Jeff Haynes put this video together. Enjoy!
Dublin Nouveau
The Art Nouveau architectural/decorative movement of roughly 1890-1910 had considerable impact in several cities in the northern half of Europe: Prague, Riga, Brussels, Budapest and Paris quickly come to mind as boasting notable structures designed in that idiom.
One place Art Nouveau passed by was Dublin, Ireland. Now there might indeed be an Art Nouveau style building someplace in the town, but if there was, I missed it during three full days of traipsing around the city in August.
All was not lost! A helpful guidebook directed us to Dawson Street and the Café en Seine, a pub gloriously decorated with Art Nouveau style objects.
Take a look at some photos I took:
Jack B., the Other Yeats
The grave in my photo above is that of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), author, poet and sometime politician. It is in the yard of a Protestant church in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, Republic of Ireland. You might well have heard of him.
But I'm not sure many readers outside of Ireland know of his brother, Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) who, like their father, was a painter (Wikipedia entry here and further biographical information here). I wasn't aware of him until I visited the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin a short while ago where significant space was devoted to his works, perhaps in part because he was appointed Governor of the organization in 1939.
Yeats earned a living by illustration and cartooning until he was well into his 40s, though he began exhibiting paintings around 1906, according to Wikipedia. By the 1920s, while in his 50s, his style became increasingly influenced by Modernism, though he never quite embraced pure abstraction, so far as I can tell from a Google search of his images.
Here are some paintings from various parts of his career.
This shows flowers being placed in memory of a nationalist shot by British troops
Two Dublin scenes painted the same year (the Liffey is a river flowing through the heart of Dublin). Yeats' style is becoming more free with less attention paid to shapes of the objects depicted.
Four years later, he features the Liffey again in a view from the main bridge crossing it. Further distortion of subject matter.
By the late 30s Yeats's style evolved to something like Impressionism where scenes were made up of tangles of brushstrokes of various colors.
Further evolution to the point that objects are difficult to distinguish at all.
Despite the great local attention devoted to Yeats' paintings, I found them unappealing messes, in particular those done from the late 1920s onward. But then, my ancestry is Irish at the very margin, so perhaps that's why I don't "get" his art.
Galbraith's Pampered Women
William Galbraith Crawford (1894-1978) was a cartoonist / illustrator who left many examples of his work, but little trace of his personal life if Google search results are any indication.
Walt Reed in his book "The Illustrator in America" states that Crawford (who signed his work "Galbraith") was Born in Salt Lake City and attended Brigham Young University for two years before going on to the Art Students League and other art schools. Much of his career was devoted to the "Side Glances" single-panel newspaper cartoon that he took over from George Clark in 1939.
I am more partial to some cartoons he did for The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s that featured glamorous young ladies who were often being kept by rich, older men. My reason is that Galbraith did a really nice job of drawing them.
Below are some examples. The first one is a World War 2 vintage "Side Glances" panel. The others are crude scans I made from my copy of "The New Yorker 25th Anniversary Album" from 1950. Even though the images are more than 70 years old, I assume that Condé Nast holds the copyright, and therefore is given credit here.
I could not find a caption for this cartoon. I include it to show Galbraith's post-New Yorker style.
For some reason (probably having to do with the image as it appeared in the book as opposed to the magazine) we have a waffle background pattern. The best that I, not a scanning jock, could manage.
James J. ("Jimmy") Walker was New York City's bon-vivant mayor 1926-32 who had to resign due to scandal.
I think this is the best-drawn of the lot. The poses and details strike me as being spot-on.
Hidden Treasures of the Kingdom Part Two
 |
| With Torli from Liberia |
On August 25 the Emmanuel Gospel Center introduced to us four people working in the Greater Boston area as missionaries. I told you about PoSan Ung from Cambodia last time. This time I will tell you about Torli Krua from Liberia, a country torn by civil war, as violent and horrific as many other wars you learn about in the African continent. It is the country featured in the movie Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about which I blogged a while ago. Fully half of the population fled to other countries during that time. A small percentage came to the USA as refugees and Torli was among them. He is an engineer, and has worked in a number of countries as such, but he left all that to become a helper of his people. He shares his passion for entrepreneurship, education, and Christ by reaching others who come here from other nations. He works tirelessly as a guiding voice against Christian complacency, and offers workshops on such topics to any church willing to listen. He is co-founder of Young-Africa http://www.uhrionline.org/ which focuses on giving the youth of Liberia better education and Godly hope. Having Mr. Krua speak to your group will be inspiring without a doubt!
Many people came a long way to attend this gathering. Pictured above are highly educated men, some in medicine and others work as professors in the Boston area; Pastor Michael Mendoabor of Liberia, Dr. Roland Matsouaka of Congo, Dr. Wallace Massah of Liberia and others. Watch below to see Torli in action.
Sterility-on-the-Clyde
Glasgow, Scotland experienced rapid growth in the 19th century due to its emergence as an industrial center. A major industry there was (and to a lesser extent today is) shipbuilding along the River Clyde. The Clyde also served as a shipping point for other goods produced in Glasgow. But that too has declined, sections of the river's banks becoming stretches of underused warehouses and other structures related to commerce. The result of this decline is the extensive urban renewal I witnessed in August.
As is usual elsewhere, this renewal has been in the form of stripping an area nearly bare of previous structures and replacing them with dull open spaces dotted with Modernist structures that are visually and scale-relatedly unwelcoming to human beings. They are either simple Modernist boxes or "dramatic" shapes that are presumably intended to be large-scale sculptures.
Here are some early morning photos I took while tracking down the location of the car rental firm I needed to get to the next day. From end-to-end, the distance from the first to the last structures shown is probably around half a mile (less than 1 kilometer).
I suppose all this is an improvement over decaying warehouses or whatever used to sit next to the Clyde, but I find it depressing. The real Glasgow lies a short distance north of the river and to me it's an enjoyable place to visit. If you ever travel to Scotland, give it a try.
Forest Fires of Greenland 3
Forest Fires of Kalaallit Nunaat
I created 2 simple ink & watercolor paintings, each of a driftwood stick with Greenlandic lichens. One of them traveled with a different group to the scientific camp NEEM, which is further north and on the top of the Greenland ice cap. There, its paints were partially dissolved in glacial meltwaters there and photographed about the base. The 2nd painting is its companion, traveled with the Chasing the Light Expedition, and was also partially dissolved in glacial waters, where more green paints were released. Like its companion painting, my hope is that they evoke the "greening" of the polar landscape, and its advance northward along the Greenland ice, from Disko Bay towards Thule. Both paintings were later partially burned by my collaborators. Why? If forests do advance into Greenland, eventually normal forest ecologies will be established on this currently treeless "continent-island"-- which would include the normal forest ecological cycles of forest fires. These two "twinned" artworks will be iidentified by their GPS locations, be framed and shown together in future exhibitions, and be shown along with photographs of the artworks placed on a Greenland beach and in the NEEM research station.
Forest Fires of Greenland 2
Taken on a beach on the West Coast of Greenland in July 2012.
Photos by Lisa Forman, with collaboration with the astounding members of the Chasing the Light Expedition (see the FB page!) To her, my deepest gratitude!
First step-- The "Greening of the Arctic" as climate change advances by diluting the extra watercolor paint on the branch painting by dousing with glacial waters.
My statement about the project:
Forest Fires of Kalaallit Nunaat
I created 2 simple ink & watercolor paintings, each of a driftwood stick with Greenlandic lichens. One of them traveled with a different group to the scientific camp NEEM, which is further north and on the top of the Greenland ice cap. There, its paints were partially dissolved in glacial meltwaters there and photographed about the base. The 2nd painting is its companion, traveled with the Chasing the Light Expedition, and was also partially dissolved in glacial waters, where more green paints were released. Like its companion painting, my hope is that they evoke the "greening" of the polar landscape, and its advance northward along the Greenland ice, from Disko Bay towards Thule. Both paintings were later partially burned by my collaborators. Why? If forests do advance into Greenland, eventually normal forest ecologies will be established on this currently treeless "continent-island"-- which would include the normal forest ecological cycles of forest fires. These two "twinned" artworks will be iidentified by their GPS locations, be framed and shown together in future exhibitions, and be shown along with photographs of the artworks placed on a Greenland beach and in the NEEM research station.
Forest Fires of Greenland
To her my deep gratitude.
Zaria says of this: "Beautiful painting by Diane Fiedler. She gave it to us to "deploy" in Greenland, with explicit directions to burn and then splash with glacier water before it was entirely destroyed. The burning part was tricky with damp paper and strong winds!"
Snowy Owl
The photo of snow-covered mountain peaks from Chasing the Light Expedition Facebook pages have reminded me of a this watercolor of mine of a snowy owl with an aurora borealis. Snowy owls are very close to my loft in South Boston-- just across the harbor at LOGAN AIRPORT! It is a favorite stop along their migration route to and from the Arctic. See more about Audubon's Snowy Owl Project, which has tagged hundreds of owls, at the Snowy Owl Telemetry Project:
Unfortunately,
Snowy Owls love airports."
Polar Bear Effigies painting floating in Disko Bay
Gerald Festus Kelly, Traditional Portrait Artist
The photo above is of Sir Gerald Festus Kelly (1879-1972) painting Edith Teresa Hulton, wife of the 8th Lord Berwick, with the (circa 1923) finished painting shown below it. As you might see, Kelly was a skilled realist and, as his Wikipedia (entry) indicates, had a successful career. Unlike most artists of his time, he had a strong, elite, formal education, attending Eton and Cambridge before heading to Paris to study art.
Despite his social connections, skills and success, Kelly seems little known today. After I finished scooping up examples of his work for this post, I noticed that the earliest one was painted when he was about 40. No doubt earlier works can be located, but it makes me wonder what he was doing artistically before 1919; Wikipedia offers no clue.
Kelly's career overlapped and then extended beyond those of Philip de Laszlo (1869-1937), John Lavery (1856-1941), and William Orpen (1878-1931) who stepped into the British portrait scene after John Singer Sargent phased out that aspect of his career. This placed him at a time when Modernism was rapidly gaining ascendancy in the intellectual class, and traditionalist painters such as Kelly were dismissed as dull-witted copyists of nature. Snap conclusion: born at a fairly good time to have a decent commercial career but a bad time in terms of artistic reputation-building.
Examples of Kelly's work are shown below. Not shown are some not-safe-for-work nudes. To view those, you'll have to Google on his name and switch into "Images."
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An unfinished portrait. There's another one farther down as further fodder for readers interested in technique.
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The Roman numeral indicates that this was one of a series of paintings.
Again, one of a series.
Wikipedia indicates that Kelly was a favorite of the Royals. This painting of Queen Elizabeth was made shortly after her husband, George VI, became King.
The composer in his later years; Kelly also painted him earlier.
I include this to show how Kelly worked up at least some of his portraits. Like the "Jane" above, he was of the do-the-face-first school rather than following the practice of continually working over the entire canvas surface to retain "balance."
500,000
Sometime today, 19 September 2012, the 500,000th page view will be registered for this blog.
Thank you for visiting here.
Del maestro para nosotros
Me tomé el atrevimiento de publicar una carta que me envió el maestro Alberto Hijar Serrano como comentario sobre mi publicación sobre el encuentro en La Paz, y a continuación publiqué un artículo sobre dicho mural de Siqueiros en Chile. M.C.
Querido Marcelo:
Agradezco que parte de la celebración sea compartirla. Por la foto de Bolivia se ve numeroso el grupo en el que solo cuento dos mujeres y un enmascarado. Estoy seguro que lo de Godoy-Cruz será enriquecedor. Ayer domingo celebré el aniversario del inicio de la Revolución de Independencia con una larga entrevista de unos investigadores chilenos avecindados en Los Ángeles sobre Siqueiros. Al final fotografiaron un poco de todos los impresos que exhibí y grabaron el poema de Neruda cantado por Yolocamba Ita y se emocionaron al saber que el último mural de Siqueiros, por cierto no figurativo con cactus del desierto de Atacama, se llama Copiapó y fue inaugurado en 1973 por Siqueiros, Salvador Allende y el entonces presidente siempre criminal Luis Echeverria. Celebremos, como dicen los católicos en sus reuniones. Saludos
Alberto Híjar
"COPIAPÓ"BEATRIZ RAMÍREZ GONZÁLEZ
Cronista de Iztapalapa
cronistabrg@msn.com
cronistabrg@msn.com
Octubre 15, 2010
En estos días se volvió gran noticia el rescate de 33 mineros, después de más de dos meses de estar atrapados en la Mina de cobre y oro de San José, en el Desierto de Atacama, al norte de Chile.
Al rescatarlos fueron llevados al hospital de la ciudad cercana de Copiapó. “Allí ocurrió un milagro”, aseguró el alcalde Maglio Cicardini. “El milagro del rescate, el milagro de dar a conocer a Copiapó”, un nombre que en quechua significa Copa de oro.
Al escuchar este nombre recordé un mural de Siqueiros que conocí en febrero de 2003, pintado en la Escuela Primaria Copiapó de la Unidad Habitacional Vicente Guerrero.
La planeación y edificación de esta Unidad se inició a finales de los años 60´s y las primeras viviendas fueron entregadas en 1970.
El 1º. de diciembre de 1972 el entonces Presidente de Chile, Salvador Allende, visitó la Unidad con motivo de la inauguración de la primera escuela secundaria, acto que sirvió de escenario para dar por terminados los trabajos de construcción de las viviendas por el Gobierno del Departamento del Distrito Federal en Iztapalapa.
La Secundaria lleva el nombre del Presidente chileno, quien inauguró también las otras escuelas de la Unidad.
Junto al mural de Siqueiros hay una placa con la siguiente leyenda:
"En 1863, cuando nuestro país fue víctima de una injusta intervención, los habitantes de Copiapó, capital de la Provincia de Atacama, de la hermana República de Chile, hicieron sentir su fraternal apoyo al Presidente Juárez y a los mexicanos. En reconocimiento a tan conmovedora muestra de solidaridad, esta escuela lleva el nombre de COPIAPÓ.
1º. de diciembre de 1972
Año de Juárez
Salvador Allende 1908-1973."
En estos días se volvió gran noticia el rescate de 33 mineros, después de más de dos meses de estar atrapados en la Mina de cobre y oro de San José, en el Desierto de Atacama, al norte de Chile.
Al rescatarlos fueron llevados al hospital de la ciudad cercana de Copiapó. “Allí ocurrió un milagro”, aseguró el alcalde Maglio Cicardini. “El milagro del rescate, el milagro de dar a conocer a Copiapó”, un nombre que en quechua significa Copa de oro.
Al escuchar este nombre recordé un mural de Siqueiros que conocí en febrero de 2003, pintado en la Escuela Primaria Copiapó de la Unidad Habitacional Vicente Guerrero.
La planeación y edificación de esta Unidad se inició a finales de los años 60´s y las primeras viviendas fueron entregadas en 1970.
El 1º. de diciembre de 1972 el entonces Presidente de Chile, Salvador Allende, visitó la Unidad con motivo de la inauguración de la primera escuela secundaria, acto que sirvió de escenario para dar por terminados los trabajos de construcción de las viviendas por el Gobierno del Departamento del Distrito Federal en Iztapalapa.
La Secundaria lleva el nombre del Presidente chileno, quien inauguró también las otras escuelas de la Unidad.
Junto al mural de Siqueiros hay una placa con la siguiente leyenda:
"En 1863, cuando nuestro país fue víctima de una injusta intervención, los habitantes de Copiapó, capital de la Provincia de Atacama, de la hermana República de Chile, hicieron sentir su fraternal apoyo al Presidente Juárez y a los mexicanos. En reconocimiento a tan conmovedora muestra de solidaridad, esta escuela lleva el nombre de COPIAPÓ.
1º. de diciembre de 1972
Año de Juárez
Salvador Allende 1908-1973."
John Clymer's Countryside Covers
Up until shortly before 1920, the population of the United States was more than half what the Census Bureau defines as "rural." By that, the Bureau meant either living outside any kind of town or else living in a town or built-up area of less than 2,500 population. The rural share of population continued to decline after that point, but its nostalgic echo remained in the popular mind.
The Saturday Evening Post was the dominant general-interest, mass circulation magazine in the United States during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and its editors did their best to select cover illustrations that appealed to as many current and potential readers as possible. The most famous Post cover artist is Norman Rockwell, but he obviously couldn't be burdened with producing an illustration every week; his production at best was around one cover illustration per month. Thankfully for the Post, there were plenty of other illustrators willing and largely able to take up the slack.
Some of those illustrators had artistic "personalities" more distinct than others. One of these was John Clymer (1907-1989) whose Wikipedia entry is here.
My mother always enjoyed seeing cover art by Clymer because he was born and raised where she went to college -- Ellensburg, Washington, a small city just on the east side of the Cascade mountain range. Clymer mostly painted outdoor scenes from the Mountain West part of North America, these for advertising, art gallery sales and magazine illustration.
Being a city boy, I was never as taken with Clymer's work as was my mother. And today my opinion is that his work was professionally competent, yet somehow lacking in the spark that sets top-notch artists and illustrators apart from the ordinary. That said, there is no denying that Clymer had a successful career: painting even one Post cover was a large feather in any illustrator's cap.
Below is a chronologically arranged selection of Clymer's cover art for the Post.
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