Month: December 2015

Wayne Thiebaud

 

Wayne Thiebaud: Urban Landscapes

Wayne Thiebaud (born November 15, 1920) is an American painter widely known for his colorful works depicting commonplace objects—pies, lipsticks, paint cans, ice cream cones, pastries, and hot dogs—as well as for his landscapes and figure paintings.

Thiebaud is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his early works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. Thiebaud uses heavy pignments and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects; and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work.

Note: An extensive article on the life and work of Wayne Thiebaud is “City, River, Mountain: Wayne Thiebaud’s California” written by Margaretta M. Lovell. It can be found at the Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art site located at: https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/wayne-thiebauds-california/

William A. Wellmand, “Wings”: Film History Series

Artist Unknown, (First Kiss), Computer Graphics, “Wings” Film Gif

“Wings” is a 1927 American silent war film set during the First World War. This Paramount Pictures film was directed by William A Wellmand and produced by Lucien Hubbard. This romantic action-war film was written to accommodate film star Clara Bow, Paramount’s biggest star at that time. It also starred Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers as Jack Powell and Richard Arien as David Armstrong.

Acclaimed for its technical prowess and realism, “Wings” became the yardstick against which future aviation films were measured, mainly because of its realistic air-combat sequences. Some three hundred pilots were involved in the shooting of the movie, including pilots and planes from the US Army Air Corps.

“Wings” was one of the first widely released films to show nudity and the first to show two men kissing. The scene above occurs near the end of the film. Jack Powell rushes  to the side of the dying David Armstrong after David’s plane had crashed into a field during the epic Battlle of Saint-Mihiel. Jack realized that he had unknowingly shot down his friend David who was flying a stolen German biplane. David consols Jack, who is distraught by what he had done, and just before he dies, forgives Jack for his mistake.

As the original negatives are lost, the closest to an original print is a spare negative stored in Paramount’s vaults. Suffering from decay and defects, the negative was fully restored with modern technology. For the restored version of “Wings”, the original music score was re-orchestrated. The sound effects were recreated by Skywalker Sound using archived audio tracks. In 2012, Paramount issued a restored version for DVD and Blue-ray.

Antonio Balestra

Antonio Balestra (Italian, “The Death of Abel”, 1701 -1704, David Owsley Museum of Art

Antonio Ba;estra was an Italian painter of the Rococo Period. Born in Verona, he first apprenticed there with Giovanni Zeffio. By 1690 he moved to Venice, where he worked for three years under Antonio Bellucci, then moved to Bologna and then to paint in Carlo Maratta’s workshop in Rome.

In 1694, he won a prize from the Accademia di San Luca. He later painted both in Verona and Venice; although his influence was stronger in the mainland. His pupils in Verona were Pietro Rotari and Giambettino Cignaroli. In Venice, he painted for the churches of the I Gesuiti and San Zaccaria, and the Scuola della Carita. Pietro Longhi briefly worked under Balestra. In Venice, other pupils or painters he influenced, included Mariotti, Giuseppe Nogari, Mattia Bortoloni and Angelo Trevisani.

Dance of the Hours

Dance of the Hours, “Fantasia”, 1940, Walt Disney

A little known fun fact about the “Dance of the Hours” segment in Disney’s “Fantasia” is that the ostriches pirouetting in the opening of the piece are performing in drag!  While their bows, long eyelashes, and ballet slippers suggest a feminine side, their black feathers give them away!  Only male ostriches have black feathers, while females are colored a brownish-grey.