Month: June 2015

Franz Von Stuck

Franz Von Stuck, “Narcissus”, 1926, Oil on Canvas, 64.3 x 59.8 cm, Private Collection

Franz Von Stuck was am influential German Symbolist  and Art Nouveau painter, sculptor, engraver, and architect born at Tettenweis near Griesbach in Lower Bavaria, Germany. He was noted for his treatment of erotic and comic aspects of mythological themes.

As a child Von Stuck quickly became a gifted caricaturist. From 1878 to 1881 he attended the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich, where he received particular encouragement from German Sculptor and painter Ferdinand Barth.

Von Stuck attended the Munich School for the Applied Arts after secondary school, transferring in 1881 to the “Königliche Akademie der bildenden Künste” (Royal Academy for the Fine Arts). The drawings he did for the portfolio ‘Allegorien und Embleme’ (‘Allegories and Emblems’), published by Gerlach and Schenk in Vienna, made his reputation as an outstanding draughtsman as early as 1882.

The many other prizes and honours awarded to Franz Von Stuck included the Ritterkreuz des Verdienstordens der Bayerischen Krone (Cross of Knighthood in the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown), a distinction coupled with elevation to knighthood. In the last phase of his work, Von Stuck concentrated primarily on sculpture.

The recipient of so many distinctions and an honorary member of numerous European academies, Franz Von Stuck died in Munich of 1928. He was buried at the Waldfriedhof in Munich and his wife Mary rests beside him. His villa at the Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich is now a art museum.

Jean Metzinger

Oil Paintings by Jean Metzinger

Jean Metzinger (1883-1956), was a French artist, painter, theorist, writer and poet. His early works, from 1902 to 1904, were influenced by the Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat and Henri Edmond Cross. Between 1904 and 1907 Metzinger worked in the Divisionist and Fauve styles.

From 1908 Metzinger was directly involved with Cubism; both as a leading artist and principle theorist. Metzinger, following Picasso and Braque, was chronologically the third Cubist painter. He was a founding member of the Section d’Or group of artists, and together with Albert Gleizes, wrote the first major treatise on Cubism in 1912.

The Alligator Hat

Photographer unknown, The Alligator Hat

“A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension.

I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow.

In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze.

I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the ‘growing edge;’ the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead.

But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning.

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. ‘If I have seen further than other men,’ said Isaac Newton, ‘it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”

― Isaac Asimov, Adding a Dimension: Seventeen Essays on the History of Science

Joan Miro

Joan Miro, “La Leçon de Ski”, 1966

In 1960, Miró’s work underwent a dramatic change when he began to use black to outline shapes and to fill them in. This work is “dramatic, even tragic, with colour often suppressed or counteracted by the weight accorded to black. His faith in abstraction was expressed during this period with particular eloquence in large canvases in which broad strokes of colour were set against sensuously painted backgrounds, as in his paintings of the mid-1920s; the simplicity of gesture and boldness of scale and handling make these among his most impressive and influential later works.”

Jacob Collins

 

Jacob Collins, “Thinking Man”, 2004, Oil on Canvas, 20 x 30 Inches

Jacob Collins is a leading figure in the contemporary revival of classical Realist painting. He earned a BA in history from Columbia College, attended the New York Studio School, the New York Academy of Art, and the Art Students League. Collins is the founder of the Water Street Atelier, The Grand Central Academy of Art, and the Hudson River Fellowship.

Reblogged with thanks to : art4gays:

 

Sylvan Esso, “Play It Right”

 

Sylvan Esso, “Play It Right”

Sylvan Esso is an American indie pop duo based in Durham, North Carolina. Formed in 2013, the band consists of singer Amelia Meath (of Mountain Man) and producer Nick Sanborn (of Megafaun). The duo released their eponymous debut album on Partisan Records on May 12, 2014. They made their network television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on July 9, performing the single “Coffee”.

Lead singer Amelia Meath, who was at the time involved with her trio, Mountain Man, created the vocals to the song called Play It Right. She later met electronic music producer Nick Sanborn in Milwaukee at the Cactus Club, performing at the time solo as Made of Oak, and asked him to make a rendering of her single, Play It Right, in his own way.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Irving Stone: “Desire Had Been Poured into the Nascent Form”

Photographer Unknown, Desire Had Been Poured

“It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one ”Go!”, his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his
fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species.”

― Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy