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Post by chriscank on Mar 11, 2006 17:45:00 GMT -5
Chris Cank's Artist of the Day! Camille Pissaro (1830-1903) Camille Pissarro. The Boulevard Montmartre at Night. 1897. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London, UK. Camille Pissarro, French Impressionist artist, was born in St. Thomas, in the West Indies in 1830 into the family of a merchant. His father was of French-Jewish origin, his mother was a Creole. First Camille started his career as a businessman, like his father, but his obsession with painting changed the direction of his life. In 1852 he got acquainted with the Danish painter F. Melbye and spent about two years with him in Caracas. In 1855, he came to Paris, where he was impressed by the landscapes of Corot. He painted in Paris and in its suburbs; in 1859, he was admitted to the Salon. In 1859-1861, he attended the Académie Suisse and formed friendships with Monet, Guillaumin and Cézanne. Approximately at the same time his liaison with Julie Vellay started; they would marry ten years later, in 1871; they had eight children; their two sons, Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944), and Georges Pissarro (1871-1961) would both become the artists. Rejected by the Salon in 1861 and 1863, Pissarro showed at the “Salon des Refusés” in 1863. Though in 1864-68 he exhibited at the Salon, his pictures were not popular with public, nobody bought them, and financial difficulties started. In 1866-68, Pissarro lived and worked in Pontoise, painted landscapes in which he changed from Barbizon Realism of Corot to Impressionism; in 1869/70 he moved to Louveciennes, where many of his paintings were destroyed by German troops during the occupation of Louveciennes in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. The artist at the time stayed with his family in London. Pissarro’s friend, the painter Daubigny, recommended him to the art dealer Durand-Ruel, who did much for promotion of the Impressionists’ works; he would organize Pissarro’s exhibitions in Paris (1883) and New York (1886). In 1872-78, Pissarro stayed in Pontoise, working with Cézanne, on whom he exercised considerable influence. At this time his independent Impressionist style fully developed. Pissarro was the leader of the original Impressionists, and the only one to exhibit at all eight of the Group exhibitions in Paris from 1874 to 1886. In 1885, he met Signac and Seurat and for the next five years adopted their Divisionist/ Pointillist style. Pissarro’s interest in Socialism brought him some trouble: in 1894 he had to flee to Belgium from the French persecution of Anarchists, he had become an Anarchist in 1885. In 1896 and 1898, he painted views of the town and harbor of Rouen, remaining faithful to the early Impressionist style. In 1897-1903, he mainly painted views of Paris, also Dieppe and Le Havre. He died in Paris in 1903. courtesy of Olga's Gallery www.abcgallery.com/P/pissaro/pissaro.html
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Post by chriscank on Mar 12, 2006 17:06:59 GMT -5
Chris Cank's Artist of the Day! Marcel DuChamp (1887-1968) Marcel Duchamp, French Dada artist, whose small but controversial output exerted a strong influence on the development of 20th-century avant-garde art. Born on July 28, 1887, in Blainville, brother of the artist Raymond Duchamp-Villon and half brother of the painter Jacques Villon, Duchamp began to paint in 1908. After producing several canvases in the current mode of Fauvism, he turned toward experimentation and the avant-garde, producing his most famous work, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) in 1912; portraying continuous movement through a chain of overlapping cubistic figures, the painting caused a furor at New York City's famous Armory Show in 1913. He painted very little after 1915, although he continued until 1923 to work on his masterpiece, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1923, Philadelphia Museum of Art), an abstract work, also known as The Large Glass, composed in oil and wire on glass, that was enthusiastically received by the surrealists. In sculpture, Duchamp pioneered two of the main innovations of the 20th century kinetic art and ready-made art. His "ready-mades" consisted simply of everyday objects, such as a urinal and a bottle rack. His Bicycle Wheel (1913, original lost; 3rd version, 1951, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), an early example of kinetic art, was mounted on a kitchen stool. After his short creative period, Duchamp was content to let others develop the themes he had originated; his pervasive influence was crucial to the development of surrealism, Dada, and pop art. Duchamp became an American citizen in 1955. He died in Paris on October 1, 1968. Courtesy of:www.beatmuseum.org/
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Post by chriscank on Mar 13, 2006 17:23:57 GMT -5
Isamu Noguchi (1904 - 1988) Isamu Noguchi (pronounced as: sämoo nogooch) was a sculptor, designer, architect, and craftsman. he believed that through sculpture and architecture, one could better understand the struggle with nature. Isamu noguchi was born in los angeles in 1904 to an irish-american teacher and editor, and a japanese poet. Isamu noguchi was raised in japan until, at 13, he was sent to the us to study. After winning one of the first guggenheim fellowships in 1927, noguchi travelled to paris where he worked for six months as a studio assistant to the sculptor, constantin brancusi. Returning to new york in 1932, he made his name as a sculptor and portrait artist, as well as winning commissions for memorials, monuments and industrial designs. With his long-time friend, the visionary engineer buckminster fuller, he constructed models, planned outdoor projects, and investigated the ways in which people live and thrive in their environments. His inventive work embraced alsosettings for the martha graham dance company. He is best known for his abstract sculptures designed as adjuncts to architecture. An example of his environmental work is his massive red cube designed for the marine midland bank building, new york city. As a landscape architect, noguchi created a large number of playgrounds, parks and gardens. In the 1950s, he designed gardens for keio university in tokyo, lever house in new york and unesco’s headquarters in paris. His 1960s projects include a sculpture garden for the national museum in jerusalem and gardens surrounding the connecticut general life insurance building designed by skidmore, owings and merrill. His entrance for the new museum of modern art, tokyo, was completed in 1969. During the 1980s, noguchi realized more public projects and created his own museum in long island, new york, where his large and varied collection of work is exhibited today. Noguchi died in new york city in 1988. Lyre - Set element from Orpheus, 1948. Installation view at the London Design Museum. © Thomas Dix/Vitra Design Museum.
JAPANESE AMERICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM 369 East First Street Los Angeles, California 90012 phone: (213) 625-0414 fax: (213) 625-1770 www.janm.org/ For all of you Degicankians in CA, I strongly recommend this exhibit! Courtesy of: www.designboom.com/portrait/noguchi/bio.html & www.janm.org/
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Post by chriscank on Mar 14, 2006 3:52:40 GMT -5
Emily Carr (1871-1945) Self-portrait 1938 Oil on wove paper, mounted on plywood 85.5 x 57.7 cm National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Indian Church 1929 Oil on canvas 108.6 x 68.9 cm Art Gallery of Ontario Canadian painter. She studied at San Francisco in 1889-95, and in 1899 she travelled to England, where she was involved with the St. Ives group and with Hubert von Herkomer's private school. She was in France in 1910 where the work of the Fauves influenced the colourism of her work and she came into contact with Frances Hodgkins. Discouraged by her lack of artistic success, she returned to Victoria where she came close to giving up art altogether. However, her contact with the Group of Seven in 1930 resurrected her interest in art, and throughout the 1930s she specialized in scenes from the lives and rituals of Native Americans. She also showed her awareness of Canadian native culture through a number of works representing the British Columbian rainforest. She lived among the native Americans to research her subjects. Many of her Expressionistic paintings represent totem poles and other artefacts of Indian culture. Courtesy of: www.artchive.com
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Post by degicank on Mar 14, 2006 23:44:45 GMT -5
rense.com/general67/street.htmEli sent this one in... Julian Beever is an English artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Its peculiarity? Beever gives his drawings an anamorphosis view, his images are drawn in such a way which gives them three dimensionality when viewing from the correct angle. It's amazing !!!
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Post by chriscank on Mar 15, 2006 7:27:17 GMT -5
Ray Johnson (1927-1995) A seminal Pop Art figure, Ray Johnson has been called the most significant "unknown artist" of the post-war period, a "collagist extraordinaire" who influenced both the Pop artists and a generation of contemporary artists besides. Until his suicide by drowning in January, 1995, he was known primarily to a close circle of friends, admirers, and collectors that included Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Chuck Close, and Robert Rauschenberg. To the larger public Johnson remained a cipher, shunning publicity and refusing for the last 25 years of his life to exhibit his work. Since his death, however, he has been rediscovered - with a retrospective at the Wexner Center that traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, and over 40 solo and group shows in the US and abroad, including Paris, London, Oslo, and Budapest. Johnson has emerged not only as a key member of the 1960's generation, but as one of the major artistic innovators of the second-half of the 20th century. Born in Detroit in 1927, Johnson attended Black Mountain College in the late 1940's, where he studied painting with Josef and Anni Albers. He studied with and worked alongside Bill and Elaine de Kooning, Richard Lippold, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham. In 1948 he moved to New York and became active in the downtown art scene. By 1954, frustrated with painting and searching for a new mode of expression, he cut up his abstract canvases, and began to make collages. Soon he was also cutting up his collages, and then combining the fragments with images from popular culture in successively newer collages. He collaged pictures of Elvis Presley, James Dean, Shirley Temple, Marilyn Monroe, and others in a manner that anticipated Warhol's images of the 1960's. Among his earliest collages were the irregularly shaped "moticos" panels, his critique of the abstract rules of the rectangle. In keeping with themes and practices that run throughout his life and art, he reused moticos cut into home-made "tesserrae," small, highly-worked blocks of intricately layered paper that he painted and sandpapered. As Johnson liked to rhyme later, he didn't make Pop Art, he made Chop Art. Johnson often linked images and ideas to generate new meaning from novel juxtapositions of shape and form. His work reflected an intense interest in Zen Buddhism, which he practiced in his own way, and in John Cage's ideas about chance operations in the artistic process. In his mailings, he introduced chance by inviting a recipient of his mailings to send the material to another person. After Marcel Duchamp, he was perhaps the first artist to incorporate instructions for active participation in the artwork into the artwork itself. His interest in codes, poetics, and semiotic systems looked back to Duchamp, while anticipating the enlarging contemporary practice of appropriation of other art. In the 1950s, while continuing with collage, Johnson began exploring the possibilities of "mail art." He gradually built up a fluid and informal network of friends, acquaintances, and virtual strangers with whom he exchanged ideas and artworks. By July, 1962, he began to write "Please send to..." on his mailings. Soon called the "New York Correspondance (sic) School," his network of correspondents became the unofficial clearing house for a web of communication by mail that eventually spread across the nation and around the globe. He mailed an enormous quantity of material, including elements of chopped-up collage; drawings with instructions ("please add to and return..."); found objects; snake skins; plastic forks; and annotated newspaper clippings. In 1966, Richard Feigen gave Ray Johnson his first one-man show in Chicago, and in 1968 exhibited his work in New York City. On June 3, 1968, the day Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas (with a gun stolen from under the bed of Johnson's friend, the artist May Wilson) Johnson was attacked in lower Manhattan. This prompted his abrupt departure to Glen Cove, and then to Locust Valley, Long Island, where he lived in ever greater reclusiveness in what he called a "small white farmhouse with a Joseph Cornell attic." As his contemporaries became famous, Johnson receded from view, cultivating his role as outsider while maintaining his profile by communicating via mail art and the telephone. He parodied celebrity in performances, fake openings, photocopy-machine art, lists of famous names next to obscure names, and rubber-stamped signatures such as "Collage by Joseph Cornell," or "Collage by Sherrie Levine." Johnson, referring to himself as a "mysterious and secret organization," achieved legendary status as the conscience of artists. This underground reputation prospered well into the 1980's, despite his general absence from the scene, and the gallery-going public's sketchy notions of his output. In addition to his work in collage, Johnson was also one of the first performance artists. In 1961 he initiated his "Nothings," performances conceived in response to the work of Allan Kaprow and Fluxus, and continued to stage them throughout his life. Indeed, given the carefully wrought circumstances of his suicide on Friday the 13th, 1995 -- the attention to detail like the number 13 - the way images in his life overlap images in his death has suggested drowning as his "final performance." Johnson's suicide became the first opportunity to examine his work of the previous fifty years. Stored in an eerie construction of boxes inside his house, the work was as precisely stacked as a large three-dimensional collage. With the help of Frances Beatty, Vice-President of Richard L. Feigen & Co., filmmakers Andrew Moore and John Walter spent the next six years probing the mysteries of Johnson's life and art. Their collaboration yielded the award-winning documentary, How To Draw a Bunny, released in 2003. The film examines Johnson's life, art, and ambivalent attitude toward fame. Since he was not ambivalent about friendship, the film appropriately includes interviews with friends such as artists Chuck Close, James Rosenquist, Billy Name, Peter Shuyf, and the founder of The Living Theatre, Judith Malina. A decade after his death, his network continues to develop with the participation of thousands of mail-artists. Although Johnson's death left many questions unanswered, his life's work is evidence of a powerful and original sensibility unique in the history of modern art. Courtesy of: www.rayjohnsonestate.comNew York Correspondence Schoolwww.rayjohnsonestate.com/newyork.phpAs an early and influential participant in Mail Art, Ray Johnson used the US postal system in a conceptual art practice that linked people in a wide circle of exchange. He sent objects and envelopes, sometimes with comments or instructions, to people he knew or was aware of, sometimes further implicating them in his ongoing project by asking them to send things on to specified others. In 1962 one of his correspondents, Ed Plunkett, suggested that Mail Art might be informally incorporated as the New York Correspondence School, after the matchbook advertisements for art schools in the 1950s and 60s. Johnson changed the penultimate "e" to "a," thus Correspondence to Correspondance, to suggest movement and play. Thereafter, Johnson organized meetings of the New York Correspondance School (NYCS), gatherings in which "nothing" often happened. These later became a form of performance art in which Johnson would stage an activity before an audience. On April 5, 1973, Johnson wrote to the New York Times notifying them of the demise of the New York Correspondance (sic). The letter was signed "Buddha University," with the monogram of a bunny head beneath it. Mail Art activities subsequently continued under various names, among them Buddha, Buddhette University, The Dead Pan Club, Blue Eyes Club, and Spam Radio Club. Courtesy of: www.rayjohnsonestate.com
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Post by MOW 1324 on Mar 15, 2006 9:13:02 GMT -5
WOW WOW WOW WOW
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Post by chriscank on Mar 16, 2006 20:13:54 GMT -5
Edward Weston (1886-1958) Pepper #30, 1930 Pepper, 1930 Nude, 1936 Edward Henry Weston was born March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He spent the majority of his childhood in Chicago where he attended Oakland Grammar School. He began photographing at the age of sixteen after receiving a Bull’s Eye #2 camera from his father. Weston’s first photographs captured the parks of Chicago and his aunt’s farm. In 1906, following the publication of his first photograph in Camera and Darkroom, Weston moved to California. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. He peddled his wares door to door photographing children, pets and funerals. Realizing the need for formal training, in 1908 Weston returned east and attended the Illinois College of Photography in Effington, Illinois. He completed the 12-month course in six months and returned to California. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing.) Weston married his first wife, Flora Chandler in 1909. He had four children with Flora; Edward Chandler (1910), Theodore Brett (1911), Laurence Neil (1916) and Cole (1919). In 1911, Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. This would be his base of operation for the next two decades. Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons and professional awards. Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies. Articles about his work were published in magazines such as American Photography, Photo Era and Photo Miniature. Weston also authored many articles himself for many of these publications. In 1912, Weston met photographer Margrethe Mather in his Tropico studio. Mather becomes his studio assistant and most frequent model for the next decade. Mather had a very strong influence on Weston. He would later call her, “the first important woman in my life.” Weston began keeping journals in 1915 that came to be known as his "Daybooks." They would chronicle his life and photographic development into the 1930’s. In 1922 Weston visited the ARMCO Steel Plant in Middletown, Ohio. The photographs taken here marked a turning point in Weston’s career. During this period, Weston renounced his Pictorialism style with a new emphasis on abstract form and shaper resolution of detail. The industrial photographs were true straight images: unpretentious, and true to reality. Weston later wrote, “The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” Weston also traveled to New York City this same year, where he met Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler and Georgia O’Keefe. In 1923 Weston moved to Mexico City where he opened a photographic studio with his apprentice and lover Tina Modotti. Many important portraits and nudes were taken during his time in Mexico. It was also here that famous artists; Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco hailed Weston as the master of 20th century art. After moving back to California in 1926, Weston began his work for which he is most deservedly famous: natural forms, close-ups, nudes, and landscapes. Between 1927 and 1930, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpture-like forms. Weston moved to Carmel, California in 1929 and shot the first of many photographs of rocks and trees at Point Lobos, California. Weston became one of the founding members of Group f/64 in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and Sonya Noskowiak. The group chose this optical term because they habitually set their lenses to that aperture to secure maximum image sharpness of both foreground and distance. 1936 marked the start of Weston’s series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are often considered some of his finest work. Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental work in 1936. Following the receipt of this fellowship Weston spent the next two years taking photographs in the West and Southwest United States with assistant and future wife Charis Wilson. Later, in 1941 using photographs of the East and South Weston provided illustrations for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Weston began experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in 1946 and in 1948 shot his last photograph of Point Lobos. In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art, New York featured a major retrospective of 300 prints of Weston’s work. Over the next 10 years of progressively incapacitating illness, Weston supervised the printing of his prints by his sons, Brett and Cole. His 50th Anniversary Portfolio was published in 1952 with photographs printed by Brett. An even larger printing project took place between1952 and 1955. Brett printed what was known as the Project Prints. A series of 8 -10 prints from 832 negatives considered Edward's lifetime best. The Smithsonian Institution held the show, “The World of Edward Weston” in 1956 paying tribute to his remarkable accomplishments in American photography. Edward Weston died on January 1, 1958 at his home, Wildcat Hill, in Carmel, California. Weston's ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Pebbly Beach at Point Lobos. Courtesy of: www.edward-weston.com©Copyright 2005 - Cole Weston. All Rights Reserved. Images courtesy of: www.westongallery.com
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Post by chriscank on Mar 17, 2006 11:31:44 GMT -5
James Joyce (1882-1941) Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed indulgently her hand), soft pedalling a triple of keys to see the thickness of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall of action. Two sheets cream vellum paper on reserve two envelopes when I was in Wisdom Hely's wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Are you not happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meets after mass. Tanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: love-lorn. For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jauntingcar. It is. Third time. Coincidence. --from Ulysses A Timeline of the Life of James Joyce 1882 Joyce is born in Rathgar, Dublin on February 2nd 1888 Begins school at Conglowes Wood College 1893 Goes to Belvedere College 1899 Begins college at University College, Dublin 1900 Publishes 'Ibsen's New Drama' 1901 'The Day of the Rabblement' is published 1902 Joyce makes his first trip to Paris 1903 Joyce's mother, Mary Jane Joyce, dies 1904 Elopes with Nora; begins sketching A Portrait 1905 Giorgio, James and Nora's son, is born; they move to Trieste 1906 Live briefly in Rome; Most likely date of writing of Stephen Hero 1907 Lucia, James and Nora's daughter, is born; they move back to Trieste; Chamber Music is published 1911 Gives lectures on Shakespeare in Trieste 1914 Dubliners published; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is serialized in The Egoist 1915 The Joyces move to Zürich; work on Ulysses resumes; Exiles is written 1916 A Portrait is published in the United States 1917 A Portrait is published in Britain 1918 The serialization of Ulysses in The Little Review begins 1920 The Joyce's move to Paris and the serialization of EM>Ulysses stops 1922 Ulysses is published in Paris 1924 The first section of Work in Progress is published in Transatlantic Review I 1927 Poems Pennyeach is published 1939 Finnegans Wake is published 1941 Joyce dies in Zürich at the age of 59 Courtesy of:James Joyce Resource Center english.osu.edu/organizations/ijjf/jrc/default.htm
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Post by chriscank on Mar 19, 2006 12:37:47 GMT -5
Chuck Jones(1912 - 2002) "Animation isn't the illusion of life, it is life." --Chuck Jones Cuddly As A Cactus - Image Dimensions: 17.25 x 12 Dutch Seaport In a career spanning over 60 years, Jones made more than 300 animated films, winning three Oscars as director and in 1996 an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. Among the many awards and recognitions, one of those most valued was the honorary life membership from the Directors Guild of America. During the Golden Age of animation Jones helped bring to life many of Warner Bros. most famous characters—Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig. The list of characters he created himself includes Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin Martian, Pepe le Pew, Michigan J. Frog and many others. He also produced, directed and wrote the screenplays for "Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas," a television classic, as well as the feature-length film "The Phantom Tollbooth." In addition, Jones was a prolific artist whose work has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide. Jones often recalled a small child who, when told that Jones drew Bugs Bunny, replied: "He doesn’t draw Bugs Bunny. He draws pictures of Bugs Bunny." His point was that the child thought of the character as being alive and believable, which was, in Jones’ belief, the key to true character animation. Born on September 21, 1912 in Spokane, Washington, Jones grew up in Hollywood where he observed the talents of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and worked occasionally as a child extra in Mac Sennett comedies. After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (now California Institute of the Arts) Jones drew pencil portraits for a dollar a piece on Olvera Street. Then, in 1932, he got his first job in the fledgling animation industry as a cel washer for former Disney animator, Ubbe Iwerks. It was at Iwerks Productions that he met Dorothy Webster, to whom he was married in 1932. In 1936 Jones was hired by Friz Freleng as an animator for the Leon Schlesinger Studio (later sold to Warner Bros.). Jones admired and revered Freleng for the rest of his life, saying, "No one except Tex Avery had as perfect a sense of timing as did Friz Freleng." In 1937 his daughter, Linda, was born, and in 1938 he directed his first film, The Night Watchman. He worked with and for directorsTex Avery and Bob Clampett until the early forties when they left the studio, and for the remainder of his years at Warner Bros. he worked in parallel with Directors Freleng and Robert McKimson. He remained at Warner Bros. until the studio was closed in 1962. During those years, sometimes referred to later as the Golden Years of Warner Bros. animation, arguably some of the most enduring cartoons ever made were produced; most of them still enjoying worldwide recognition daily. When Warner Bros. closed, and after a very short stay at the Disney Studios, Jones moved to MGM Studios, where he created new episodes from the Tom and Jerry cartoon series. While there, in addition to The Phantom Tollbooth and Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Jones directed the Academy Award winning film, The Dot and the Line. Jones established his own production company, Chuck Jones Enterprises, in 1962 and produced nine half-hour animation films for television including Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi and The White Seal. After the death of his first wife, Jones met and married the love of his life, Marian Dern, who remained his best friend, lover and companion for the rest of his life. In the late 70s Jones and his daughter, Linda, pioneered a continuing art business featuring limited edition images created by Jones depicting scenes from his most enduring cartoons. He continued to support his daughter’s business, generously making appearances, drawings and paintings, in addition to signing countless editions of images, which continue to delight collectors and fans worldwide. One of his films, the Wagnerian mini epic, What’s Opera, Doc? was inducted into the National Film Registry for being "among the most culturally, historically and aesthetically significant films of our time." In recent years, Jones’ work has been honored at film festivals and museums throughout the world, including a one-man retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His autobiography, Chuck Amuck, appeared in 1989, now in its fifth printing. Chuck Reducks, his follow-up to the first book, was published two years later. In 2000, Jones established the Chuck Jones Foundation, designed to recognize, support and inspire continued excellence in art and the art of classic character animation. Plans for the Foundation include scholarships, library resources, touring exhibits, a lecture series and access to film, notes and drawings. Director Peter Bogdanovich once explained the enduring appeal of Jones’ work: "It remains, like all good fables and only the best art, both timeless and universal." After hearing that Jones had died, a four-year-old child asked her mother, between sobs, "Does this mean the bunny won’t be in the barber chair any more?" The answer is, "No, the bunny will be in the barber chair forever." Manhattan Beach Courtesy of: www.chuckjones.com
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Post by JOE on Mar 19, 2006 13:44:44 GMT -5
Chuck Jones is the KING!
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Post by chriscank on Mar 20, 2006 2:58:59 GMT -5
Hieronymus, or Jerome, Bosch(1450-1516) "The master of the monstrous... the discoverer of the unconscious." -- Carl Gustav Jung, on Hieronymus Bosch Arras, Bibliothèque Municipal Arras Perhaps a self portrait of Bosch at an advanced age. It is assumed this portrait was done shortly before his death in 1516. Courtesy of: www.craigsweb.com/bosch.htmThe Ship Of Fools Illustrated allegories In The Ship of Fools Bosch is imagining that the whole of mankind is voyaging through the seas of time on a ship, a small ship, that is representative of humanity. Sadly, every one of the representatives is a fool. This is how we live, says Bosch--we eat, dring, flirt, cheat, play silly games, pursue unattainable objectives. Meanwhile our ship drifts aimlessly and we never reach the harbour. The fools are not the irreligious, since promiment among them are a monk and a nun, but they are all those who live ``in stupidity''. Bosch laughs, and it is sad laugh. Which one of us does not sail in the wretched discomfort of the ship of human folly? Eccentric and secret genius that he was, Bosch not only moved the heart but scandalized it into full awareness. The sinister and monstrous things that he brought forth are the hidden creatures of our inward self-love: he externalizes the ugliness within, and so his misshapen demons have an effect beyond curiosity. We feel a hateful kinship with them. The Ship of Fools is not about other people, it is about us. The Garden Of Earthly Delights (Central Panel) Hieronymus, or Jerome, Bosch spent his entire artistic career in the small Dutch town of Hertogenbosch, from which he derived his name. At the time of his death, Bosch was internationally celebrated as an eccentric painter of religious visions who dealt in particular with the torments of hell. During his lifetime Bosch's works were in the inventories of noble families of the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and they were imitated in a number of paintings and prints throughout the 16th century, especially in the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bosch was a member of the religious Brotherhood of Our Lady, for whom he painted several altarpieces for the Cathedral of Saint John's, Hertogenbosch, all of which are now lost. The artist probably never went far from home, although records exist of a commission in 1504 from Philip the Handsome (later king of Castile), for a lost Last Judgment altarpiece. None of Bosch's pictures are dated, although the artist signed many of them. Paradise and Hell c. 1510 (170 Kb); Left and right panels of a triptych: oil on wood, Each panel 135 x 45 cm (53 1/4 x 17 3/4 in); Prado, Madrid The greatest Netherlandish artist of the period are not found among the adherents of the New Style but among those who, like Grunewald in Germany, refused to be drawn into the modern movement from the South. In the Dutch town of Hertogenbosch there lived such a painter, who was called Hieronymous Bosch. Very little is known about him. We do not know how old he was when he died in 1516, but he must have been active for a considerable time since he became an independent master in 1486. Like Grunewald, Bosch showed that the traditions and achievements of painting which had been developed to represent reality most convincingly could be turned round, as it were, to give us an equally plausible picture of things no human eye had seen. He became famous for his terrifying representations of the powers of evil. Perhaps it is no accident that the gloomy King Philip II of Spain, later in the century, had a special predilection for this artist, who was so much concerned with man's wickedness. The picture shows two wings from one of Bosch's triptychs he bought and which is therefore still in Spain. On the left we watch evil invading the world. The creation of Eve is followed by the temptation of Adam and both are driven out of Paradise, while high above in the sky we see the fall of the rebellious angels, who are hurled from heaven as a swarm of repulsive insects. On the other wing we are shown a vision of hell. There we see horror piled upon horror, fires and torments and all manner of fearful demons, half animal, half human or half machine, who plague and punish the poor sinful souls for all eternity. For the first and perhaps for the only time, an artist had succeeded in giving concrete and tangible shape to the fears that had haunted the minds of man in the Middle Ages. It was an achievement which was perhaps only possible at this very moment, when the old ideas were still vigorous and yet the modern spirit had provided the artist with methods of representing what he saw. Perhaps Hieronymus Bosch could have written on one of his paintings of hell what Jan van Eyck wrote on his peaceful scene of the Arnolfinis' betrothal: 'I was there'. Courtesy of:Web Museum, Paris www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/
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Post by Josh on Mar 20, 2006 18:09:08 GMT -5
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Post by chriscank on Mar 21, 2006 11:49:40 GMT -5
Bob Ross(Oct. 29, 1942 - July 4, 1995) "Barn At Sunset" "Cactus At Sunset" Bob Ross his love for nature was overwelming. Sometimes he shared his joy of nature with us by bringing animals with him in the studio. "We don't make mistakes here, we just have happy accidents. We want happy, happy paintings. If you want sad things, watch the news. Everything is possible here. This is your little universe." --Bob Ross Bob Ross was a grandmaster American oil painter who primarily practiced the finer, more respectable arts of relaxation and kindness. His quiet, nurturing disposition was a form of therapy to the weary, and the reassuring intonations of his gentle voice hypnotized entire generations of would-be illustrators into creating a million-dollar art supply store enterprise. His PBS series The Joy of Painting duped viewers around the globe into believing they too could create impeccable rectangles of content suitable for framing in just under twenty-six minutes. For this reason, it's no wonder The Joy of Painting is the most recognized and studied art show in the history of television. Ross's light, experimental excursions through nature and beyond have thrived since 1983 on over 300 public television stations -- a phenomenal achievement for programs of this genre. Every thirty minutes, on a public TV station somewhere in the United States, Bob Ross is just starting (or just finishing up) another masterpiece. The phrase "harmless international cult" certainly applies. Foreign distribution of The Joy of Painting began in 1992. Responsive audience members armed themselves with palette knives, brush beater racks and base coats across the United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Turkey, Iran, Hong Kong, Costa Rica and Germany. The Bob Ross machine continues to be an unstoppable force, as many of his original broadcasts tickle people's imaginations from the safety of a VCR or DVD player. What television neighbor Fred Rogers does for the lonely, alienated child, Bob Ross does for the isolated, emotionally unavailable adult. Or at least a person who considers his own existence to be more of a mistake than a happy accident. He accomplishes in mere minutes what it's taken Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and the Deepak Chopracabra a lifetime to fail at. "We tell people sometimes: we're like drug dealers. We come into town and get everybody absolutely addicted to painting. It doesn't take much to get you addicted," Ross says while touching up the branches on a birch tree with Titanium White. He gestures toward a limb with his angled sponge brush: "That's where the crows will sit. We'll have to install an elevator to get 'em up there because they can't fly. They don't know that, but they still try." Not a tremendous amount is known about Ross's youth, but he spent most of it in Daytona Beach, Florida. He mentions from time to time his childhood pets: an alligator who constantly chomped at Ross's fingers until finally it was set loose, and an armadillo who "tore up" everything in his father's carpentry workshop. He intuited that painting could change a person's life in much the same way people gravitate toward music, writing, or gardening. Following a brief career in the U.S. Air Force, Ross started to develop a quick-study oil painting technique meant to appeal to the masses. By distilling the artistic process into steps and keeping the number of colors to a minimum, he grew to be one of the few artists whose name is associated with the "wet on wet" technique: the progressive addition of oil or watercolor to a canvas without wasting enormous amounts of time waiting for content to dry. "Little bit of black, a little bit of blue.. some criss-cross strokes, or little x's, whatever you want to call them. Whatever. There you go." His half-hour television performances unspooled before the cameras in more or less real time. The only sequences edited out were bloopers: his enormous house painting brush had a habit of knocking the canvas off its easel while Ross rhythmically dap-dap-dappled fall colors onto sycamore trees. And there were intermissions between strokes -- ranging anywhere from five minutes to an hour -- so layered undercoats of white or black gesso were allowed to dry. Not everything has to be "wet on wet," of course. This is your universe; feel free to experiment with hilly landscapes dotted with craggly trees, lush meadows, or snow-dusted farmhouse panoramas suitable for abandoning in a thrift store. While some folks distract themselves toting iPods of shitty music around like colostomy bags, others prefer to remain focused on a cardboard canvas with a modest fan brush. Bob Ross was like a chef on the Food network capable of turning an ungreased cookie sheet into white chocolate cheesecake with caramelized apples on the side, simply by producing from under the counter a time-lapsed version prepared prior to taping. Viewers sometimes felt like they were left standing in their kitchens without a VCR, struggling to follow along. The real reason folks at home couldn't immediately replicate his paintings? Ross infused about thirty years of practice into every stroke. As he streaked his flat, disposable foam brush down the entire length of the canvas to paint the soft craggling of a birch, he'd pause to "dirty" his instrument on the palette so the painting would look better on television. By loading the bristles in a deliberate, gradated manner which took into account the fractal nature of bark patterns, or the leafy, hyperkinetic color schema of fall, or the predetermined uniform direction of celestial light sources, he was able to provide as much instruction as one could possibly telegraph into a video camera. Bob Ross historian and former business associate Annette Kowalski (along with her husband Walt and their daughter) presently run Bob Ross Incorporated from the quiet, secret suburbs of Washington, D.C. People clamor for his books and videotapes, his brushes and paints, his discarded dropclothes. What kind of easel does he use? What's gesso? They want to know everything, and they're prepared to put it all down on their Discover card. The Bob Ross empire leverages no small degree of delicate sorrow from its participants: often audience members fall in love with Ross before they realize he's been dead since 1995. Viewers who maintain emotionally wrenching, co-dependent television relationships with him latch onto him even harder once they discover he's "not here" any longer. They simply cannot let go. Nearly twenty-four hours a day, a team of four operators fields calls from American viewers. Overseas sales are handled abroad. An army of dedicated, enthusiastic would-be painters strive to populate our world with the Bob Ross aesthetic. His namesake company has recruited and trained over 2000 art teachers, all of whom proudly wear the "Bob Ross Certified" logo, and all of them capable of delineating the proper technique for landscapes, wildlife, and flowers. Students have been known to pay $375.00 for an hour of instruction in the Bob Ross technique. Co-owner Walt Kowalski: "The vast majority of people do have a private urge to be creative. Generally speaking, people think you have to be blessed with talent to be a painter. I think we've pretty much reversed that whole notion." After Bob Ross died at the age of 52, the majority of his original oil paintings were donated to charity or PBS stations. Courtesy of: www.rotten.com/library/bio/artists/bob-ross/Elegy for Bob Ross by Robert J. McCaffery Jr. Checked shirt, easy jeans, gleam of his buckle under easel, Bob's slouched at his canvas. As always, he'll start with the top and work down (but never so low we'll see his feet, as Bob's in his socks). For half-an-hour, he won't turn his back to us fully –because– as he says, Painting is not just for the chosen few. Over his shoulder, we see his fan-brush –four swift strokes– shade out a mountain. This is something you can do, he says. In ten minutes: foothills, the beginning of a forest. How many trees? Bob wonders, tapping his one-inch brush on his palette. Nature doesn't like even numbers, but put in as many trees as it takes to make you happy. Trees need friends too. As his hand floats over the canvas his soft blender-brush barely touches, Bob says, Reflection is one of the most beautiful things in this world and the simplest to do; there's a rhythm to glossing his placid lake: light, like the whisk of a breath on the skin of the paint. In one of Bob's lymph-nodes, a tendril, a complex acid, loops inside a cell, and grows, and will not die, begins to gnaw. Bob daubs his brow. Something bothers you? Change it, he hums, as he flecks some berries on a bush. This is your world; you control it. See? Maybe a little path lives right here, a happy little path. Bob loads up his knife with dark sienna, scrapes with its flat to lay down his path; his strokes grow longer and broader as they come towards him. Then he touches in Indian yellow, using so little pressure his path's wet paint just breaks. There are no mistakes, says Bob, only happy accidents, and says it so sincerely, I want to believe him Copyrighted © by Robert J McCaffery Jr.
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Post by chriscank on Mar 22, 2006 15:22:07 GMT -5
Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin(June 7, 1848-May 8, 1903) Portrait de l'artiste (Self-portrait)c. 1893-94 (210 Kb); Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm (18 1/8 x 15 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris Les Alyscamps, Arles1888 (170 Kb); Oil on canvas, 91 x 72 cm (35 7/8 x 28 3/8 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris Femmes de Tahiti [Sur la plage] (Tahitian Women [On the Beach])1891 (150 Kb); Oil on canvas, 69 x 91 cm (27 1/8 x 35 7/8 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris Nave, Nave Moe (Miraculous Source)1894; Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Gauguin, (Eugène-Henri-) Paul (b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr.--d. May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia), one of the leading French painters of the Postimpressionist period, whose development of a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. After spending a short period with Vincent van Gogh in Arles (1888), Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for expressiveness through colour. From 1891 he lived and worked in Tahiti and elsewhere in the South Pacific. His masterpieces include the early Vision After the Sermon (1888) and Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98). Although his main achievements were to lie elsewhere, Gauguin was, to use a fanciful metaphor, nursed in the bosom of Impressionism. His attitudes to art were deeply influenced by his experience of its first exhibition, and he himself participated in those of 1880, 1881 and 1882. The son of a French journalist and a Peruvian Creole, whose mother had been a writer and a follower of Saint-Simon, he was brought up in Lima, joined the merchant navy in 1865, and in 1872 began a successful career as a stockbroker in Paris. In 1874 he saw the first Impressionist exhibition, which completely entranced him and confirmed his desire to become a painter. He spent some 17,000 francs on works by Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir and Guillaumin. Pissarro took a special interest in his attempts at painting, emphasizing that he should `look for the nature that suits your temperament', and in 1876 Gauguin had a landscape in the style of Pissarro accepted at the Salon. In the meantime Pissarro had introduced him to Cézanne, for whose works he conceived a great respect---so much so that the older man began to fear that he would steal his `sensations'. All three worked together for some time at Pontoise, where Pissarro and Gauguin drew pencil sketches of each other (Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre). In 1883-84 the bank that employed him got into difficulties and Gauguin was able to paint every day. He settled for a while in Rouen, partly because Paris was too expensive for a man with five children, partly because he thought it would be full of wealthy patrons who might buy his works. Rouen proved a disappointment, and he joined his wife Mette and children, who had gone back to Denmark, where she had been born. His experience of Denmark was not a happy one and, having returned to Paris, he went to paint in Pont-Aven, a well-known resort for artists. Vision After the Sermon, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel1888; National Gallery of Scotland; As its name suggests, Gauguin's work was concerned with inner rather than external truth. He combined stylized images of Breton figures in a shallow pictorial space with a 'vision' in the top right corner. Thus the 'real' and imagined worlds depicted, are separated by the strong, diagonal of the tree, which was inspired by Japanese prints. Like the Impressionists, Gauguin studied Japanese prints and even adopted their use of bold, flat areas of solid color. The figures are distributed unconventionally, cut off and framing the canvas edge at the left and in the foreground. No identifiable source of light is used, a device which looks forward to developments in Fauvism. The White Horse
1898; Louvre, Paris Although Gauguin was settled in Tahiti when he painted this superb picture, it does not primarily suggest a local connection but rather a final outcome of the sense of newly tapped powers in color and new sensations to be derived from it that had been the preoccupation of a whole half-century. The seed of Impressionism, it might be said, expanded here into a marvellous exotic bloom. The color, however, is no longer descriptive or atmospheric but makes an impact on the senses akin to that of music. The white horse itself suggests some creature of heroic fable, yet while it shares this appearance of belonging to an imaginary world with the riders in the background, the picture had its basis in Polynesian reality. The inhabitants used horses as a means of transport in the absence of roads and bridges. Bengt Danielsson, the anthropologist and historian, in his book Gauguin in the South Seas, makes this remark with special reference to the Marquesas where `everyone still rides a horse from the bishop down to the smallest native boy'. Gauguin did not move to the Marquesas until 1901 but as this picture shows the native horsemanship had already caught his attention. All pictures and text courtesy of: www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gauguin/
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