Month: February 2018

Gwrych Castle

Gwrych Castle near Abergele in North Wales

Local history claims that the first castle at Gwrych was built by the Normans in the 12th century. It was seized by the Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd of Deheubarth in about 1170 who then rebuilt the timber castle in stone. This castle was later destroyed by Cromwell’s army following the English Civil War of the mid-17th century.

The later castle at Gwrych was begun in 1819. The castle is a Grade 1 listed building set in a wooded hillside over looking the Irish Sea. It was the first Gothic folly to be built in Europe by a wealthy industrialist Lloyd Hesketh. Bamford Hesketh, his son, inherited the title of Gwrych in his early 20s and used his vast fortune to build the 4,000-acre Gwrych Castle Estate.

The castle once had a total of 128 rooms including the outbuildings: twenty-eight bedrooms, an outer hall, an inner hall, two smoke rooms, a dining room, a drawing room, a billiards room, an oak study, and a range of accommodations for servants. There are nineteen embattled towers and the whole facade is over 2000 yards. Many feel the castle’s outstanding feature was the castle’s 52-step marble staircase.

The Kneeling Archer

Armored Kneeling Archer, Teracotta, Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE), China. Terracotta.

This Kneeling Archer, one of many terra-cotta figures, was excavated from Pit Number 2 at the Qin Shihuang Tomb Complex in 1977.

These remarkable figures are representatives of the army amassed by China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huang some 2,200 years ago to guard him in the afterworld. Though Qin Shi Huang lived to be just 49, he is a pivotal figure in Chinese history—responsible for unifying all of China under one powerful leader and creating a legacy of a centralized bureaucratic state that was carried on to successive dynasties over two millennia.

Obsessed with the concept of immortality, he began to make plans for his immense burial complex at a young age while greatly expanding his power base in real terms.  By defeating or allying with the seven independent warring principalities that had battled among themselves for generations, he ended China’s brutal Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) and creating a vast kingdom.

It is near Xian, that he built his massive mausoleum guarded by the Terra Cotta warriors.   At 250,000 sq. ft., it’s the length of four football fields, and includes a replica of the imperial palace with stables, offices, an armory, an amusement park, a zoo, and an aviary filled with elegant bronze replicas of waterfowl.

Calendar: February 25

Year: Day to Day Men: February 25

Falling Water

The twenty-fifth of February in 1846 marks the birthdate of Italian painter Giuseppe De Nittis, a central figure in Paris during the aesthetic and institutional upheavals of 1870s. His work integrated the style of the Academic salons with the newly emerged Impressionists.

Giuseppe De Nittis was born into a wealthy family who resided in the coastal city of Barletta in Italy’s region of Apulia. Barletta, particularly during the reign of Ferdinand II, was an extremely class-oriented city. Those who could afford it gathered regularly at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher which was located near the De Nittis residence. The city’s port was a point of embarkation for the privileged class’s travels to and from the East. 

In 1860 at the age of fourteen, De Nittis relocated to Naples where he gained admittance to the Reale Instituto de Belle Arti, a university-level fine arts school founded in 1752 by King Charles VII of Naples. Outspoken in his criticism, he was was expelled from the institute in 1863 for insubordination. De Nittis began his career with the 1864 entry of two paintings at the Neapolitan Promotrice, an exhibition space similar to the salons of Paris. He became acquainted with a group of artists, known as the Macchiaioli, and became friends with one of its most prominent members, Telemaco Signorini. The Macchiaioli were a group of Neapolitan and Florentine painters who reacted against the rule-oriented Italian art academies and painted plein-air to capture both the light and color of nature.

In 1867, Giuseppe De Nittis began exhibiting his works in Florence. During this time in Italy, De Nittis met and renewed his acquaintance with painter, Geremia Discanno, also born in Barletta but seven years earlier. Together, they exhibited and sold work in the city of Turin during 1867. De Nittis traveled to Paris later in the year and became represented by Jean-Baptiste Adolphe Goupil, one of the city’s leading art dealers. After exhibiting at the Salon, he returned to Italy where he produced several views of  Mount Vesuvius. 

In 1868 at the age of twenty-two, De Nittis returned to Paris and became a permanent resident of the city. His affection for Paris was expressed through images of the French capital’s urban renovation overseen by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Haussmann had been chosen by Emperor Napoleon III to carry out a massive renewal program of the boulevards, parks and public works in Paris. Through his close association with members of the Impressionist movement, De Nittis often visited the horse races at Auteuil with Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas. The love of the French for horse racing as well as the well-groomed crowds promenading on the wide boulevards became recurring themes for his work. 

Giuseppe De Nittis was invited by Edgar Degas in 1873 to exhibit in the First Impressionist Exhibition held at photographer Nader’s studio in 1874. De Nittis, who submitted five works despite protests by Adolphe Goupil, was the only Italian artist at that exhibition; it was also the only one of the group’s exhibitions he attended. In 1875, De Nittis broke his contract with Goupil and started working in pastels. He executed a series of portraits of sitters which included the authors Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, playwright Émile Édouard Zola, Édouard Manet, and novelist Louis Edmond Duranty. Pastels became an important medium for De Nittis’s later work; he preferred patels as the medium for his largest works such as the 1881 triptych “Races at Auteuil”.

De Nittis exhibited twelve works at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris. He was, in the same year, also awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. In 1884, Giuseppe De Nittis died suddenly at the age of thirty-eight of a stroke at the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the western suburbs of Paris. His wife, Léontine Lucile Gruvelle, donated the studio’s paintings to his hometown of Barletta where they are housed in the Palace of the Marra. 

Giuseppe De Nittis’ works are in many public collections, including the Musée d’Orsay, London’s British Museum and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses his 1875 “Return from the Races” and 1869 “The Connoisseurs”. In September of 2022, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. held the first exhibition devoted to the work of Giuseppe De Nittis in the United States.  

Colin See-Paynton

Colin See-Paynton, “The Hare and Moonshadows”, Woodcut, Edition of 75, 12.7 x 17.8 cm, Private Collection

In 1972, See-Paynton moved to a remote farmhouse in Wales, on to which he built his studio. Entirely self-taught as an engraver, he began to make prints in 1980 and has since produced over 250 editions.

Colin has brought a new vitality to one of the earliest forms of printmaking- woodcuts. Although his work is based on the meticulous observation of the natural world, his talent is to invent compositions which distil the ecological and behavioural relationships of the species and their habitats.

He uses his knowledge and imagination to construct engravings of great complexity and refinement and has evolved something new by the patterning and layering of his images. Later compositions, particularly those from an underwater viewpoint, use an increasingly abstract and fluid line to capture the fast and fleeting movements of birds and fish.

Forest Swords, “The Weight of Gold”

Forest Swords, “The Weight of Gold” featuring dancer Billy Barry

Acclaimed French choreographer and filmmaker Benjamin Millipied directs American dancer Billy Barry in Forest Sword’s haunting track “The Weight of Gold”.

“I first saw Billy Barry perform at Juilliard four years ago, I thought, ‘Who is this creature?’ Billy’s quality as a dancer is so otherworldly, I immediately knew I wanted to create a portrait of him. The sense of solitude depicted in the film reflects just how different he is as an artist.” – Benjamin Millipied

The chance to direct today’s music video for British artist Forest Swords’ haunting track “The Weight of Gold” presented an intriguing opportunity for Millepied, who was seduced after being inspired by Israel’s Dead Sea area’s landscape, including the Judean desert and Nebi Musa site that is dedicated to Moses.

“We arrived at a beautiful location and I just let the music and the desert move me instead of forcing it, I listened to the music a lot before the shoot and on the day we just went with what happened naturally.” – Billy Barry, a dancer with Tel Aviv’s prestigious Batsheva Ensemble

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

The Tree of Life

Photographer Unknown, (The Tree of Life)

“On top of the Tree of Life – in the Hall of the Palace – someone had found somebody for whom he had been searching for a long, long time. And the tears of joy which were shed became the fruit of the Tree of Life, the grapes whose juice is distilled by the flute of the blue god.”
― Miguel Serrano

Buster Keaton, “Neighbors”: Film History Series

Buster Keaton Remix from “Neighbors”, December 22, 1920 Release Date, Length: 17 minutes

“Neighbors” was a two reel silent film produced by Joseph M. Schenk for Comique Film Corporation. Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline wrote and directed. The film was photographed by Elgin Lesley and Metro Pictures was the distributer. The story followed the romance between the boy, Buster Keaton, and the girl, Virginia Fox, who lived in neighboring tenant buildings. Keaton’s actual father played the role of the boy’s father in this film.

The silent film, without any added soundtrack, is in the public domain and can be viewed here: https://publicdomainmovie.net/movie/buster-keatons-neighbors-1920

Reblogged with thanks to http://ensalada-de-lengua-de-pajaritos.tumblr.com

Henry Clarence Pitz

Henry Clarence Pitz, “Back Stage”, Oil on Board, 1955, The Michael Thomas Collection, Morristown, New Jersey

Henry Clarence Pitz was an American illustrator, author, editor and teacher. He studied illustration at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art with Thornton Oakley as one of his instructors. After serving in the Army Medical Corps, he began a career of teaching and book illustration. His first notable book of illustrations was “Early American Costume” published by the Century Company.

In the 1930s Pitz joined the monthly magazine “American Artist” as an associate editor and writer. He was a regular contributor to the magazine for the rest of his life. In 1950 Pitz was elected to the National Academy of Design. In the 1960s Pitz was commissioned by Houghton, Mifflin and Company to write “The Brandywine Tradition”, which remained on the best seller list for ten weeks.

Jean-Antoine Watteau

Jean-Antoine Watteau, “Pierrot, dit Autrefois Gilles”, 1718-19, Oil on Canvas, 184.5 × 149.5 cm, Musée du Louvre

Pierrot is  one of the most famous characters in Italian comedy. The theme of this painting could come from the experience of Watteau as a student of Claude Gillot, who painted among others many sets of theater. The current explanation is that the large format of the painting and its painting would have originated from an order intended to be the sign of the coffee of the former actor Belloni.

The decentering of the main character, considered a daring for the time, is in fact not the initial composition of the painting. Observations revealed ancient traces of a frame that almost centered Pierrot’s figure, showing that the canvas was subsequetly cut. His observation in grazing light highlights ancient traces of a frame that was almost in the center of Pierrot’s figure, the painting having subsequently been cut on one side.

Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in color and movement, as seen in the tradition of Rubens and Correggio. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formal classical Rococo. He is credited with inventing the genre of “fetes galantes”, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, with a theatrical air. Some of his best know works were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet.

Sickly and physically frail since childhood, Watteau died at the estate of his patron in 1721 from tuberculosis at the eary age of thirty six. His influence on the arts, including costume, music, and decorative arts, was more extensive than that of any other 18th cetury artist.

Calendar: February 24

A Year: Day to Day Men: 24th of February

The Sunken Garden

Jacques de Vaucanson, a French inventor and artist, was born on February 24, 1709.

At just 18 years of age, Jacques de Vaucanson was given his own workshop in Lyon, and a grant from a nobleman to construct a set of machines. Vaucanson decided to make some automata, self-operating machines designed to automatically follow a predetermined sequence of operations. The automata would serve dinner and clear the tables for the visiting politicians. However one government official declared that he thought Vaucanson’s tendencies “profane”, and ordered that his workshop be destroyed.

In 1737, Vaucanson built “The Flute Player”, a life-size figure of a shepherd that played a portable snare drum and the pipe and had a repertoire of twelve songs. The following year, in early 1738, he presented his creation to the Académie des Sciences. Mechanical creatures were somewhat a fad in Europe; but most could be classified as toys. Vaucanson’s creations were recognized as being revolutionary in their mechanical lifelike sophistication.

Later that year, he created two additional automata, “The Tambourine Player” and “The Digesting Duck”, which is considered his masterpiece. The duck had over 400 moving parts in each wing alone, and could flap its wings, drink water, digest grain, and defecate. Although Vaucanson’s duck supposedly demonstrated digestion accurately, his duck actually contained a hidden compartment of “digested food”, so that what the duck defecated was not the same as what it ate. Despite the revolutionary nature of his automata, he is said to have tired quickly of his creations and sold both in 1743.

In 1741 he was appointed by Cardinal Fleury, chief minister of Louis XV, as inspector of the manufacture of silk in France and was charged with undertaking reforms of the silk manufacturing process. In 1745, he created the world’s first completely automated loom. Drawing on the work of Basile Bouchon and Jean Falcon, Vaucanson was trying to automate the French textile industry with punch cards; but his proposals were not well received and largely ignored by the weaving industry.  The technology he proposed, as refined by Joseph-Marie Jacquard more than a half century later, would revolutionize weaving and, in the twentieth century, would be used to input data into computers and store information in binary form.