Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 – January 15, 1955), known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.

Biography[link]

Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin. After his father's death in 1908, his mother moved back to her native Locronan, Finistère, and he ended up spending much of his youth living with various relatives.

In 1918, Yves Tanguy briefly joined the merchant navy before being drafted into the Army, where he befriended Jacques Prévert. At the end of his military service in 1922, he returned to Paris, where he worked various odd jobs. By chance, he stumbled upon a painting by Giorgio de Chirico and was so deeply impressed he resolved to become a painter himself in spite of his complete lack of formal training.

Tanguy had a habit of being completely absorbed by the current painting he was working on. This way of creating artwork may have been due to his very small studio which only had enough room for one wet piece.

Through his friend Jacques Prévert, in around 1924 Tanguy was introduced into the circle of surrealist artists around André Breton. Tanguy quickly began to develop his own unique painting style, giving his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1927, and marrying his first wife later that same year. During this busy time of his life, André Breton gave Tanguy a contract to paint 12 pieces a year. With his fixed income, he painted less and only ended up creating eight works of art for Breton.

Throughout the 1930s, Tanguy adopted the bohemian lifestyle of the struggling artist with gusto, leading eventually to the failure of his first marriage. In 1938, after seeing the work of fellow artist Kay Sage, Tanguy began a relationship with her that would eventually lead to his second marriage.

With the outbreak of World War II, Sage moved back to her native New York, and Tanguy, judged unfit for military service, followed her. He would spend the rest of his life in the United States. Sage and Tanguy were married in Reno, Nevada on August 17, 1940. Toward the end of the war, the couple moved to Woodbury, Connecticut, converting an old farmhouse into an artists' studio. They spent the rest of their lives there. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

In January 1955, Tanguy suffered a fatal stroke at Woodbury. His body was cremated and his ashes preserved until Sage's death in 1963. Later, his ashes were scattered by his friend Pierre Matisse on the beach at Douarnenez in his beloved Brittany, together with those of his wife.^[1]

Yves Tanguy's paintings have a unique, immediately recognizable style of nonrepresentational surrealism. They show vast, abstract landscapes, mostly in a tightly limited palette of colors, only occasionally showing flashes of contrasting color accents. Typically, these alien landscapes are populated with various abstract shapes, sometimes angular and sharp as shards of glass, sometimes with an intriguingly organic look to them, like giant amoebae suddenly turned to stone.

Gallery[link]

• Mama, Papa is Wounded!.jpg

  Mama, Papa is Wounded!, 1927

• Promontory Palace.jpg

  Promontory Palace, 1931

• Reply to Red.jpg

  Reply to Red, 1943

• Multiplication of the Arcs.jpg

  Multiplication of the Arcs, 1954

References[link]

1. ^ John Russell, Matisse, Father & Son, p.210, published by Harry N. Abrams, NYC. Copyright John Russell 1999, ISBN 0-8109-4378-6

List of paintings[link]

1920s[link]

• Vite! Vite! (1924)
• Rue de la Santé (1925) The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Self Portrait (1925) Private Collection
• Dancing (1925) Private Collection
• The Testament of Jacques Prévert (1925) Private Collection
• Fantômas (1925–26) Private Collection
• The Storm (1926)
• The Lighthouse (1926) Private Collection, France
• The Girl with Red Hair (1926) Private Collection
• Title Unknown (The Giantess, The Ladder) (1926) Private Collection
• I Came As I Had Promised. Adieu (1926) Dieter Scharf Collection Foundation
• The Storm (Black Landscape) (1926) Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Woman Dreaming (Sleeping) (1926) Private Collection
• Composition (1927) Private Collection
• A Large Painting Which is a Landscape (1927)
• Death Watching His Family (1927) Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
• Second Message II (Third Message) (1927) Private Collection
• Someone Is Ringing (1927) Private Collection, Switzerland
• There! (The Evening Before) (1927) Menil Collection, Houston
• He Did What He Wanted (1927) Richard S Zisler Collection, New York
• Shadow Country (1927) The Detroit Institute of Arts
• Mama, Papa is wounded! (1927) The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Extinction of Useless Lights (1927) The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• The Hand in the Clouds (1927) Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
• Finish What I Have Begun (1927) Private Collection
• Belomancy I (1927) Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
• Surrealist Landscape (1927) Staatlishe Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
• Title Unknown (Surrealist Composition) (1927) Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection, Berlin
• Title Unknown (He Comes) (1928) Private Collection
• Old Horizon (1928) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
• Unspoken Depths (1928) Private Collection
• The Dark Garden (1928) Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
• Tomorrow They Shoot Me (1928) Hildén Art Museum, Tempere, Finland
• Tabernacle (1928)
• Landscape with Red Cloud (1928) Private Collection
• Title Unknown (1928) Collection of Mr and Mrs Jack Wolgin
• Indifferent Drouning/Indifferent Walnut Tree (1929) Private Collection
• Perfect Balance (1929) Gunter Sachs Collection
• Outside (1929) Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
• Lit Bleu (1929) Private Collection
• Inspiration (1929) Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes
• L’Avion (1929)
• The Look of Amber (1929) The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
• The Lovers (1929) Museum Folkwang, Essen
• Derive d'Azur (1929) Museum Ludwig, Köln
• Out of the Blue (1929) Private Collection
• The Lurid Sky (1929) Mount Holyoke College Museum
• Views (1929) Private Collection
• Satin Pillow (1929) Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

1930s[link]

• Cloud (1930) Private Collection
• La Splendeur Semblable (1930)
• Neither Legends Nor Figures (1930) Menil Collection, Houston
• Clouds of Earth (The Man) (1930) Private Collection
• Similar Resplendence (1930) Kunstmuseum, Basel
• Tower of the West (1931) Kunstmuseum Winterthur
• Promontory Palace (1931) Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
• The Armoire of Proteus (1931) Private Collection
• Four-Part Screen (The Firmament) (1932) Berardo Collection, Lisbon
• The Heart of the Tower (1933) Private Collection
• The Certitude of the Never-Seen (1933) The Art Institute of Chicago
• Between the Grass and the Wind (1934) Private Collection
• The End of the Rope (1934) Private Collection
• I Am Waiting for You (1934) Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• The Passage of a Smile (1935) The Toledo Museum of Art
• Echelles (1935) Manchester Art Gallery
• The Meeting-Place of Parallels (1935) Kunstmuseum, Basel
• Title Unknown (Metaphysical Landscape) (1935) Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
• Palming (1935) Private Collection, Hamburg
• The New Nomads (1935) John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota
• The Geometer of Dreams (1935) Private Collection
• Untitled (1935) Collection of Carlo F. Bilotti
• Heredity of Acquired Characteristics (1936) Menil Collection, Houston
• L’Extinction des Especes (1936)
• From the Other Side of the Bridge (1936) Private Collection, New York
• The Nest of the Amphioxus (1936) Museum of Grenoble
• Treasures of the Sea (1936) Private Collection
• Fragile (1936)
• Way of Heredity (1936) Private Collection
• The Air in Her Mirror (1937) Sprengel Museum, Hanover
• Les Filles des Consequences (1937)
• The Doubter (The Interrogation) (1937) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
• The Sun in its Jewel Case (1937)
• Lingering Day (1937) Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• Movements and Acts (1937) Smith College Museum of Art
• Title Unknown (Landscape) (1938) Private Collection
• Familiar Little Person (1938) Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• Ennui and Tranquility (1938) Private Collection
• Boredom and tranquillity (1938) The Jeffrey H. Loria Collection
• Hidden Thoughts (My Hidden Thoughts) (1939) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• If it Were (1939) Private Collection
• La Rue aux Levres (1939)
• The Furniture of Time (1939) The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• The Great Nacre Butterfly (1939) Private Collection
• Second Thoughts (1939) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Satin Tuning-Fork (1939) Collection of Mr and Mrs Jacques Gelman

1940s[link]

• Belomancy II (1940) Private Collection
• The Witness (1940) Collection of Mr and Mrs Frederick R. Weisman
• A Little Later (1940) Private Collection
• The Earth and the Air (1941) Baltimore Museum of Art
• On Slanting Ground (1941) Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
• The Five Strangers (1941) Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
• The Palace of Windowed Rocks (1942) Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• Naked Water (1942) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
• The Long Rain (1942) Honolulu Museum of Art
• Indefinite Divisibility (1942) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
• The Absent Lady (1942) Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
• The Great Mutation (1942) The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Slowly Toward the North (1942) The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• The Stone in the Tree (1942) The Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe
• Minotaur (1943) Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona
• Through Birds, Through Fire and Not Through Glass (1943) The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
• Reply to Red (1943) The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
• Zones D’Instabilite (1943)
• Equicocal Colors (1943) Private Collection
• The Prodigal Never Returns I (1943) Collection of Mr and Mrs Leonard Yaseen
• The Prodigal Never Returns II (1943) Collection of Mr and Mrs Leonard Yaseen
• The Prodigal Never Returns III (1943) Collection of Mr and Mrs Leonard Yaseen
• The Prodigal Never Returns IV (1943) Collection of Mr and Mrs Leonard Yaseen
• Distances (1944) Private Collection
• Twice (1944) Private Collection
• The Tower of the Sea (1944) Washington University Gallery of Art, St Louis
• My Life, White and Black (1944) Collection of Mr and Mrs Jacques Gelman
• The Rapidity of Sleep (1945) The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
• There, Motion Has Not Yet Ceased (1945) Richard S Zeisler Collection, New York
• There the Mouth has not Ceased Yet (1945) Collection of Richard S. Zeisler
• The Provider (1945) Private Collectio
• Hands and Gloves (1946) Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne
• Clothed in Wakefulness (1947) Collection of Mr and Mrs Isidore M. Cohen
• There Is (1947) Private Collection
• At the Risk of the Sun (1947) Nelson Gallery - Atkins Museum, Kansas City
• From One Night to Another (1947) de Young Museum, San Francisco
• First Stone (1947) Private Collection
• Who Will Answer (1948) Collection of Mr and Mrs Herbert Lust
• Fear (1949) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

1950s[link]

• Rose of the Four Winds (1950) Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
• The Immense Window (1950) Private Collection
• From Pale Hands to Weary Skies (1950) Yale University Art Gallery
• To look at in Winter (1950) Smith College Museum of Art
• Unlimited Sequences (1951) Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia
• The Invisibles / The Transparent Ones (1951) Tate Modern, London
• The Hunted Sky (1951) Menil Collection, Houston
• Time Without Change (1951) University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson
• The Stars in Open-Work (1951) The Art Institute of Chicago
• Because (1951) Williams College Museum of Art
• This Morning (1951) Collection of Nesuhi Ertegun
• Through the Forest (1952)
• The Mirage of Time (1954) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• The Saltimbanques (1954) Richard L Feigen, New York
• Imaginary Numbers (1954) Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
• From Green to White (1954) Collection of Mr and Mrs Jacques Gelman
• Multiplication of the Arcs (1954) The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Books about Yves Tanguy[link]

• Yves Tanguy and Surrealism (2001) Published by Hatje Cantz - Authors: Karin von Maur, Susan Davidson, Konrad Klapheck, Gordon Onslow Ford, Andreas Schalhorn and Beate Wolf
• An Important Private Collection of Works by Yves Tanguy (2001) Published by Christie's New York
• Yves Tanguy: The Graphic Work (1976) Published by Wolfgang Wittrock - Authors: Wolfgang Wittrock and Stanley W Hayter
• Yves Tanguy (1974) Published by Acquavella Galleries, Inc. - Authors: Nicholas M Acquavella and John Ashbery
• Yves Tanguy (1974) Published by Éditions Filipacchi - Author : Daniel Marchesseau
• Yves Tanguy (First Edition 1955, Second Edition 1977) Published by The Museum of Modern Art - Author: James Thrall Soby

External links[link]

• "Inseparable Pairs: reviewing the exhibit Double Solitaire", ArtsEditor.com, 2011
• DoddsNet Yves Tanguy Archive
• List of Tanguy Exhibitions
• Yves Tanguy at the WebMuseum
• Tate Collection Page
• MoMA Collection Page

Katherine Linn Sage (June 25, 1898 – January 8, 1963), usually known as Kay Sage, was an American Surrealist artist and poet.

Biography[link]

Sage was born in Albany, New York, into a wealthy family that had made its money in the timber industry. Her father, Henry Manning Sage, was a state assemblyman at the time of her birth and later became a state senator. Her mother was Anne Wheeler Ward Sage. Sage had one slightly older sister, also called Anne.^[1]

Early life[link]

Anne Wheeler Ward Sage, a free spirit with an unquenchable wanderlust, left her husband and older daughter soon after Katherine’s birth to live and travel in Europe with Katherine as her companion. She and Henry Sage divorced in 1908, but Henry Sage continued to support his ex-wife and younger daughter, and Katherine visited him and his new wife in Albany from time to time and wrote him frequent letters.^[2]

Katherine and her mother established a home in Rapallo, Italy, but visited many other places as well, including Paris^[3]. Katherine became fluent in French and Italian as well as English, speaking colloquial versions of these languages that she learned from the servants who helped to raise her^[4]. She attended a number of schools, including the Foxcroft School in Virginia (she and her mother returned to the United States during World War I), but did not stay at any of them very long^[5].

Young Katherine both drew and wrote as hobbies^[6], but her first formal training in painting was at the Corcoran Art School in Washington, D.C., in 1919-1920^[7]. After she and her mother went back to Italy in 1920^[8], she studied art in Rome for several years, learning conventional techniques and styles^[9]. She particularly enjoyed painting outdoors in the Roman Campagna with teacher Oronato Carlandi and fellow students^[10]. In China Eggs, an unpublished autobiography that she wrote in 1955^[11], Sage stated that “these were the happiest days of my life,”^[12], and she told friend and gallery owner Julien Levy in 1961 that her campagna experience shaped her “perspective idea of distance and going away.” ^[13] Nonetheless, in later years Sage usually claimed that she was self-taught, perhaps because, as one of her biographers, Judith Suther, states, most of what she had learned in Rome bore so little relationship to the kind of painting she eventually did that “she felt as if she had studied with no one.”^[14]

Sage met a young Italian nobleman, Prince Ranieri di San Faustino, in Rome around 1923 ^[15] and fell in love with him, believing at first, as she wrote to a friend in 1924, that he was “me in another form.”^[16] They married on March 30, 1925^[17]. For ten years the couple lived the idle life of upper-class Italians, which Sage described in China Eggs as “a stagnant swamp.”^[18] She looked back on that time as years that she simply “threw away to the crows. No reason, no purpose, nothing.”^[19] Her husband was content with their lifestyle, but Sage was not: as she wrote in China Eggs, “Some sort of inner sense in me was reserving my potentialities for something better and more constructive.”^[20]

Surrealism and Tanguy[link]

Perhaps spurred by the deaths of her father in 1933 and her sister, from tuberculosis, in 1934 (Anne had joined Katherine and her mother in Italy in the 1920s, and the sisters became quite close during Anne’s final illness)^[21], Sage left her husband in 1935 with plans to build an independent life as an artist^[22]. (They obtained a papal annulment of their marriage several years later.^[23]) In December 1936, as she prepared to leave Italy and move to Paris, Sage had her first solo art exhibit, six oil paintings shown at the Galleria del Milione in Milan. In A House of Her Own, her 1997 biography of Sage, Judith Suther describes these works as “experimental abstract compositions.”^[24]

Sage moved to Paris in March 1937 and rented a luxurious apartment there^[25]. In early 1938 she saw the International Surrealist Exhibit at Galerie Beaux-Arts, 299 pieces by 60 artists from 14 countries^[26]. She was especially struck by the paintings of Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, which featured what Magdalena Holzhey, in a book devoted to de Chirico, calls “empty squares and receding depths, shadowy arcades and soaring towers.”^[27] Sage bought one of de Chirico’s paintings, La Surprise, and kept it all her life.^[28]

This exposure to Surrealism inspired Sage to begin painting in earnest. She exhibited six of her new oils in the Salon des Surindépendants show at the Porte de Versailles in the fall of 1938. These semiabstract paintings, including Afterwards and The World Is Blue, borrowed motifs and styles from de Chirico and the Surrealists but showed hints of Sage’s own future work as well.^[29] Art historian Whitney Chadwick states that Sage’s paintings were “imbued with an aura of purified form and a sense of motionlessness and impending doom found nowhere else in Surrealism.”^[30] Around this time the artist began signing her works “Kay Sage.”^[31]

Several stories are told about Sage’s meeting with her future husband, Surrealist artist Yves Tanguy. One came from Greek poet Nicolas Calas, who recalled that he and Tanguy accompanied Surrealist leader André Breton to the Surindépendants exhibit and were impressed enough by Sage’s paintings to seek her out. Calas said that Breton, who saw women more as inspirers of male artists than as creative people in their own right, was sure that the paintings must have been made by a man.^[32]

Tanguy at the time was married to Jeannette Ducroq^[33], but they were separated, and he and Sage immediately fell in love. Breton and most of the other Surrealists were much less welcoming. Sage, still well off, was generous with her money, and the group of impoverished artists badly needed such support, but they resented her wealth and what they felt was a haughty attitude that fitted her former title of “Princess” all too well. Her alliance with Tanguy caused a rift between Tanguy and Breton, who had formerly been close friends.^[34] Shrugging off this rejection, Sage went on calling herself a Surrealist^[35].

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II, and Sage sailed back to the United States a month later. She immediately set up plans to help the Surrealists immigrate as well and establish themselves in the new country by means of art exhibitions—starting, of course, with Tanguy, who joined her in New York City in November^[36]. She arranged for Tanguy to have a solo show at the New York gallery of Pierre Matisse, son of famous Impressionist painter Henri Matisse, a month after he arrived ^[37]. Sage had her own solo show, her first in the United States, at the same gallery in June 1940^[38]. Sage and Tanguy married on August 17, 1940, in Reno, Nevada, after he obtained a final divorce from duCroq^[39].

Mature work[link]

Sage did the bulk of her mature work between 1940, when she married Tanguy, and 1955, when he died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage. During most of that time the two artists lived at Town Farm in Woodbury, Connecticut. (They leased a house in the area beginning in 1941 but maintained a New York apartment for a while as well^[40]; in 1946 they purchased the farm and moved to Woodbury permanently.) They converted a barn on the farm into his-and-hers studios, separated by a partition with a door.^[41] Their large home was decorated with numerous pieces of Surrealist art and a variety of unusual objects, including a stuffed raven in a cage and an Eskimo mask^[42].

Although the Tanguys visited, and were visited by, many members of both the French expatriate and American art communities, such as mobile designer Alexander Calder and his family, they had difficulty keeping close friends. “Again and again Sage is described [by people who knew her] as imperious, forbidding, moody, quick to anger, remote, private, solitary, aloof, contradictory, and unapproachable,” Judith Suther writes.^[43] Tanguy, though friendlier, became notorious for his behavior when drunk, which included grabbing the heads of other men at a gathering and striking them hard and repeatedly with his own^[44].

During these years Sage’s art gained a solid reputation among art critics, though she found it difficult to emerge from the shadow of the better-known Tanguy. Her work was regularly included in national exhibits, won prizes, and was sold to major art museums^[45]. She had several solo shows at the galleries of Julien Levy and, beginning in 1950, Catherine Viviano in New York^[46]. In the Third Sleep won the Watson F. Blair Purchase Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in October 1945, Sage’s first major public recognition^[47]. In 1951, All Soundings Are Referred to High Water won first prize in oils at the Eastern States Exposition of Connecticut Contemporary Art ^[48], and Nests of Lightning won first honorable mention in the 22nd Corcoran Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting^[49]. Sage and Tanguy had a large joint exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut—their first and almost only exhibition together—in August and September 1954^[50].

Last years and death[link]

The relationship between Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy was as enigmatic as their art. At the same parties during which he banged his head against those of other men, Tanguy assaulted Sage verbally and sometimes physically, pushing her and sometimes even threatening her with a knife. Sage, according to friends’ accounts, made no response to her husband’s aggression except to try to persuade him to go home.^[51] Friends also said that Tanguy did not like Sage’s painting and felt jealous of the fame that came to her^[52]. The couple must have shared different feelings in private, however, because all accounts agree that Sage was devastated by Tanguy’s death. “Yves was my only friend who understood everything,” she wrote to Jehan Mayoux, an old friend of Tanguy’s, about a month after Tanguy’s fatal stroke.^[53]

Sage did little new painting after Tanguy died, partly because of her depression and partly because of decreasing eyesight due to cataracts^[54]. Instead, she devoted her time to two projects: preserving Tanguy’s reputation through retrospective shows and a complete catalogue of his work, and writing poetry, mostly in the slangy French she had learned in her youth and spoken with Tanguy^[55]. With the help of longtime friend Marcel Duhamel—and her own subsidies to cover most of the printing costs—Sage arranged for a book of this poetry, Demain, Monsieur Silber, to be published in France in June 1957^[56]. Around 1955 she also wrote a partial autobiography, China Eggs, which covered her life up to about the time she left San Faustino, but she never tried to publish it^[57].

One of the chief paintings in a show of 13 of Sage’s oils at the Viviano Gallery in November 1958 was called The Answer Is No.^[58] This seems to have reflected Sage’s own state of mind. She filed her will in Waterbury in December 1958, and on April 28-29, 1959, a few weeks after she completed a massive catalogue of Tanguy’s paintings, she attempted to end her life with an overdose of sleeping pills. A housekeeper found her, however, and she was revived.^[59]

Sage seemed to rally for a while after her unsuccessful suicide attempt. In 1959 and 1960 she underwent operations to remove her cataracts, which she had formerly refused to do. Unfortunately, the surgeries were painful and had only limited success^[60], and by this time she was suffering from other health problems as well, including some that may have resulted from her years of heavy smoking and drinking^[61]. She also published a second book of poems, Faut dire c’qui est, in September 1959^[62]. During 1960 and 1961, as a substitute for painting, she made small sculptures of wire, stones, bullets, and other unusual materials. Catherine Viviano hosted a show of these objects, titled “Your Move,” in November 1961^[63], as well as a major retrospective show of Sage’s paintings in April 1960^[64].

None of this, apparently, was enough. Sage wrote in a journal in August 1961, “I have said all that I have to say. There is nothing left for me to do but scream.”^[65] On January 8, 1963, she put a fatal bullet through her heart^[66]. Following instructions in her will, Pierre Matisse buried urns containing Sage’s and Tanguy’s ashes in the water off the coast of Tanguy’s native Brittany in 1964^[67].

Art and Writing[link]

Kay Sage is known chiefly as a visual artist. However, she also wrote several volumes of poetry, chiefly in French, as well as three short plays and an unpublished autobiography, China Eggs.

Features of Artistic Style[link]

Despite rejection by André Breton and most of the Surrealist group, Kay Sage consistently identified herself as a Surrealist, and authors who have written about her usually do so as well. Her biographer, Judith Suther, writes:

I call Kay Sage a Surrealist because her painting resonates with the unsettling paradoxes and hallucinatory qualities prized by André Breton and his group. . . . More fundamentally, I call Sage a Surrealist because her allegiance to the Surrealist identity lies at the heart of her self-image as an artist.^[68]

Critics during Sage’s lifetime frequently compared her work to that of Tanguy, who was better known, and usually assumed that, when their work had features in common, those features must have originated with him^[69]. More recent feminist scholars have stated that the influence more likely was mutual—what Judith Suther calls “a constant, usually unconscious interchange.”^[70] Suther and others also point out differences between the two artists: for example, the large architectural constructions that dominate Sage’s paintings are quite unlike the smaller biomorphic or metallic forms that people Tanguy’s landscapes.

Both Suther^[71] and Régine Tessier, the latter in a sketch of Sage in Notable American Women: The Modern Period,^[72] note key features of Sage’s mature work. Most of Sage’s paintings focus on free-standing architectural structures, including walls, towers, and latticework, which could represent buildings either under construction or ruined and decaying. Some contain figures that might or might not be human, hidden by flowing drapery. (Le Passage, one of Sage’s last paintings, is perhaps the only one containing a definite human figure; even Small Portrait, thought by many to be a self-portrait, is hardly recognizable as a face.) Like Tanguy, Sage often sets her objects on deserts or plains that recede to immeasurably distant horizons. She renders her forms in meticulous, photographic detail, using a gray-green-ochre palette that Tessier describes as “reminiscent of the sulphurous light before a thunderstorm”^[73]. Critics frequently called Sage’s work disturbing or depressing, even when they praised her painterly skill.^[74]

Sage almost never commented on what her paintings represented or how their seemingly ominous mood should be interpreted. One exception was her statement to a Time magazine critic that The Instant, a painting that appeared in her 1950 show at the Catherine Viviano gallery, was “a sort of showing of what’s inside—things half mechanical, half alive.”^[75] It seems likely that Kay Sage’s other works also portray the interior world of this enigmatic artist.

Gallery[link]

• My Room Has Two Doors.jpg

  My Room Has Two Doors, 1939

• Danger, Construction Ahead.jpg

  Danger, Construction Ahead, 1940

• Margin of Silence.jpg

  Margin of Silence, 1942

• The Fourteen Daggers.jpg

  The Fourteen Daggers, 1942

• Unusual Thursday.jpg

  Unusual Thursday, 1951

• On the Contrary.jpg

  On the Contrary, 1952, Walker Art Center Minneapolis, Minnesota

Selected works[link]

Exhibitions[link]

• 1936, Galleria del Milione, Milan, Italy (six oils)
• 1938, Salon des Surindependants, Paris, France (six oils)
• 1940, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (17 oils, solo show); Tone Price gallery, Los Angeles (13 oils, solo show); San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco (13 oils, part of group show)
• 1944, Julien Levy gallery, New York (18 oils, solo show)
• 1947, Julien Levy gallery, New York (11 oils, solo show)
• 1950, Catherine Viviano gallery, New York (14 oils, solo show)
• 1952, Catherine Viviano gallery, New York (14 oils, solo show)
• 1954, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (46 works, joint show with Yves Tanguy)
• 1956, Catherine Viviano gallery, New York (12 oils, solo show)
• 1960, Catherine Viviano gallery, New York (59 works, solo retrospective)
• 1961, Catherine Viviano gallery, New York (small Surrealist sculptures, titled “Your Move”)
• 1965, Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut (memorial exhibit of 50 works, titled “A Tribute to Kay Sage”)
• 1977, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (65 works, solo retrospective)
• 2011, The Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York (25 works, joint show with Yves Tanguy)
• 2012, Featured in the exhibition In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Books[link]

In addition to her autobiography, China Eggs, and three dramatic sketches (the latter published in 2011 by the Gallery of Surrealism, New York, in the book called Kay Sage: the Biographical Chronology and Four Surrealist One-Act Plays - see footnote no 1. below), Sage wrote several books of poetry, all but one in French. Their style is colloquial, their wit sharp and often directed at herself. Many are dialogues, perhaps imagined conversations with Tanguy (with whom she spoke the same kind of street-language French she used in the poems) or perhaps discussions between different parts of herself.^[76] Her published works are:

• Demain, Monsieur Silber (1957)
• The More I Wonder (1957, probably a translation into English of Demain, Monsieur Silber)
• Faut dire c’qui est (1959)
• Mordicus (posthumous, 1963)

See also[link]

Biography portal

• Women Surrealists

References[link]

Suggested reading[link]

• Chadwick, Whitney. ‘‘Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement.’’ New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985.
• Hubert, Renée Riese. “The Silent Couple: Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy,” in her Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, and Partnership. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, pp. 173-198.
• Mattatuck Museum Historical Society. "A Tribute to Kay Sage." Mattatuck, Conn.: Mattatuck Museum, 1965.
• Miller, Stephen Robeson. "The Surrealist Imagery of Kay Sage" Art International, Lugano, Switzerland, v. 26, September-October, 1983, pp. 32-47; 54-56.
• Miller, Stephen Robeson. "In the Interim: the Constructivist Surrealism of Kay Sage" in Surrealism and Women, edited by Mary Ann Caws, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991.
• Miller, Stephen Robeson. Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy. Katonah, N. Y.: Katonah Museum of Art/Mint Museum, 2011.
• Miller, Stephen Robeson. Kay Sage: The Biographical Chronology and Four Surrealist One-Act Plays, New York: Gallery of Surrealism, 2011. (Note: This chronology, an edited version of the author's 1983 seventy-eight page chronology in the Archives of American Art - which forms part of the collection named by the AAA "The Stephen Robeson Miller Research Papers about Kay Sage, 1898-1983" - was published to coincide with the Katonah Museum of Art exhibition cited above; it is the most comprehensively reliable source for all factual information about the artist.
• Rosenberg, Karen. “A House of Her Own: Kay Sage, Solitary Surrealist.” Women’s Review of Books, v. 15 i. 6 (March 1998), p. 4 ff.
• Suther, Judith D. A House of Her Own: Kay Sage, Solitary Surrealist. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
• Tessier, Régine. “Sage, Kay Linn,” in Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, eds., Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 618-619.
• von Maur, Karin, ed. Yves Tanguy and Surrealism. Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2001.

External links[link]

• “Kay Sage.” All-Art. [1]. Accessed Dec. 11, 2011.
• “Kay Sage.” ArtCyclopedia. [2]. Accessed Dec. 11, 2011.
• “Kay Sage.” Mattatuck Collections, Mattatuck Museum. [3]. Accessed Dec. 11, 2011.
• “Kay Sage (American—1898-1963).” [4]. Accessed Dec. 11, 2011.
• “Kay Sage Papers, 1925-circa 1985, Bulk 1950-1965.” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [5]. Accessed Dec. 11, 2011.
• Morris, Gary. “Surreal Women: Leonor Fini and Kay Sage.” Morphizm. [6]. Posted May 15, 2006; accessed Dec. 11, 2011.
• Poosti, Tara. “Kay Sage (1898-1963): Surrealist.” Sullivan Goss. [7]. Accessed Dec. 11, 2011.
• Vieuille, Chantal. ‘‘Kay Sage ou le surréalisme américain.’’ Editions Complicités. [8]. In French. Accessed Dec. 24, 2011.
• Woods, Melissa. “Inseparable Pairs: Reviewing the Exhibit ‘‘Double Solitaire.’’” ArtsEditor. [9]. Accessed Dec. 24, 2011.

Arvo Pärt in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, 2008

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.^[1] 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.^[2]

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^[3] and in Tallinn.^[4]

Musical development[link]

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).

Pärt is often identified with the school of minimalism and, more specifically, that of mystic minimalism or holy minimalism.^[5] He is considered a pioneer of the latter style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener.^[6] Although his fame initially rested on instrumental works such as Tabula Rasa and Spiegel im Spiegel, his choral works have also come to be widely appreciated.

Pärt's musical education began at age seven. He began attending music school in Rakvere, where his family lived. By the time he reached his early teen years, Pärt was writing his own compositions. While studying composition with Heino Eller at the Tallinn Conservatory in 1957,^[4] it was said of him that "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and notes would fall out."

In this period of Estonian history, Pärt was unable to encounter many musical influences from outside the Soviet Union except for a few illegal tapes and scores. Although Estonia had been an independent Baltic state at the time of Pärt's birth, the Soviet Union occupied it in 1940 as a result of the Soviet-Nazi Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; and the country would then remain under Soviet domination—except for the three-year period of German wartime occupation—for the next 51 years.

Musical oeuvre[link]

Arvo Pärt in 2011

Pärt's oeuvre is generally divided into two periods. He composed his early works using a range of neo-classical styles influenced by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Bartók. He then began to compose using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and serialism. This, however, not only earned the ire of the Soviet establishment, but also proved to be a creative dead-end. When early works were banned by Soviet censors, Pärt entered the first of several periods of contemplative silence, during which he studied choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries.^[4] In this context, Pärt's biographer, Paul Hillier, observed that "He had reached a position of complete despair in which the composition of music appeared to be the most futile of gestures, and he lacked the musical faith and will-power to write even a single note."

The spirit of early European polyphony informed the composition of Pärt's transitional Third Symphony (1971); and thereafter, he immersed himself in early music, re-investigating the roots of Western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the emergence of polyphony in the European Renaissance.

The music that began to emerge after this period was radically different. This period of new compositions included Fratres, Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa.^[4] Pärt describes the music of this period as tintinnabuli—like the ringing of bells. Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) is a well-known example which has been used in many films. The music is characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triads, which form the basis of Western harmony. These are reminiscent of ringing bells. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple and do not change tempo. Another characteristic of Pärt's later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts, although he mostly chooses Latin or the Church Slavonic language used in Orthodox liturgy instead of his native Estonian language. Large-scale works inspired by religious texts include St. John Passion, Te Deum, and Litany. Choral works from this period include Magnificat and The Beatitudes.^[4]

Of his popularity, Steve Reich has written: "Even in Estonia, Arvo was getting the same feeling that we were all getting .... I love his music, and I love the fact that he is such a brave, talented man .... He's completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he's enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfills a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion."^[7] Pärt's music came to public attention in the West, largely thanks to Manfred Eicher who recorded several of Pärt's compositions for ECM Records starting in 1984.

Invited by Walter Fink, he was the 15th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2005 in four concerts. Chamber music included Für Alina for piano, played by himself, Spiegel im Spiegel and Psalom for string quartet. The chamber orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra played his Trisagion, Fratres and Cantus along with works of Bach. The Windsbach Boys Choir and soloists Sibylla Rubens, Ingeborg Danz, Markus Schäfer and Klaus Mertens performed Magnificat and Collage über B-A-C-H together with two cantatas of Bach and one of Mendelssohn. The Hilliard Ensemble, organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, the Rostock Motet Choir and the Hilliard instrumental ensemble, conducted by Markus Johannes Langer, performed a program of Pärt's organ music and works for voices (some a cappella), including Pari Intervallo, De profundis and Miserere.

A new composition, Für Lennart, written for the memory of the Estonian President Lennart Meri, was played at his funeral service on 2 April 2006.

In response to the murder of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on 7 October 2006, Pärt declared that all of his works performed in 2006–2007 would be in honour of her death, issuing the following statement: "Anna Politkovskaya staked her entire talent, energy and—in the end—even her life on saving people who had become victims of the abuses prevailing in Russia."^[8]

Pärt was honoured as the featured composer of the 2008 RTÉ Living Music Festival^[9] in Dublin, Ireland. He was also commissioned by Louth Contemporary Music Society^[10] to compose a new choral work based on St. Patrick's Breastplate, which premiered in 2008 in Louth, Ireland. The new work is called The Deers Cry. This is the composer's first Irish commission, having its debut in Drogheda and Dundalk in February 2008.

His recent (2008) Symphony No. 4 is named “Los Angeles” and was dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It is Pärt's first symphony written in over 37 years, since 1971's Symphony No. 3. It premiered in Los Angeles, California, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on 10 January 2009,^[11] and has been nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

On 10 December 2011 he was appointed a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture for a five year renewable term by Pope Benedict XVI.^[12]

List of Works[link]

Awards[link]

• 1996 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music
• 1996 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Sydney^[13]
• 1998 – Honorary Doctor of Arts, University of Tartu
• 2003 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Durham^[14]
• 2008 – Léonie Sonning Music Prize
• 2010 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of St Andrews^[15]
• 2011 – Chevalier (Knight) of Légion d'honneur^[16]
• 2011 – Membership of the Pontifical Council for Culture^[17]

International Arvo Pärt Centre[link]

The International Arvo Pärt Centre is being created in the Estonian village of Laulasmaa. The centre will include a research institute, an education and music centre, a museum, a publishing facility and an archive of the composer's works. It is planned to open in 2015.^[18]

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Hillier, Paul. (1997). Arvo Pärt. Oxford : Oxford University Press. 10-ISBN 0-19-816616-8; 13-ISBN 978-0-19-816616-0 (paper)

Further Reading[link]

• Andrew Shenton (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
• Chikinda, Michael (2011). "Pärt's Evolving Tintinnabuli Style". Perspectives of New Music 49, no. 1 (Winter): 182–206.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Arvo Pärt

• Arvo Pärt biography and works on the UE website (publisher)
• Arvo Pärt discography at Classical Net
• Arvo Pärt discography at MusicBrainz
• Arvo Pärt Conference at Boston University
• Complete Listing of Arvo Pärt's Works
• Arvo Pärt – extensive site
• arvopart.info – another comprehensive site with current news
• David Pinkerton's Arvo Pärt archive – yet another extensive site, with some good analytical writing.
• Biography in MUSICMATCH Guide – Small biography and list of works.
• Arvo Pärt and the New Simplicity – Article by Bill McGlaughlin, with audio selections
• Steve Reich about Arvo Pärt, in an interview with Richard Williams, The Guardian, 2 January 2004
• Spike Magazine Interview
• Lancing College Commission 'Original' Claudio Records Recording in the presence of the composer – Review/Information
• International Arvo Pärt Centre – most up-to-date info and more

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2010)

François Bayle (born 27 April 1932, Toamasina, Madagascar) is a composer of Musique concrète or acousmatic music.

In the 1950s he studied with Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1960 he joined the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française, and in 1966 was put in charge of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). In 1975, the GRM was integrated with the new Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA) with Bayle as its head, which post he held until 1997. During these years he organized concerts, radio broadcasts, seminars and events celebrating individual composers, supported technological developments (Syter, GRM Tools, Midi Formers, Acousmographe) and was behind innovations such as the Acousmonium and the INA-GRM recordings label.

After leaving GRM in 1997, he founded his own electronic music studio, the Studio Magison, where he has devoted himself to research, writing and composition.

In the world of electronic art music, Bayle is regarded is one of the most distinguished composers; his influence is widespread (particularly in France, Europe and French-speaking Canada) and his music has earned some of the most prestigious musical prizes (SACEM Grand Prize for Composers, 1978; National Record Grand Prize, 1981; Ars Electronica Prize, Linz, 1989; City of Paris Grand Prize for Music, 1996; Homage by the CIME of São Paulo, 1997; Charles Cros Presidential Grand Prize, 1999). 18 CDs entirely of his music have been released, an exceptionally large number for one composer in the annals of electronic art music. French director Jérémie Carboni is working on a documentary with the composer.

Works[link]

Among Bayle's 100 or so compositions are:

• 1960 Points critiques (instrumental)
• 1962 Trois portraits d’un Oiseau-Qui-N’existe-Pas
• 1962 L'objet captif (instrumental)
• 1963 L'Archipel (quatuor à cordes)
• 1963 Pluriel, pour 19 instruments et haut-parleurs (in Concert Collectif du Grm)
• 1966 Lignes et points
• 1967 Espaces inhabitables
• 1969 Jeïta ou Murmure des eaux
• 1971 Trois Rêves d'oiseau
• 1969–1972 L'Expérience Acoustique [suite comprenant: 1-L"Aventure du Cri/2-le langage des fleurs/3-La preuve par le sens/4-L'épreuve par le son/5-La philosophie du non]
• 1972 Purgatoire, d'après La Divine Comédie, de Dante
• 1973 Vibrations composées
• 1974 Grande polyphonie
• 1976 Camera oscura
• 1978 Tremblement de terre très doux
• 1979–1980 Erosphère [suite comprenant: 1-La fin du bruit/2-Tremblement de terre très doux/3-Toupie dans le ciel]
• 1982 Les Couleurs de la nuit
• 1980–1983 Son Vitesse-Lumière [suite comprenant: 1-Grandeur nature/2-Paysage, personnage, nuage/3-Voyage au centre de la tête/4-Le sommeil d'Euclide/5-Lumière ralentie]
• 1984 Aéroformes
• 1985 Motion-Emotion
• 1987–1988 Théâtre d'Ombres
• 1989 Mimaméta
• 1991 Fabulae [suite comprenant: 1-Fabula/2-Onoma/3-Nota/4-Sonora]
• 1994–1995 La main vide [suite comprenant: 1-Bâton de pluie/2-La fleur future/3-Inventions]
• 1996 Morceaux de ciels
• 1999 Jeîta-retour
• 1999 Arc (pour Gérard Grisey)
• 2000–2001 La forme du temps est un cercle [suite comprenant: 1-Concrescence/2-Si loin, si proche/3-Tempi/4-Allures/5-Cercles]
• 2002–2004 La forme de l'esprit est un papillon [suite comprenant: 1-Ombrages et trouées/2-Couleurs inventées]
• 2005 Univers nerveux
• 2008–2009 L'Oreille étonnée
• 2010 Rien n'est réel [suite comprenant: 1-Sensations/2-Perceptions]
• 2011 Deviner-devenir

External links[link]

• François Bayle's own site. Retrieved 05-05-2007
• François Bayle at allmusic.com. Retrieved 22-04-2007
• BBC Radio 3 article. Retrieved 22-04-2007
• (French) A biography of François Bayle, from IRCAM's website.

This article about a French composer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer^[1][2] 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",^[3] and the rhapsodic lyricism in "And death shall have no dominion" and "Fern Hill".

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

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.

5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea, birthplace of Dylan Thomas

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.^[4] 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.

Dylan is pronounced ˈdəlan in Welsh, and in the early part of his career some announcers introduced him using this pronunciation. However, Thomas himself favoured the anglicised pronunciation /ˈdɪlən/.^[4] A review of a biography by Andrew Lycett (2004) notes: "Florence, the boy’s mother, had her doubts about the odd name: the correct Welsh pronunciation, which the family used, is “Dullan,” and she worried that other children would tease him by calling him “dull one.” Later, when broadcasting on the Welsh service of the BBC, Dylan Thomas had to instruct the announcers to say "'Dillan,' the way he himself pronounced it".^[5] His middle name, Marlais, was given to him in honour of his great-uncle, Unitarian minister William Thomas, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.^[4]

His childhood was spent largely in Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his maternal aunts' Carmarthenshire farms.^[6] These rural sojourns and the contrast with the town life of Swansea provided inspiration for much of his work, notably many short stories, radio essays, and the poem Fern Hill. Thomas was known to be a sickly child who suffered from bronchitis and asthma. He shied away from school and preferred reading on his own. He was considered too frail to fight in World War II, instead serving the war effort by writing scripts for the government. Thomas's formal education began at Mrs. Hole's Dame school, a private school which was situated a few streets away on Mirador Crescent. He described his experience there in Quite Early One Morning:^[7]

Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime — the pulling of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature.

In October 1925, Thomas attended the single-sex Swansea Grammar School, in the Mount Pleasant district of the city, where his father taught. He was an undistinguished student. Thomas's first poem was published in the school's magazine. He later became its editor.^[4] He began keeping poetry notebooks and amassed 200 poems in four such journals between 1930 and 1934.^[4] He left school at 16 to become a reporter for the local newspaper, the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave the job under pressure 18 months later in 1932. After leaving the job he filled his notebooks even faster. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these first years.^[4] He then joined an amateur dramatic group in Mumbles called Little Theatre (Now Known as Swansea Little Theatre), but still continued to work as a freelance journalist for a few more years.

Dylan Thomas Theatre Home of Swansea Little Theatre

Dylan's £5 writing shed in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire

Thomas spent his time visiting the cinema in the Uplands, walking along Swansea Bay, visiting a theatre where he used to perform, and frequenting Swansea's pubs. He especially patronised those in the Mumbles area such the Antelope Hotel and the Mermaid Hotel. A short walk from the local newspaper where he worked was the Kardomah Café in Castle Street, central Swansea. At the café he met with various artist contemporaries, such as his good friend the poet Vernon Watkins. These writers, musicians and artists became known as 'The Kardomah Gang'. In 1932, Thomas embarked on what would be one of his various visits to London.

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the German Luftwaffe in a "three nights' blitz". Castle Street was just one of the many streets in Swansea that suffered badly; the rows of shops, including the 'Kardomah Café', were destroyed. Thomas later wrote about this in his radio play Return Journey Home, in which he describes the café as being "razed to the snow". Return Journey Home was first broadcast on 15 June 1947, having been written soon after the bombing raids. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded: "Our Swansea is dead".^[8] The Kardomah Café later reopened on Portland Street, not far from the original location.

Career and family[link]

Statue of Dylan Thomas, outside the Dylan Thomas Theatre at the Marina, Swansea

It is often commented that Thomas was indulged like a child and he was, in fact, still a teenager when he published many of the poems he would become famous for: “And death shall have no dominion" “Before I Knocked” and “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower". "And death shall have no dominion", appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933^[4]and further work appeared in The Listener in 1934 catching the attention of two of the most senior poets of the day T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender. His highly acclaimed first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published on 18 December 1934, and went on to win a contest run by The Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, which did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement would later be used by a number of other new authors, including Philip Larkin.

His passionate musical lyricism caused a sensation in these years of desiccated Modernism; the critic Desmond Hawkins said it was “the sort of bomb that bursts no more than once in three years”.^[4][9] In all, he wrote half of his poems while living at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive before he moved to London.^[10] It was also the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.^[9][11]

In the spring of 1936, Dylan Thomas met dancer Caitlin Macnamara in the Wheatsheaf pub, in the Fitzrovia area of London's West End. They were introduced by Augustus John, who was Macnamara's lover at the time (there were rumours that she continued her relationship with John after she married Thomas). A drunken Thomas proposed to Macnamara on the spot, and the two began a courtship.^[12] On 11 July 1937, Thomas married Macnamara in a register office in Penzance, Cornwall.^[13] In 1938, the couple rented a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, West Wales. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on 30 January 1939 (d. 2000). Their daughter, Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, was born on 3 March 1943 (d. 2009). A second son, Colm Garan Hart, was born on 24 July 1949.

Wartime and after[link]

At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was designated C3, which meant that although he could, in theory, be called up for service he would be in one of the last groups to be so. He was saddened to see his friends enter active service leaving him behind and drank whilst struggling to support his family. He lived on tiny fees from writing and reviewing and borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances, writing begging letters to random literary figures in hope of support, envisaging this as a plan of long term regular income.^[4] He wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information asking for employment but after a rebuff eventually ended up working for Strand Films. Strand produced films for the Ministry of Information and Thomas scripted at least five in 1942 with titles such as This Is Colour (about dye), New Towns For Old, These Are The Men and Our Country (a sentimental tour of Britain).^[14] He actively sought to build a reputation as a raconteur and outrageous writer, heavy drinker and wit.^[4]

The publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic W. J. Turner commented in The Spectator "This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet".^[15] Thomas was well known for being a versatile and dynamic speaker, best known for his poetry readings. He made over 200 broadcasts for the BBC.

Often considered his greatest single work, Under Milk Wood, a radio play featuring the characters of Llareggub, is set in a fictional Welsh fishing village ('Llareggub' is 'Bugger All' backwards, implying that there is absolutely nothing to do there). The BBC credited their producer Stella Hillier with ensuring the play actually materialised. Assigned "some of the more wayward characters who were then writing for the BBC", she dragged the notoriously unreliable Thomas out of the pub and back to her office to finish the work.^[16] The play took several years to write, the first half mostly in South Leigh, Oxford, in 1948, whilst the second half was mostly written in America in May 1953. Fewer than 300 lines were written in Laugharne, according to one account, which also explains the influence of New Quay on the play.^[17]

New York[link]

John Malcolm Brinnin invited Thomas to New York and in 1950 embarked on a lucrative three month tour of arts centres and campuses in the States. He toured there again in 1952, this time with Caitlin, who discovered that he had been unfaithful on his 1950 trip. They both drank heavily, as if in competition, Thomas's health beginning to suffer with gout and lung problems. Thomas performed a 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood solo for the first time on 3 May at Harvard during his early 1953 US tour, and then with a cast at the Poetry Centre in New York on 14 May. He worked on the play further in Wales, where in its completed form it premiered the Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen, Wales on 8 October 1953,^[18] just 12 miles away from Laugharne. It was said Thomas gave a 'supreme virtuoso performance'. He then travelled to London and on 19 October he flew to America.^[18] He died in New York on 5 November 1953 before the BBC could record the play.^[19] Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954 and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film.

Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry prize. He wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night", a villanelle, to his dying father, who passed away in 1952, one of the poet's last poems.

Death[link]

Thomas's image on the pub sign of his Laugharne 'local', Browns Hotel

Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953, to take part in a performance of Under Milk Wood at the city's prestigious Poetry Centre. He was already ill and had a history of blackouts and heart problems, using an inhaler in New York to help his breathing. Thomas had liked to boast of his addiction to drinking, saying "An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do."^[20] He "liked the taste of whisky" and had a powerful reputation for his drinking. The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicating a performer he was and how the tension would build before a performance: “Would he arrive only to break down on the stage? Would some dismaying scene take place at the faculty party? Would he be offensive, violent, obscene? These were alarming and yet exciting possibilities.” His wife Caitlin said in her embittered memoir “Nobody ever needed encouragement less, and he was drowned in it.” Thomas “exhibited the excesses and experienced the adulation which would later be associated with rock stars,” however the amount he is supposed to have drunk in his lifetime and in New York before his death, may well have been exaggerated as Thomas became mythologised.^[5]

On the evening of 27 October 1953, Thomas's 39th birthday, the poet attended a party in his honour but felt so unwell that he returned to his hotel. On 28 October 1953, he took part in Poetry And The Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16, which included panellists Amos Vogel, Maya Deren, Parker Tyler, and Willard Maas. The director of the Poetry Centre, John Brinnin, was also Thomas's tour agent. Brinnin didn't travel to New York, remaining at home in Boston and handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell.^[21] Reitell met Thomas at Idlewild Airport (now JFK airport) and he told her that he had had a terrible week, had missed her terribly and wanted to go to bed with her. Despite Reitell's previous misgivings about their relationship they spent the rest of the day and night together at the Chelsea Hotel. The next day she invited him to her apartment but he declined, saying that he was not feeling well and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. After spending the night at the hotel with Thomas, Reitell went back to her own apartment for a change of clothes. At breakfast Herb Hannum noticed how sick Thomas looked and suggested a visit to a Dr. Feltenstein before the performance of Under Milk Wood that evening. The doctor went to work with his needle, and Thomas made it through the two performances of Under Milk Wood, but collapsed straight afterwards. Reitell would later describe Feltenstein as a wild doctor who believed injections could cure anything.

A turning point came on 2 November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses, such as Thomas had. By the end of the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog.^[21] On 3 November Thomas spent most of that day in bed drinking.^[22] He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse Tavern, a pub he'd found through Scottish poet Ruthven Todd, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record!"^[22] The barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time later commented that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that amount.^[23] Thomas had an appointment to visit a clam house in New Jersey on 4 November. When phoned at the Chelsea that morning, he said that he was feeling awful and asked to take a rain-check. Later, he did go drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing morphine, which seriously affected Thomas's breathing. At midnight on 5 November, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell unsuccessfully tried to get hold of Feltenstein.

Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent's hospital. The medical notes state that he arrived in a coma at 1.58 am, and that the "impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response".^[24] The duty doctors found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the presence of an infection. Caitlin in Laugharne was sent a telegram on 5 November, notifying her that Dylan was in hospital. She flew to America the following day and was taken, with a police escort, to the hospital. Her alleged first words were "Is the bloody man dead yet?"^[24] The pneumonia worsened and Thomas died, whilst in coma, at noon on 9 November.^[24][25]

Aftermath[link]

The first rumours to circulate were of a brain haemorrhage, followed by reports that he had been mugged and soon stories began to fly that he had drunk himself to death.^[24] Later, there were speculations about drugs and diabetes. At the post-mortem, the pathologist found that the immediate cause of death was swelling of the brain, caused by the pneumonia reducing the supply of oxygen. Despite his heavy drinking his liver showed little sign of cirrhosis.^[25]

Following his death, his body was brought back to Wales for his burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne on 25 November.^[26] One of the last people to stay at his graveside after the funeral was his mother, Florence. Thomas's obituary was written by his long-time friend and Welsh poet Vernon Watkins. His widow, Caitlin, died in 1994 and was buried alongside him. Thomas's father 'DJ' died on 16 December 1952 and his mother Florence died in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000.^[26] His only daughter, Aeronwy, died in 2009.

Caitlin Thomas's two searing autobiographies, Caitlin Thomas – Leftover Life to Kill (1957) and Double Drink Story: My life with Dylan (1997, published posthumously), both describe the highly destructive effect of alcoholism to the poet and to their relationship. "But ours was a drink story, not a love story, just like millions of others. Our one and only true love was drink", she writes. "The bar was our altar".^[27] His biographer Lycett ascribed the demise of Dylan's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife Caitlin, who deeply resented his affairs.^[28]

Poetry[link]

Statue of Dylan Thomas in Swansea – same statue as shown above from different viewpoint

Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night. His images were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life again. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore and preaching, and Freud.^[29] Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in poems such as Fern Hill, In Country Sleep, Ballad of the Long-legged Bait or In the White Giant's Thigh from Under Milkwood: <poem>

Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house

and heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost,

the scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse

of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed^[30]

</poem> Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:

I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance. [...] I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever.^[31]

Memorials[link]

A statue of Thomas is in the city's maritime quarter. The Dylan Thomas Theatre Swansea Little Theatre and the Dylan Thomas Centre, formerly the town's Guildhall, are also found in Swansea. The latter is now a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held, and is the setting for an annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive. The memorial is a small rock in a closed-off garden, set within the park. The rock is inscribed with the closing lines from "Fern Hill": <poem>

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

</poem>

Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boat House, has been made a memorial. Several of the pubs in Swansea also have associations with the poet. One of Swansea's oldest pubs, 'The No Sign Bar' (since renamed 'The No Sign Wine Bar') was a regular haunt of Thomas's and is mentioned in his story "The Followers". A class 153 diesel multiple unit was named 'Dylan Thomas 1914–1953' and in 2004 the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in honour of the poet,^[32] awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. Following this, in 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award^[33] was established. The prize is administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, and is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival. In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in his honour in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Selected works[link]

Poetry collections[link]

• 1934 18 Poems
• 1936 Twenty-Five Poems
• 1939 The Map of Love
• 1943 New Poems
• 1946 Deaths and Entrances
• 1950 Twenty-Six Poems
• 1952 In Country Sleep
• 1952 Collected Poems, 1934–1952

Collected prose[link]

• 1940 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Dent
• 1946 Selected Writings of Dylan Thomas, New Directions
• 1953 Adventures In The Skin Trade And Other Stories (Adventures In The Skin Trade, an unfinished novel). New Directions
• 1954 Quite Early One Morning (Planned by Thomas, posthumously published). New Directions
• 1955 A Child's Christmas in Wales, New Directions
• 1955 A Prospect of the Sea and other stories and prose writings, Dent
• 1957 Letters to Vernon Watkins, Dent
• 1965 Rebecca's Daughters, Triton
• 1969 The year of love.

Drama[link]

• 1954 Under Milk Wood (Radio play)
• 1953 The Doctor and the Devils and Other Scripts
• 1964 The Beach of Falesa (Screenplay)

Further reading: collections[link]

• 1966 Dylan Thomas: a Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Charles B. Cox
• 1971 The Poems of Dylan Thomas W. W. Norton & Co
• 1978 A Child's Christmas in Wales illustrated by Edward Ardizzone. 1996: published as Dolphin Paperback from Orion Children's Books
• 1982 Selected Works, Guild Publishing, London
• 1984 The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas, New Directions Publishing
• 1986 Collected Letters. Edited by Paul Ferris. MacMillan
• 1992 On the Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts, Ed. Ralph Maud New Directions Publishing
• 1994 Eight Stories, W. W. Norton & Co
• 1995 Dylan Thomas: The Complete Screenplays, Ed. John Ackerman. Applause Books
• 1997 Fern Hill: An Illustrated edition of the Dylan Thomas poem. Red Deer College Press, Canada
• 2000 Collected Poems 1934–1953, London: Phoenix
• 2000 Selected Poems London: Phoenix

Critical studies[link]

• Brinnin, J M Dylan Thomas in America: an intimate journal, 1957
• Gilbar & Stewart Literary Santa Barbara 1998, pp. 248–252
• Lycett, Andrew. Dylan Thomas: A new life, 2003
• Thomas, Caitlin Leftover Life to Kill, 1957
• Thomas, David N. Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? David N. Thomas, Seren 2008
• Thomas, David N. Dylan Remembered, Volume 2: 1935–1953, Seren 2004
• Thomas, David N. Dylan Remembered, Volume 1: 1913– 1934, Seren 2003
• Thomas, David N. The Dylan Thomas Murders, Seren 2002
• Thomas, David N. Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, Seren 2000

Discography[link]

• Dylan Thomas: Volume I — A Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems (Caedmon TC 1002–1952)
• Under Milk Wood (Caedmon TC 2005–1953)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume II — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1018–1954)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume III — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1043)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume IV — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1061)
• Dylan Thomas: Quite early one morning and other memories (Caedmon TC 1132–1960)
• Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood and other plays (Naxos Audiobooks NA288712 – 2008) (originally BBC – 1954)

Posthumous film adaptations[link]

• 1972 Under Milk Wood, 1972, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter O'Toole
• 1987 A Child's Christmas in Wales. Directed by Don McBrearty.^[34]
• 1992 Rebecca's Daughters starring Peter O'Toole and Joely Richardson
• 2007 Dylan Thomas: A War Films Anthology (DDHE/IWM D23702 – 2006)
• 2009 Nadolig Plentyn yng Nghymru/A Child's Christmas in Wales, 2009 BAFTA Best Short Film, animation, soundtrack in Welsh and English, Director: Dave Unwin. Extras include filmed comments from Aeronwy Thomas. 5-016886-088457.

Media depictions[link]

• 1964: Dylan, a Broadway play by Sidney Michaels, starring Alec Guinness as Dylan Thomas.
• 1978: Dylan, film of Thomas's final visit to America; directed by Richard Lewis.
• 1990–91: Dylan Thomas: Return Journey, a one-man stage show featuring Bob Kingdom as Thomas and directed by Anthony Hopkins.^[35]
• 2008: The Edge of Love starring Matthew Rhys as the poet, directed by John Maybury, written by Sharman Macdonald^[36]

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Ferris, Paul (1993). Caitlin, The life of Caitlin Thomas. London: Pimlico. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/0-7216-6290-1|0-7216-6290-1]]. 
• Ferris, Paul (1989). Dylan Thomas, A Biography. New York: Paragon House. ISBN 1-55778-215-6. 
• Thomas, Caitlin; George Tremlett (1986). Caitlin, Life with Dylan Thomas. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-51850-3. 

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Dylan Thomas

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dylan Thomas

• Works by Dylan Thomas (public domain in Canada). Retrieved 11 September 2010
• The Life and Work of Dylan Thomas (archive). Retrieved 11 September 2010
• Works by or about Dylan Thomas in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• The Dylan Thomas museum at Laugharne. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• BBC Biography. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• Audio files: Anthology Film Archives. Including Dylan Thomas (drunk). Symposium at Cinema 16 1953-10-28. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• Dylan Thomas on Poets.org Biography, poems, audio clips, and essays. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• Dylan Thomas Official Family Web Site, Swansea. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• BBC Wales' Dylan Thomas site. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• BBC Wales biography of Caitlin. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• Dylan Thomas's archive at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 11 September 2010
• The death of Dylan Thomas from BBC Cymru Wales. Accessed 8 November 2011
• Archival material relating to Dylan Thomas listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Portraits of Dylan Thomas at the National Portrait Gallery, London