end of the performance, by Marley's request, Michael Manley (leader of then-ruling People's National Party) and his political rival Edward Seaga (leader of the opposing Jamaica Labour Party), joined each other on stage and shook hands.[31]
Under the name Bob Marley and the Wailers eleven albums were released, four live albums and seven studio albums. The releases included Babylon by Bus, a double live album with thirteen tracks, were released in 1978 and received critical acclaim. This album, and specifically the final track "Jamming" with the audience in a frenzy, captured the intensity of Marley's live performances.[32]
"Marley wasn’t singing about how peace could come easily to the World but rather how hell on Earth comes too easily to too many. His songs were his memories; he had lived with the wretched, he had seen the downpressers and those whom they pressed down."
Survival, a defiant and politically charged album, was released in 1979. Tracks such as "Zimbabwe", "Africa Unite", "Wake Up and Live", and "Survival" reflected Marley's support for the struggles of Africans. His appearance at the Amandla Festival in Boston in July 1979 showed his strong opposition to South African apartheid, which he already had shown in his song "War" in 1976. In early 1980, he was invited to perform at the 17 April celebration of Zimbabwe's Independence Day. Uprising (1980) was Bob Marley's final studio album, and is one of his most religious productions; it includes "Redemption Song" and "Forever Loving Jah".[34] Confrontation, released posthumously in 1983, contained unreleased material recorded during Marley's lifetime, including the hit "Buffalo Soldier" and new mixes of singles previously only available in Jamaica.[35]
Personal life[link]
Religion[link]
| Main doctrines | |
| Jah · Afrocentrism · Ital · Zion · Cannabis use | |
| Central figures | |
| Haile Selassie I · Jesus · Menen Asfaw · Marcus Garvey | |
| Key scriptures | |
| Bible · Kebra Nagast · The Promise Key · Holy Piby · My Life and Ethiopia's Progress · Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy | |
| Branches and festivals | |
| Mansions · in United States · Shashamane · Grounation Day · Reasoning | |
| Notable individuals | |
| Leonard Howell · Joseph Hibbert · Mortimer Planno · Vernon Carrington · Charles Edwards · Bob Marley · Peter Tosh | |
| See also: | |
| Vocabulary · Persecution · Dreadlocks · Reggae · Ethiopian Christianity · Index of Rastafari articles
|
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Bob Marley was a member of the Rastafari movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae. Bob Marley became an ardent proponent of Rastafari, taking their music out of the socially deprived areas of Jamaica and onto the international music scene. He once gave the following response, which was typical, to a question put to him during a recorded interview:
- Interviewer: "Can you tell the people what it means being a Rastafarian?"
- Bob: "I would say to the people, Be still, and know that His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is the Almighty. Now, the Bible seh so, Babylon newspaper seh so, and I and I the children seh so. Yunno? So I don't see how much more reveal our people want. Wha' dem want? a white God, well God come black. True true."[36]
Observant of the Rastafari practice Ital, a diet that shuns meat, Marley was a vegetarian.[37] According to his biographers, he affiliated with the Twelve Tribes Mansion. He was in the denomination known as "Tribe of Joseph", because he was born in February (each of the twelve sects being composed of members born in a different month). He signified this in his album liner notes, quoting the portion from Genesis that includes Jacob's blessing to his son Joseph. Marley was baptised by the Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Kingston, Jamaica, on 4 November 1980.[38][39]
Family[link]
Bob Marley had a number of children: three with his wife Rita, two adopted from Rita's previous relationships, and several others with different women. The Bob Marley official website acknowledges eleven children.
Those listed on the official site are:
- Sharon, born 23 November 1964, to Rita in previous relationship
- Cedella born 23 August 1967, to Rita
- David "Ziggy", born 17 October 1968, to Rita
- Stephen, born 20 April 1972, to Rita
- Robert "Robbie", born 16 May 1972, to Pat Williams
- Rohan, born 19 May 1972, to Janet Hunt
- Karen, born 1973 to Janet Bowen
- Stephanie, born 17 August 1974; according to Cedella Booker she was the daughter of Rita and a man called Ital with whom Rita had an affair; nonetheless she was acknowledged as Bob's daughter
- Julian, born 4 June 1975, to Lucy Pounder
- Ky-Mani, born 26 February 1976, to Anita Belnavis
- Damian, born 21 July 1978, to Cindy Breakspeare
Makeda was born on 30 May 1981, to Yvette Crichton, after Marley's death.[40] Meredith Dixon's book lists her as Marley's child, but she is not listed as such on the Bob Marley official website.
Various websites, for example,[41] also list Imani Carole, born 22 May 1963 to Cheryl Murray; but she does not appear on the official Bob Marley website.[40]
Final years and death[link]
In July 1977, Marley was found to have a type of malignant melanoma under the nail of one of his toes. Contrary to urban legend, this lesion was not primarily caused by an injury during a football match in that year, but was instead a symptom of the already existing cancer. Marley turned down doctors' advice to have his toe amputated, citing his religious beliefs.[42] Despite his illness, he continued touring and was in the process of scheduling a world tour in 1980. The intention was for Inner Circle to be his opening act on the tour but after their lead singer Jacob Miller died in Jamaica in March 1980 after returning from a scouting mission in Brazil this was no longer mentioned.[43]
The album Uprising was released in May 1980 (produced by Chris Blackwell), on which "Redemption Song" is particularly considered to be about Marley coming to terms with his mortality.[citation needed] The band completed a major tour of Europe, where they played their biggest concert, to a hundred thousand people in Milan. After the tour Marley went to America, where he performed two shows at Madison Square Garden as part of the Uprising Tour.
The final concert of Bob Marley's career was held 23 September 1980 at the Stanley Theater (now called The Benedum Center For The Performing Arts) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The audio recording of that concert is now available on CD, vinyl, and digital music services.
Shortly after, Marley's health deteriorated and he became very ill; the cancer had spread throughout his body. The rest of the tour was cancelled and Marley sought treatment at the Bavarian clinic of Josef Issels, where he received a controversial type of cancer therapy (Issels treatment) partly based on avoidance of certain foods, drinks, and other substances. After fighting the cancer without success for eight months, Marley boarded a plane for his home in Jamaica.[44]
While flying home from Germany to Jamaica, Marley's vital functions worsened. After landing in Miami, Florida, he was taken to the hospital for immediate medical attention. He died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami Hospital) on the morning of 11 May 1981, at the age of 36. The spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death. His final words to his son Ziggy were "Money can't buy life".[45] Marley received a state funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981, which combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Rastafari tradition.[46] He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace with his red Gibson Les Paul (some accounts say it was a Fender Stratocaster).[47]
On 21 May 1981, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga delivered the final funeral eulogy to Marley, declaring:
His voice was an omnipresent cry in our electronic world. His sharp features, majestic looks, and prancing style a vivid etching on the landscape of our minds. Bob Marley was never seen. He was an experience which left an indelible imprint with each encounter. Such a man cannot be erased from the mind. He is part of the collective consciousness of the nation.[48]
Legacy[link]
Bob Marley was the Third World's first pop superstar. He was the man who introduced the world to the mystic power of reggae. He was a true rocker at heart, and as a songwriter, he brought the lyrical force of Bob Dylan, the personal charisma of John Lennon, and the essential vocal stylings of Smokey Robinson into one voice.
In 1999 Time magazine chose Bob Marley & The Wailers' Exodus as the greatest album of the 20th century.[50] In 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a feature-length documentary about his life, Rebel Music, won various awards at the Grammys. With contributions from Rita, The Wailers, and Marley's lovers and children, it also tells much of the story in his own words.[51] A statue was inaugurated, next to the national stadium on Arthur Wint Drive in Kingston to commemorate him. In 2006, the State of New York renamed a portion of Church Avenue from Remsen Avenue to East 98th Street in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn "Bob Marley Boulevard".[52] In 2008, a statue of Marley was inaugurated in Banatski Sokolac, Serbia.[53]
Internationally, Marley’s message also continues to reverberate amongst various indigenous communities. For instance, the Aboriginal people of Australia continue to burn a sacred flame to honor his memory in Sydney’s Victoria Park, while members of the Native American Hopi and Havasupai tribe revere his work.[54] There are also many tributes to Bob Marley throughout India, including restaurants, hotels, and cultural festivals.[55][56]
Marley has also evolved into a global symbol, which has been endlessly merchandised through a variety of mediums. In light of this, author Dave Thompson in his book Reggae and Caribbean Music, laments what he perceives to be the commercialized pacification of Marley's more militant edge, stating:
Bob Marley ranks among both the most popular and the most misunderstood figures in modern culture ... That the machine has utterly emasculated Marley is beyond doubt. Gone from the public record is the ghetto kid who dreamed of Che Guevara and the Black Panthers, and pinned their posters up in the Wailers Soul Shack record store; who believed in freedom; and the fighting which it necessitated, and dressed the part on an early album sleeve; whose heroes were James Brown and Muhammad Ali; whose God was Ras Tafari and whose sacrament was marijuana. Instead, the Bob Marley who surveys his kingdom today is smiling benevolence, a shining sun, a waving palm tree, and a string of hits which tumble out of polite radio like candy from a gumball machine. Of course it has assured his immortality. But it has also demeaned him beyond recognition. Bob Marley was worth far more.[57]
Film adaptations[link]
In February 2008, director Martin Scorsese announced his intention to produce a documentary movie on Marley. The film was set to be released on 6 February 2010, on what would have been Marley's 65th birthday.[58] However, Scorsese dropped out due to scheduling problems. He was replaced by Jonathan Demme,[59] who dropped out due to creative differences with producer Steve Bing during the beginning of editing. Kevin Macdonald replaced Demme[60] and the film, Marley, was released on 20 April 2012.
In March 2008, The Weinstein Company announced its plans to produce a biopic of Bob Marley, based on the book No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley by Rita Marley. Rudy Langlais will produce the script by Lizzie Borden and Rita Marley will be executive producer.[61]
Ex-girlfriend and filmmaker Esther Anderson, along with Gian Godoy, made the documentary Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2011.[62]
Discography[link]
Main article: Bob Marley & The Wailers discography
- The Wailing Wailers (1965)
- The Best of The Wailers (1970)
- Soul Rebels (1970)
- Soul Revolution (1971)
- Catch a Fire (1973)
- Burnin' (1973)
- Natty Dread (1974)
- Rastaman Vibration (1976)
- Exodus (1977)
- Kaya (1978)
- Survival (1979)
- Uprising (1980)
- Confrontation (1983)
Awards and honors[link]
- 1976: Band of the Year (Rolling Stone).
- June 1978: Awarded the Peace Medal of the Third World from the United Nations.[54]
- February 1981: Awarded Jamaica's third highest honour, the Jamaican Order of Merit.
- March 1994: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
- 1999: Album of the Century for Exodus by Time Magazine.
- February 2001: A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
- February 2001: Awarded Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
- 2004: Rolling Stone ranked him No.11 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[63]
- "One Love" named song of the millennium by BBC.
- Voted as one of the greatest lyricists of all time by a BBC poll.[64]
- 2006: A blue plaque was unveiled at his first UK residence in Ridgmount Gardens, London, dedicated to him by Nubian Jak community trust and supported by Her Majesty's Foreign Office.[65]
- 2010: "Catch a Fire" inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame (Reggae Album).[66]
References[link]
- ^ "2007 Pop Conference Bios/Abstracts". Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. 2007. http://www.empsfm.org/education/index.asp?categoryID=26&ccID=127&xPopConfBioID=784&year=2007.
- ^ "Bob Marley". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/bob-marley. Retrieved 29 December 2010.
- ^ "Bob Marley". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006.
- ^ Miller, Doug (26 February 2007). "Concert Series: 'No Woman, No Cry'". web.BobMarley.com. http://web.bobmarley.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070226&contentid=3540. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
- ^ Newcomb, Peter (25 October 2004). "Top Earners for 2004". Forbes: p. 9. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2004/10/25/cx_2004deadcelebtears_9.html. Retrieved 30 November 2008.
- ^ "Rolling in the money". iAfrica. http://entertainment.iafrica.com/features/1051960.htm. Retrieved 30 November 2008.
- ^ Moskowitz 2007, p. 1
- ^ Moskowitz 2007, p. 9
- ^ Moskowitz 2007, p. 2
- ^ Moskowitz 2007, p. 4
- ^ Webley, Bishop Derek (10 May 2008). "One world, one love, one Bob Marley". Birmingham Post. http://www.birminghampost.net/comment/birmingham-columnists/more-columnists/2008/05/10/bishop-webley-one-world-one-love-one-bob-marley-65233-20891539/. Retrieved 15 June 2008.
- ^ "Religion and Ethics: Rastafari – Bob Marley". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/people/bobmarley.shtml.
- ^ Middleton 2000, pp. 181–198
- ^ Ankeny, Jason. "Bob Marley – Biography". Allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p2907. Retrieved 15 June 2008.
- ^ "The Beverley Label and Leslie Kong: Music Business". bobmarley.com. Archived from the original on 21 June 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060621034903/http://www.bobmarley.com/life/musicbusiness/beverley.html.
- ^ "The Wailers'Biography". Vital Spot. http://www.vitalspot.com/TheWailers/Biography.html. Retrieved 1 October 2009. [dead link]
- ^ White, Timothy (25 June 1981). "Bob Marley: 1945–1981". Rolling Stone. Jann Wenner. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6879720/bob_marley_19451981.
- ^ Moskowtz, David Vlado (2007). The Words and Music of Bob Marley. Westport, Connecticut. p. 16. ISBN 0-275-98935-6, ISBN 978-0-275-98935-4.
- ^ a b Bob Marley’s London home on the Music Pilgrimages website.
- ^ a b Muir, Hugh (27 October 2006). "Blue plaque marks flats that put Marley on road to fame". The Guardian (UK). http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/oct/27/musicnews.arts. Retrieved 7 September 2010.
- ^ a b c McKinley, Jesse (19 December 2002). "Pre-reggae tape of Bob Marley is found and put on auction". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E2DD133DF93AA25751C1A9649C8B63. Retrieved 4 January 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f Hagerman, Brent (February 2005). "Chris Blackwell: Savvy Svengali". Exclaim.ca. http://exclaim.ca/Features/Timeline/chris_blackwell-savvy_svengalil. Retrieved 29 December 2010.
- ^ [Quoted in the liner notes to 2001 reissue of Catch a Fire, written by Richard Williams]
- ^ "I Shot the Sheriff". Rolling Stone. Jann Wenner. 9 December 2004. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6596288/i_shot_the_sheriff/print. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
- ^ "Bob Marley Biography". admin. 9 August 2010. http://bobmarleytshirts.net/bob-marley-biography/. Retrieved November 2010.
- ^ "Bob Marley Bio". niceup.com. http://www.niceup.com/bmbio.html. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
- ^ Moskowitz 2007, pp. 71–73
- ^ "The shooting of a Wailer". Rolling Stone. Jann Wenner. 13 January 1997. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6879667/the_shooting_of_a_wailer. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
- ^ Walker, Jeff (1980) on the cover of Zap Pow's LP Reggae Rules. Los Angeles: Rhino Records.
- ^ "A Timeline of Bob Marley's Career". Thirdfield.com. http://www.thirdfield.com/new/timeline.html. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
- ^ "One Love Peace Concert". Everything2.com. 24 May 2002. http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1307397. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
- ^ White, Timothy (28 December 1978). "Babylon by Bus review". Rolling Stone. Jann Wenner. http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/301860. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
- ^ Henke 2006, p. 61
- ^ Morris, Chris (16 October 1980). "Uprising review". Rolling Stone. Jann Wenner. http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/103460/review/6068123?utm_source=Rhapsody&utm_medium=CDreview. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
- ^ Schruers, Fred (1 September 1983). "Confrontation review". Rolling Stone. Jann Wenner. http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bobmarley/albums/album/232098/review/6067472/confrontation. Retrieved 3 October 2009. [dead link]
- ^ Davis, Steven, Bob Marley: the biography (1983) p. 115
- ^ "Bob Marley". The International Vegetarian Union. http://www.ivu.org/people/music/marley.html. Retrieved 16 December 2009.
- ^ "The Ethiopian Orthodox Church & Bob Marley's Baptism And The Church". Jamaicans.com. http://www.jamaicans.com/culture/rasta/ethiopian_church.shtml.
- ^ "Bob Marley's Baptism in Ethiopian Orthodox Church". Rastafarispeaks.com. http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/cgi-bin/forum/archive1/config.pl?noframes;read=47421.
- ^ a b Dixon, Meredith. "Lovers and Children of the Natural Mystic: The Story of Bob Marley, Women and their Children". The Dread Library. http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/dixon.html. Retrieved 21 June 2007.
- ^ "Bob Marley's Children". Chelsea's Entertainment Reviews. http://chelseasreviews.wordpress.com/2006/12/07/bob-marleys-children/. Retrieved 28 December 2009.
- ^ "A Death by Skin Cancer? The Bob Marley Story". The Tribune. 11 April 2011. http://www.tribune242.com/04122011_Bob-Marley_features_pg9. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
- ^ Slater, Russ (6 August 2010). "The Day Bob Marley Played Football in Brazil". Sounds and Colours. http://www.soundsandcolours.com/articles/brazil/the-day-bob-marley-played-football-in-brazil/. Retrieved 6 August 2010.
- ^ "His story: The life and legacy of Bob Marley". web.bobmarley.com. http://web.bobmarley.com/story/?storypage=7. Retrieved 4 October 2009.
- ^ "Why Did Bob Marley Die - What Did Bob Marley Die From". Worldmusic.about.com. http://worldmusic.about.com/od/genres/f/BobMarleyDeath.htm. Retrieved 2011-10-31.
- ^ Moskowitz 2007, p. 116
- ^ "Bob Marley". Find a Grave. 1 January 2001. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1732. Retrieved 16 April 2009.
- ^ Henke 2006, p. 58
- ^ Henke 2006, p. 4
- ^ "The Best Of The Century". Time (Time Inc.). 31 December 1999. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,993039,00.html. Retrieved 16 April 2009.
- ^ "Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for Bob Marley". Caribbian Today. 31 January 2001. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-79143687.html. Retrieved 4 October 2009.
- ^ "Brooklyn Street Renamed Bob Marley Boulevard". NY1. 2 July 2006. http://ny1.com/1-all-boroughs-news-content/top_stories/?SecID=1000&ArID=60701. Retrieved 6 October 2009.
- ^ "n. Marinković, "Marli u Sokolcu"". Politika.rs. http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Drustvo/Marli-u-Sokolcu.lt.html. Retrieved 2011-10-31.
- ^ a b Henke 2006, p. 5
- ^ Singh, Sarina; Brown, Lindsay; Elliot, Mark; Harding, Paul; Hole, Abigail; Horton, Patrick (2009). Lonely Planet India. Oakland, CA: Lonely Planet. p. 1061. ISBN 978-1-74179-151-8. http://books.google.com/?id=vK88ktao7pIC&pg=PA1061&dq=bob+marley+cafe+Mamallapuram+(Mahabalipuram)#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved 2011-07-07.
- ^ "Bob Marley Cultural Fest 2010". Cochin Square. 4 May 2010. http://www.cochinsquare.com/bob-marley-cultural-fest-2010/. Retrieved 2011-07-07.
- ^ Reggae and Caribbean Music, by Dave Thompson, Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002, ISBN 0-87930-655-6, pp. 159
- ^ Winter Miller (17 February 2008). "Scorsese to make Marley documentary". Ireland On-Line. http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=246581796&p=z4658z5xz. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
- ^ "Martin Scorsese Drops Out of Bob Marley Documentary". WorstPreviews.com. 22 May 2008. http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=8737&count=25. Retrieved 26 May 2008.
- ^ Kevin Jagernauth (2 February 2011). "Kevin Macdonald Takes Over 'Marley' Doc From Jonathan Demme". indieWire. http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/kevin_macdonald_takes_over_marley_doc_from_jonathan_demme#. Retrieved 22 February 2012.
- ^ Miller, Winter (3 March 2008). "Weinstein Co. options Marley". Variety (Reed Business Information). http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117981772.html?categoryid=13&cs=1. Retrieved 3 March 2008.
- ^ http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/news/20021-bob-marley-the-making-of-a-legend-at-eiff/
- ^ "The Immortals: The First Fifty". Rolling Stone Issue 946. Jann Wenner. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939214/the_immortals_the_first_fifty.
- ^ "Who is the greatest lyricist of all time". BBC. 23 May 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1347071.stm.
- ^ "London honours legendary reggae artist Bob Marley with heritage plaque". AfricaUnite.org. http://africa-unite.org/site/content/view/63/54.
- ^ "Grammy Hall of Fame Awards Complete Listing". Grammy.com. http://www2.grammy.com/Recording_Academy/Awards/Hall_Of_Fame/#c.
Further reading[link]
- Farley, Christopher (2007). Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley, Amistad Press ISBN 0-06-053992-5
- Goldman, Vivien (2006). The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Album of the Century, Aurum Press ISBN 1-84513-210-6
- Henke, James (2006). Marley Legend: An Illustrated Life of Bob Marley. Tuff Gong books. ISBN 0-8118-5036-6
- Marley, Rita; Jones, Hettie (2004) No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley Hyperion Books ISBN 0-7868-8755-9
- Masouri, John (2007) Wailing Blues: The Story of Bob Marley's "Wailers" Wise Publications ISBN 1-84609-689-8
- Moskowitz, David (2007). The Words and Music of Bob Marley. Westport, Connecticut, United States: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-98935-6. http://books.google.com/?id=JJ4ub5h5E6sC&printsec=frontcover
- White, Timothy (2006). Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-8050-8086-4.
- Middleton, J. Richard (2000). Religion, culture, and tradition in the Caribbean: Identity and Subversion in Babylon: Strategies for "Resisting Against the System" in music of Bob Marley and the Wailers. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-23242-X
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bob Marley |
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bob Marley |
- Official website
- Bob Marley at the Internet Movie Database
- The Bob Marley Foundation
- Online Home of the Marleys
- Bob Marley at Rolling Stone
- Marley Elected one of the Greatest Songwriters BBC News, 23 May 2001
- Showcase: Bob Marley by James Estrin, The New York Times, 18 May 2009
- Interview with Heather Marley in Bob Marley Magazine
- Extensive discography
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Marley, Bob |
| Alternative names | Marley, Robert Nesta |
| Short description | Singer, songwriter, guitarist |
| Date of birth | 6 February 1945 |
| Place of birth | Nine Miles, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica |
| Date of death | 11 May 1981 |
| Place of death | Miami, Florida, U.S. |
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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Marley
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is about the performer. For other people named Steve Martin, see Steve Martin (disambiguation).
| Steve Martin | |
|---|---|
 Martin in April 2011 |
|
| Birth name | Stephen Glenn Martin |
| Born | (1945-08-14) August 14, 1945 (age 66) Waco, Texas, United States |
| Medium | Concert, film, recordings, television, books |
| Nationality | American |
| Years active | 1967–present |
| Genres | Surreal humor, Musical comedy, physical comedy, sketch comedy, Wit/word play Music: bluegrass |
| Influences | British television, Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Laurel and Hardy, Wally Boag[1] |
| Influenced | Judd Apatow, Will Arnett, Louis C.K., Stephen Colbert,[2] Eddie Izzard, Patton Oswalt,[3] Lucy Porter, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart |
| Spouse | Victoria Tennant (1986–1994)[4] Anne Stringfield (2007–present) |
| Signature |  |
| Website | www.stevemartin.com |
| Emmy Awards | |
| Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music 1969 The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour |
|
| Grammy Awards | |
| Best Comedy Album 1978 Let's Get Small 1979 A Wild and Crazy Guy Best Country Instrumental Performance 2002 Foggy Mountain Breakdown Best Bluegrass Album 2009 The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo |
|
| American Comedy Awards | |
| Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy 2000 Lifetime Achievement |
|
| NYFCC Award for Best Actor | |
| All of Me (1984) | |
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, author, playwright, producer, musician and composer. Martin came to public notice as a writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In the 1970s, Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before packed houses on national tours. In 2004, Comedy Central[5] ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics.
Since the 1980s, having branched away from stand-up comedy, Martin has become a successful actor in both comedic and dramatic roles, as well as an author, playwright, pianist, and banjo player, eventually earning Emmy, Grammy, and American Comedy awards, among other honors.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Martin was born in Waco, Texas,[6] the son of Mary Lee (née Stewart) and Glenn Vernon Martin, a real estate salesman and aspiring actor.[4][7] Martin was raised in Inglewood, California, and then later in Garden Grove, California, in a Baptist family.[8] Martin was a cheerleader of Garden Grove High School.[9] One of his earliest memories is of seeing his father, as an extra, serving drinks onstage at the Call Board Theatre on Melrose Place. During World War II, in England, Martin's father had appeared in a production of Our Town with Raymond Massey. Years later, he would write to Massey for help in Steve's fledgling career, but would receive no reply. Expressing his affection through gifts of cars, bikes, etc., Martin's father was stern, and not emotionally open to his son.[10] He was proud but critical, with Martin later recalling that in his teens his feelings for his father were mostly ones of hatred.[11] Martin's first job was at Disneyland, selling guidebooks on weekends and full-time during the summer school break. That lasted for three years (1955–1958). During his free time he frequented the Main Street Magic shop, where tricks were demonstrated to potential customers.[10] By 1960, he had mastered several of the tricks and illusions, and took a paying job there in August. There he perfected his talents for magic, juggling, and creating balloon animals, frequently performing for tips.[12] In his authorized biography, close friend Morris Walker suggests that Martin could "be described most accurately as an agnostic [...] he rarely went to church and was never involved in organized religion of his own volition".[13]
Comedy[link]
After high school graduation, Martin attended Santa Ana Junior College, taking classes in drama and English poetry. In his free time, he teamed up with friend and Garden Grove High School classmate Kathy Westmoreland to participate in comedies and other productions at the Bird Cage Theatre. He joined a comedy troupe at Knott's Berry Farm.[10] Later, he met budding actress Stormie Sherk, and they developed comedy routines and became romantically involved. Sherk's influence caused Martin to apply to the California State University, Long Beach, for enrollment with a major in Philosophy.[10] Stormie enrolled at UCLA, about an hour's drive north, and the distance eventually caused them to lead separate lives.[14]
Inspired by his philosophy classes, Martin considered becoming a professor instead of an actor-comedian. His time at college changed his life. "It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about non-sequiturs appealed to me. In philosophy, I started studying logic, and they were talking about cause and effect, and you start to realize, 'Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!' Then it gets real easy to write this stuff, because all you have to do is twist everything hard—you twist the punch line, you twist the non sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up".[15] Martin recalls wondering in a psychology class "What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation."[16] Martin periodically spoofed his philosophy studies in his 1970s stand-up act, comparing philosophy with studying geology. "If you're studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life."[17]
In 1967, Martin transferred to UCLA and switched his major to theater. While attending college, he appeared in an episode of The Dating Game. Martin began working local clubs at night, to mixed notices, and at twenty-one he dropped out of college.[18]
Career[link]
Early career – stand-up[link]
In 1967, his former girlfriend Nina Goldblatt, a dancer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, helped Martin land a writing job with the show by submitting his work to head writer Mason Williams.[19] Williams initially paid Martin out of his own pocket. Along with the other writers for the show, Martin won an Emmy Award[20] in 1969, aged 23.[10] He also wrote for John Denver (a neighbor of his in Aspen, Colorado, at one point), The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Martin's first TV appearance was on The Steve Allen Show in 1969. He says: "[I] appeared on The Virginia Graham Show, circa 1970. I looked grotesque. I had a hairdo like a helmet, which I blow-dried to a puffy bouffant, for reasons I no longer understand. I wore a frock coat and a silk shirt, and my delivery was mannered, slow and self-aware. I had absolutely no authority. After reviewing the show, I was depressed for a week."[21] During these years his roommates included comedian Gary Mule Deer and singer/guitarist Michael Johnson.[22] Martin opened for groups such as The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Carpenters, and Toto. He appeared at San Francisco's The Boarding House, among other venues. He continued to write, earning an Emmy nomination for his work on Van Dyke and Company in 1976.
In the mid-1970s, Martin made frequent appearances as a stand-up comedian on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.,[21] and on The Gong Show, HBO's On Location and NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL). SNL's audience jumped by a million viewers when he made guest appearances, though despite a common misconception, he was never a cast member.[10] Martin has guest-hosted Saturday Night Live 15 times, bested only in number of presentations by host Alec Baldwin (who has hosted 16 times as of September 2011). On the show, Martin popularized the air quotes gesture, which uses four fingers to make double quote marks in the air.[23] While on the show Martin became close with several of the cast members, including Gilda Radner. On the day Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989, a visibly shaken Martin hosted SNL and featured footage of himself and Radner together in a 1978 sketch.
His TV appearances in the 1970s led to the release of comedy albums that went platinum.[10] The track "Excuse Me" on his first album, Let's Get Small, helped establish a national catch phrase.[10] His next album, A Wild and Crazy Guy (1978), was an even bigger success, reaching the No.2 spot on the US sales chart, selling over a million copies. "Just a wild and crazy guy" became another of Martin's known catch phrases.[10] The album featured a character based on a series of Saturday Night Live sketches where Martin and Dan Aykroyd played "Georgi" and "Yortuk" the Festrunk Brothers, a couple of bumbling Czechoslovak would-be playboys. The album ends with the song "King Tut", sung and written by Martin and backed by the "Toot Uncommons", members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It was later released as a single, reaching No.17 on the US charts in 1978 and selling over a million copies.[10][24] The song came out during the King Tut craze that accompanied the popular traveling exhibit of the Egyptian king's tomb artifacts. Both albums won Grammys for Best Comedy Recording in 1977 and 1978, respectively. Martin performed "King Tut" on the April 22, 1978, edition of SNL.
On his comedy albums, Martin's stand-up is self-referential and sometimes self-mocking. It mixes philosophical riffs with sudden spurts of "happy feet", banjo playing with balloon depictions of concepts like venereal disease, and the controversial kitten juggling (he is a master juggler). His style is off-kilter and ironic, and sometimes pokes fun at stand-up comedy traditions, such as Martin opening his act (from A Wild and Crazy Guy) by saying, "I think there's nothing better for a person to come up and do the same thing over and over for two weeks. This is what I enjoy, so I'm going to do the same thing over and over and over [...] I'm going to do the same joke over and over in the same show, it'll be like a new thing." Or: "Hello, I'm Steve Martin, and I'll be out here in a minute."[23][25] In one comedy routine, used on the Comedy Is Not Pretty! album, Martin claimed that his real name was "Gern Blanston". The riff took on a life of its own. There is a Gern Blanston website, and for a time a rock band took the moniker as their name.[26] He stopped stand-up in 1981 to concentrate on movies and never went back.[10]
Acting career – film[link]
By the end of the 1970s, Martin had acquired the kind of following normally reserved for rock stars, with his tour appearances typically occurring at sold-out arenas filled with tens of thousands of screaming fans. But unknown to his audience, stand-up comedy was "just an accident" for him; his real goal was to get into film.[15]
Martin's first film was a short, The Absent-Minded Waiter (1977). The seven-minute-long film, also featuring Buck Henry and Teri Garr, was written by and starred Martin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Short Film, Live Action. He made his first feature film appearance in the musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, where he sang The Beatles' "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". In 1979, Martin co-wrote and starred in his first full-length movie, The Jerk, directed by Carl Reiner. The movie was a huge success, grossing over $100 million on a budget of approximately $4 million.[27]
Stanley Kubrick met with him to discuss the possibility of Martin starring in a screwball comedy version of Traumnovelle (Kubrick later changed his approach to the material, the result of which was 1999's Eyes Wide Shut). Martin was executive producer for Domestic Life, a prime-time television series starring friend Martin Mull, and a late-night series called Twilight Theater. It emboldened Martin to try his hand at his first serious film, Pennies from Heaven, a movie he was anxious to perform in because of his desire to avoid being typecast. To prepare for that film, Martin took acting lessons from director Herbert Ross, and spent months learning how to tap dance. The film was a financial failure; Martin's comment at the time was "I don't know what to blame, other than it's me and not a comedy."[28]
Martin was in three more Reiner-directed comedies after The Jerk: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid in 1982, The Man with Two Brains in 1983 and All of Me in 1984, possibly his most critically acclaimed comic performance to date.[29][30] In 1986, Martin joined fellow Saturday Night Live veterans Martin Short and Chevy Chase in ¡Three Amigos!, directed by John Landis, and written by Martin, Lorne Michaels, and singer-songwriter Randy Newman. It was originally entitled The Three Caballeros and Martin was to be teamed with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. In 1986, Martin was in the movie musical film version of the hit Off-Broadway play Little Shop of Horrors (based on a famous B-movie), playing the sadistic dentist, Orin Scrivello. The film was the first of three films teaming Martin with Rick Moranis. In 1987, Martin joined comedian John Candy in the John Hughes movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. That same year, Roxanne, the film adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac which Martin co-wrote, won him a Writers Guild of America, East award. It also garnered recognition from Hollywood and the public that he was more than a comedian. In 1988, he performed in the Frank Oz film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a remake of Bedtime Story, alongside Michael Caine.
Martin starred in the Ron Howard film Parenthood, with Moranis in 1989. He later met with Moranis to make the Mafia comedy My Blue Heaven in 1990. In 1991, Martin starred in and wrote L.A. Story, a romantic comedy, in which the female lead was played by his then-wife Victoria Tennant. Martin also appeared in Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon, in which he played the tightly-wound Hollywood film producer, Davis, who was recovering from a traumatic robbery that left him injured, which was a more serious role for him. Martin also appeared in a remake of the comedy Father of the Bride in 1991 (followed by a sequel in 1995). He starred in the 1992 comedy HouseSitter, with Goldie Hawn and Dana Delany.
In David Mamet's 1997 thriller, The Spanish Prisoner, Martin played a darker role as a wealthy stranger who takes a suspicious interest in the work of a young businessman (Campbell Scott). He went on to star with Eddie Murphy in the 1999 comedy Bowfinger, which Martin also wrote. He appeared in a version of Waiting for Godot as Vladimir, with Robin Williams as Estragon and Bill Irwin as Lucky. In 1998, Martin guest starred with U2 in the 200th episode of The Simpsons titled "Trash of the Titans", providing the voice for sanitation commissioner Ray Patterson. In 1999, Martin and Hawn starred in a remake of the 1970 Neil Simon comedy, The Out-of-Towners. By 2003, Martin ranked 4th on the box office stars list, after starring in Bringing Down The House and Cheaper By The Dozen, each of which earned over $130 million at U.S. theaters. That same year, he also played the villainous Mr. Chairman in the animation/live action blend, Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
Martin wrote and starred in Shopgirl (2005), based on his own novella (2000), and starred in Cheaper by the Dozen 2. He also starred in the box office hit The Pink Panther in 2006, standing in Peter Sellers's shoes as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, a role which he reprised in 2009's The Pink Panther 2. In Baby Mama (2008), he played the founder of a health food company, and in It's Complicated (2009), he played opposite Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. In 2009, an article in The Guardian listed Martin as one of the best actors never to receive an Oscar nomination.[31]
He appeared with Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and JoBeth Williams in the birdwatching comedy The Big Year, in 2011.
Writing[link]
In 1993, Martin wrote his first full length play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. The first reading of the play took place in Beverly Hills, California at Steve Martin's home, with Tom Hanks reading the role of Pablo Picasso and Chris Sarandon reading the role of Albert Einstein. Following this, the play opened at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, and played from October 1993 to May 1994, then went on to run successfully in Los Angeles, New York City and several other US cities.[32] In 2009, the La Grande, Oregon school board refused to allow the play to be performed after several parents complained about the content. In an open letter in the local Observer newspaper, Martin wrote "I have heard that some in your community have characterized the play as 'people drinking in bars, and treating women as sex objects.' With apologies to William Shakespeare, this is like calling Hamlet a play about a castle [...] I will finance a non-profit, off-high school campus production [...] so that individuals, outside the jurisdiction of the school board but within the guarantees of freedom of expression provided by the Constitution of the United States can determine whether they will or will not see the play".[33]
Throughout the 1990s, Martin wrote various pieces for The New Yorker. In 2002, he adapted the Carl Sternheim play The Underpants, which ran Off Broadway at Classic Stage Company and in 2008, co-wrote and produced Traitor, starring Don Cheadle. He has also written the novellas, Shopgirl (2000), and The Pleasure of My Company (2003), both more wry in tone than raucous.[34] A story of a 28-year-old woman behind the glove counter at the Neiman Marcus department store in Beverly Hills, Shopgirl was made into a film starring Martin and Claire Danes.[34] The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2005 and was featured at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival before going into limited release in the US. In 2007, he published a memoir, Born Standing Up, which TIME magazine named as one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at #6, and praising it as "a funny, moving, surprisingly frank memoir."[35] In 2010, he published the novel An Object of Beauty.
Hosting[link]
Martin hosted Academy Awards solo in 2001 and 2003 and with Alec Baldwin in 2010.[36] In 2005, Martin co-hosted Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years, marking the park's anniversary. Disney continued to run the show until March 2009, which now plays in the lobby of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.
Music[link]
Martin first picked up the banjo when he was around 17 years of age. Martin has claimed in several interviews and in his autobiography, "Born Standing Up", that he used to take 33 rpm bluegrass records and slow them down to 16 rpm and tune his banjo down, so the notes would sound the same. Martin was able to pick out each note, and perfect his playing.
Martin learned how to play the banjo with help from John McEuen, who later joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. McEuen's brother later managed Martin as well as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Martin did his stand-up routine opening for the band in the early 1970s. He had the band play on his hit song, "King Tut", being credited as "The Toot Uncommons" (as in Tutankhamun).
File:Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers in Seattle.JPG
Steve Martin playing with the Steep Canyon Rangers in Seattle
The banjo was a staple of Martin's 1970s stand-up career, and he periodically poked fun at his love for the instrument.[21] On the Comedy Is Not Pretty! album he included an all-instrumental jam, titled "Drop Thumb Medley", and played the track on his 1979 concert tour. His final comedy album, The Steve Martin Brothers (1981), featured one side of Martin's typical stand-up material, with the other side featuring live performances of Steve playing banjo with a bluegrass band.
In 2001, he played banjo on Earl Scruggs's remake of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". The recording was the winner of the Best Country Instrumental Performance category at the following year's Grammys. In 2008, Martin appeared with the band, In the Minds of the Living, during a show in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.[37]
In 2009, Martin released his first all-music album, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo with appearances from stars such as Dolly Parton.[38] The album won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album in 2010.[39] Nitty Gritty Dirt Band member John McEuen produced the album.
Martin made his first appearance on The Grand Ole Opry on May 30, 2009.[40] In the American Idol season eight finals, he performed alongside Michael Sarver and Megan Joy in the song "Pretty Flowers". In June, Martin played banjo along with the Steep Canyon Rangers on A Prairie Home Companion, and began a two-month U.S. tour with the Rangers in September, including an appearances at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, Carnegie Hall and Benaroya Hall in Seattle.[41][42] In November, they went on to play at the Royal Festival Hall in London with support from Mary Black.[43] In 2010, Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers appeared at the New Orleans Jazzfest, Merlefest Bluegrass Festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, at Bonnaroo Music Festival, at the ROMP[44] Bluegrass festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, at the Red Butte Garden Concert series and on the BBC's Later... with Jools Holland.[45][46] Martin performed "Jubilation Day" with the Steep Canyon Rangers on The Colbert Report on March 21, 2011, on Conan on May 3, 2011, and on BBC's The One Show on July 6, 2011.[47] Martin performed a song he wrote called "Me and Paul Revere"[48] in addition to two other songs on the lawn of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, at the "Capitol Fourth Celebration" on July 4, 2011.[49]
Personal life[link]
Martin was romantically involved with actress and singer Bernadette Peters, his costar in the films The Jerk and Pennies from Heaven, during the 1970s and early 1980s. He married actress Victoria Tennant on November 20, 1986, and the union lasted until 1994. On July 28, 2007, after three years together, Martin married Anne Stringfield, a writer and former staffer for The New Yorker magazine.[50] Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey presided over the ceremony at Martin's Los Angeles home. Lorne Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live, was best man.[50] Several of the guests, including close friends Tom Hanks, Eugene Levy, comedian Carl Reiner, and magician/actor Ricky Jay were not informed that a wedding ceremony would take place. Instead, they were told they were invited to a party, and were surprised by the nuptials.[50]
Investigators at Berlin's state criminal police office (LKA) think that Martin was one victim of a German art forgery scandal. In July 2004 Martin purchased what he believed to be a 1915 work by the German-Dutch painter Heinrich Campendonk, "Landschaft mit Pferden", or "Landscape With Horses", from a Paris gallery for what should have been a bargain price in the neighborhood of €700,000 (around $850,000 at the time). Before the purchase an expert authenticated the work and identified the painter's signature on a label attached to the back. Fifteen months later Martin put the painting up for sale, and auction house Christie's disposed of it in February 2006 to a Swiss businesswoman for €500,000 – a loss of €200,000. Police believe the fake Campendonk originated from an invented art collection devised by a group of German swindlers caught in 2010. Skillfully forged paintings from this group were sold to French galleries like the one where Martin bought the forgery.[51]
Awards and honors[link]
- 1969 Emmy Award – The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (with other writers)
- 1978 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album – Let's Get Small[52]
- 1979 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album – A Wild and Crazy Guy.[52]
- 1989 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from California State University Long Beach[53]
- 2001 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance with Earl Scruggs (and others) – banjo performance of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown".[52]
- 2005 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
- 2005 Disney Legend award
- 2007 30th Annual Kennedy Center Honors
- 2009 Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album for his album The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo.[52]
- 2011 International Bluegrass Music Association's Entertainer of the Year.
Written works by Martin[link]
- The Jerk (1979) (Screenplay written with Carl Gottlieb)
- Cruel Shoes (1979) (Essays)
- Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays: Picasso at the Lapin Agile, the Zig-Zag Woman, Patter for the Floating Lady, WASP (1996) (Play)
- L.A. Story and Roxanne: Two Screenplays (published together in 1997) (Screenplays)
- Pure Drivel (1998) (Stories)
- Bowfinger (1999) (Screenplay)
- Eric Fischl : 1970–2000 (2000) (Afterword)
- Modern Library Humor and Wit Series (2000) (Introduction and Series Editor)
- Shopgirl (2000) (Novella)
- Kindly Lent Their Owner: The Private Collection of Steve Martin (2001) (Art)
- The Underpants: A Play (2002) (Play)
- The Pleasure of My Company (2003) (Novel)
- The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z (2007) (Children's Books illustrated by Roz Chast)
- Born Standing Up (2007) (Memoir)
- An Object of Beauty (2010) (Novel)
- Late For School (2010) (Children's book)
- The Ten, Make That Nine, Habits of Very Organized People. Make That Ten.: The Tweets of Steve Martin (February 21, 2012) (Collection)
Released stand-up shows[link]
- Steve Martin-Live! (1986, VHS)
- Saturday Night Live: The Best Of Steve Martin (1998, DVD)
Filmography[link]
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1956 | Disneyland Dream | Documentary | |
| 1977 | The Absent-Minded Waiter | Short Subject | |
| 1978 | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | Dr. Maxwell Edison | |
| 1979 | The Muppet Movie | Insolent Waiter | |
| The Kids Are Alright | Documentary | ||
| The Jerk | Navin R. Johnson | Also Writer | |
| 1981 | Pennies from Heaven | Arthur | Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| 1982 | Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid | Rigby Reardon | Also Writer |
| 1983 | The Man with Two Brains | Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr | |
| 1984 | The Lonely Guy | Larry Hubbard | |
| All of Me | Roger Cobb | National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
|
| 1985 | Movers & Shakers | Fabio Longio | |
| 1986 | Three Amigos | Lucky Day | Also Writer and Executive Producer |
| Little Shop of Horrors | Orin Scrivello, DDS | Billed as "Special Appearance" | |
| 1987 | Roxanne | C.D. Bales | Also Writer and Executive Producer Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| Planes, Trains and Automobiles | Neal Page | ||
| 1988 | Dirty Rotten Scoundrels | Freddy Benson | |
| 1989 | Parenthood | Gil Buckman | Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| 1990 | My Blue Heaven | Vinnie Antonelli | |
| 1991 | L.A. Story | Harris K. Telemacher | Also Writer and Executive Producer |
| Father of the Bride | George Banks | Nominated – MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance | |
| Grand Canyon | Davis | ||
| 1992 | HouseSitter | Newton Davis | |
| Leap of Faith | Jonas Nightengale | ||
| 1993 | And the Band Played On | The Brother | Cameo |
| 1994 | A Simple Twist of Fate | Michael McCann | Also Writer and Executive Producer |
| Mixed Nuts | Philip | ||
| 1995 | Father of the Bride Part II | George Banks | Nominated – American Comedy Award for Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| 1996 | Sgt. Bilko | Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko | |
| 1997 | The Spanish Prisoner | Jimmy Dell | |
| 1998 | The Prince of Egypt | Hotep | Voice |
| 1999 | The Out-of-Towners | Henry Clark | |
| Bowfinger | Bobby Bowfinger | Also writer | |
| The Venice Project | Cameo | ||
| Fantasia 2000 | Introductory Host | Disney Re-Release | |
| 2000 | Joe Gould's Secret | Charlie Duell | |
| 2001 | Novocaine | Frank Sangster | |
| 2002 | Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour | As himself | |
| 2003 | Bringing Down the House | Peter Sanderson | |
| Looney Tunes: Back in Action | Mr. Chairman | ||
| Cheaper by the Dozen | Tom Baker | ||
| 2004 | Jiminy Glick in Lalawood | Cameo | |
| The Merchant of Venice | |||
| 2005 | Shopgirl | Ray Porter | Also Writer and Producer |
| Cheaper by the Dozen 2 | Tom Baker | ||
| Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years | As himself | ||
| 2006 | The Pink Panther | Inspector Clouseau | A remake of the earlier series |
| 2008 | Baby Mama | Barry | |
| Traitor | Writer and Producer | ||
| 2009 | The Pink Panther 2 | Inspector Clouseau | Also Screenplay Nominated - Razzie Award for Worst Actor |
| It's Complicated | Adam Schaffer | ||
| 2011 | The Big Year | Stu Preissler |
Discography[link]
Albums[link]
| Album | Year | Peak chart positions | Certifications | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [54] |
US Bluegrass [54][55] |
|||
| Let's Get Small | 1977 | 10 | — |
|
| A Wild and Crazy Guy | 1978 | 2 | — |
|
| Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band soundtrack | 1978 | 5 | — |
|
| Comedy Is Not Pretty! | 1979 | 25 | — |
|
| The Steve Martin Brothers | 1981 | 135 | — | |
| Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack | 1986 | — | — | |
| The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo | 2009 | 93[58] | 1 | |
| Rare Bird Alert[59] | 2011 | 43 | 1 | |
| "—" denotes a title that did not chart. | ||||
Singles[link]
| Single | Year | Peak chart positions |
|---|---|---|
| US [60] |
||
| "Grandmother's Song" | 1977 | 72 |
| "King Tut" | 1978 | 17 |
| "Cruel Shoes" | 1979 | 91 |
Music videos[link]
| Video | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| "Jubilation Day"[61] | 2011 | Ryan Reichenfeld |
TV specials[link]
| Title | Year | Network |
|---|---|---|
| "Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy" | 1978 | NBC |
| "All Commercials... A Steve Martin Special" | 1980 | NBC |
| "Steve Martin: Comedy is Not Pretty" | 1980 | NBC |
| "Steve Martin's Best Show Ever" | 1981 | NBC |
| "The Winds of Whoopie" | 1983 | NBC |
References[link]
- ^ Martin (2007) p18–19
- ^ King, Larry. "Interview with Stephen Colbert". Larry King Live. October 11, 2007.
- ^ "The AST Interview: Patton Oswalt". Web.archive.org. November 21, 2005. Archived from the original on October 13, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071013165258/http://aspecialthing.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1465. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
- ^ a b Morris (1999) p 2.
- ^ Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of all Time
- ^ Walker (1999) p1
- ^ "Ancestry of Steve Martin". Wargs.com. http://www.wargs.com/other/martin.html. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
- ^ Martin (2007) pp.20–39
- ^ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/20/top-5-famous-former-male-cheerleaders/
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Steve Martin, a Mild and Crazy Guy". Time Magazine article. November 15, 2007. Accessed August 14, 2010.
- ^ Wills, Dominic. "Steve Martin – Biography". TalkTalk. http://www.talktalk.co.uk/entertainment/film/biography/artist/steve-martin/biography/118. Retrieved May 15, 2010.
- ^ Martin (2007) p 39
- ^ Walker (1999) p40
- ^ Martin (2007) p 65
- ^ a b Fong-Torres, Ben (1982) "Steve Martin Sings: The Rolling Stone Interview". Rolling Stone February 18, 1982. Issue 363
- ^ "Being Funny: How the path-breaking comedian got his act together" By Steve Martin. Smithsonian magazine. February 2008. Accessed August 14, 2010
- ^ Steve Martin at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ "SteveMartin.com | Stop the Presses"[dead link]
- ^ Martin, (2007) p. 76
- ^ Steve Martin Emmy Award Winner
- ^ a b c Martin, Steve (2008). "Being Funny". Smithsonian Magazine. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/funny-martin-200802.html. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
- ^ Martin, (2007) p. 77
- ^ a b Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. pp. 36–37. ISBN 0-465-04195-7.
- ^ "King Tut" Video. Accessed August 14, 2010.
- ^ "Rationalist of the Absurd: Steve Martin’s extraordinarily calculated comedy".New York Books" Nov 18, 2007. Accessed August 12, 2010[dead link]
- ^ Martin (2007) p176–77
- ^ Chris Brummel (2010). "The Jerk". http://chrisbrummel.com/the-jerk-that-movie-about-hating-cans. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
- ^ American film Volume 7. 1981. American Film Institute, Arthur M. Sackler Foundation
- ^ "All of Me". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1000640-all_of_me/. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
- ^ All of Me. New York Times film review. September 21, 1984. Accessed August 12, 2010
- ^ Singer, Leigh (February 19, 2009). "Oscars: the best actors never to have been nominated". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/feb/19/best-actors-never-nominated-for-oscars. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
- ^ History: Picasso At The Lapin Agile. Oct. 13, 1993 – May. 12, 1994. Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Accessed August 14, 2010
- ^ "Of arts and sciences". by Steve Martin. Article in The Observer (Oregon). March 13, 2009. Accessed August 14, 2010
- ^ a b But Seriously, Folks. Time Magazine article. October 16, 2000. Accessed August 14, 2010
- ^ Grossman, Lev (December 9, 2007). "Born Standing Up'' review". Time.com. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686244_1691787,00.html. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
- ^ "Hosts of the 2010 (82nd) Academy Awards". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- ^ "Steve Martin Plays The Banjo Really Well (Video)". October 6, 2009. HuffingtonPost.com. Retrieved May 15, 2010.
- ^ Itzkoff, Dave (August 5, 2009). "Steve Martin brings it all home with his banjo". Guardian. Retrieved May 15, 2010
- ^ The Crow album on Martin's official website. Retrieved May 15, 2010.
- ^ "Steve Martin To Make Grand Ole Opry Debut". April 1, 2009. Billboard. Retrieved May 15, 2010.
- ^ "Benaroya Hall Calendar, Seattle Symphony Orchestra".
- ^ Madison, Tjames (August 4, 2009). "Steve Martin and his banjo map fall tour". LiveDaily.com. Retrieved on October 4, 2009.
- ^ Gill, Andy (November 10, 2009). "Steve Martin with The Steep Canyon Rangers, Royal Festival Hall, London". The Independent.
- ^ "2011 ROMP". Bluegrass-museum.org. International Bluegrass Music Museum. http://www.bluegrass-museum.org/general/home.php.
- ^ "Concerts – 2010 Outdoor Concert Series". Red Butte Garden. The University of Utah. Retrieved May 15, 2010.
- ^ "BBC – BBC Two Programmes – Later... with Jools Holland, Series 35, Episode 9". BBC. Retrieved May 15, 2010.
- ^ Tobey, Matt (March 21, 2011). "This Week on the Colbert Report: Steve Martin". Ccinsider.comedycentral.com. Comedy Partners. http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/2011/03/21/this-week-on-the-colbert-report-steve-martin/. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
- ^ Barker, Olivia (June 29, 2011). "Steve Martin's 'Paul Revere' picks away at history". USA Today.
- ^ "A Capitol Fourth". PBS. Retrieved July, 4, 2011.
- ^ a b c "Steve Martin weds girlfriend Anne Stringfield". July 29, 2007. USA Today.
- ^ Der Spiegel (May 30, 2011). "German Art Forgery Scandal Reaches Hollywood". http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,765658,00.html. Retrieved May 30, 2011.
- ^ a b c d http://www.grammy.com/nominees/search?artist=%22steve+martin%22&title=&year=All&genre=All
- ^ Los Angeles Times via Sydney Morning Herald; August 28, 1989 Late Edition; NEWS AND FEATURES; Pg. 11
- ^ a b "Steve Martin – Billboard Albums". Allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p198/charts-awards. Retrieved January 15, 2011.
- ^ "Steve Martin Album & Song Chart History". Billboard.com. Prometheus Media Group. Retrieved January 15, 2011.
- ^ a b c "RIAA – Searchable Database: Steve Martin". Recording Industry Association of America. http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?artist=%22Martin,%20Steve%22. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
- ^ "RIAA – Searchable Database: Lonely Hearts Club Band". Recording Industry Association of America. http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?artist=%22Lonely%20Hearts%20Club%20Band%22. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
- ^ "Bluegrass Albums | Billboard.com". Billboard. June 13, 2009. http://www.billboard.com/#/charts/bluegrass-albums?chartDate=2009-06-13. Retrieved March 24, 2011.
- ^ "Rare Bird Alert". Rounder.com. Rounder Records. March 1, 2011. http://www.rounder.com/2011/03/new-releases/rare-bird-alert. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
- ^ "Steve Martin – Billboard Albums". Allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p198/charts-awards/billboard-singles. Retrieved January 15, 2011.
- ^ "CMT : Videos : Steve Martin : Jubilation Day". Country Music Television. http://www.cmt.com/videos/steve-martin/659725/jubilation-day.jhtml. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
Sources[link]
- Martin, Steve. (2007) Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. Scribner. ISBN 1-4165-5364-9.
- Walker, Morris (1999) Steve Martin: The Magic Years. SPI Books. ISBN 1-56171-980-3.
External links[link]
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Steve Martin |
|
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Steve Martin |
- Official website
- Steve Martin at the Internet Movie Database
- Steve Martin on National Public Radio in 2008. Article and radio file
- Steve Martin on National Public Radio in 2003. Radio file.
- Steve Martin on Charlie Rose Video of interview
- Men's Vogue article
- Disney Legends profile
- Works by or about Steve Martin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Martin, Steve |
| Alternative names | Martin, Stephen Glen |
| Short description | American comedian, writer, entertainer |
| Date of birth | August 14, 1945 |
| Place of birth | Waco, Texas, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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Wiki Summary
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.
Besides Matisse and Derain, other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Louis Valtat, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Maurice Marinot, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, the Swiss painter Alice Bailly, and Georges Braque (subsequently Picasso's partner in Cubism).
The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction. Fauvism can be classified as an extreme development of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac. Other key influences were Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated color—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work at Collioure in 1905. In 1888 Gauguin had said to Paul Sérusier:
