Month: March 2018

Stephanie Pfriender Stylander

Stephanie Pfriender Stylander, “Heath Ledger”

Stephanie Stylander earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a Associate of Science Degree from Endicott College in Massachusetts graduating with honors in photography from both institutions.

StephanieStylander began her career in Milan and Paris as a fashion and celebrity portrait photographer, her noted evocative style became widely recognized through her cinematic vision, gritty realism and her intimate portraiture. Stephanie’s editorial clients ranged from Vanity Fair, Vogue’s, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, and Interview among others to her iconic portraits of the world’s most famous actors and musicians of the twenty first century.

Stephanie is represented for this work by the Staley-Wise Gallery in New York and the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York and Los Angeles.

Calendar: March 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of March, Solar Year 2018

Warmth of the Light

A preview by invitation of “Nosferatu”  premiered  on March 4, 1922 in the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Garden.

The studio behind “Nosferatu”, Prana Film, was a short-lived silent-era German film studio founded in 1921 by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist-artist Albin Grau. Although the studio’s intent was to produce occult and supernatural themed films, “Nosferatu” was its only production. It declared bankruptcy in order to dodge copyright infringement suit from Bram Stoker’s widow Florence Balcombe.

Albin Grau had the idea to shoot a vampire film, the inspiration of which had risen from a war experience: in the winter of 1916, a Serbian farmer told him that his father was a vampire and one of the undead. Diekmann and Grau gave Henrik Galeen, a disciple of the German author Hanns Heinz Ewers, the task to write a screenplay inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”, despite Prana Film not having obtained the film rights.

For cost reasons, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner only had one camera available, and therefore there was only one original negative. Murnau, the director, followed Galeen’s screenplay carefully, following handwritten instructions on camera positioning, lighting, and related matters. Nevertheless, the director completely rewrote 12 pages of the script, as Galeen’s text was missing from the director’s working script.

This concerned the last scene of the film, in which Ellen sacrifices herself and the vampire dies in the first rays of the Sun. Murnau prepared carefully; there were sketches that were to correspond exactly to each filmed scene, and he used a metronome to control the pace of the acting.

The film was praised for its visual style; Murnau’s nature shots were praised as “mood-creating elements”. However, the Bram Stoker estate, acting for his widow, won the copyright infringement case against Prana Film Company. The court ordered all existing prints of “Nosferatu” burned, but one purported print of the film had already been distributed around the world. This print was duplicated over the years, kept alive by a cult following of viewers, making it an early example of a cult film. The film is regarded as one of the most foreboding and influential horror films in the history of cinema- a classic.

The Art of Writing

The Art of Writing

These images are pages from a 17th century German book on calligraphy. The full title of the book is, in English: “The Proper Art of Writing: a compilation of all sorts of capital or initial letters of German, Latin and Italian fonts from different masters of the noble art of writing”. The book was compiled by Kunstrichtige Schreibart and was published in 1655 by Paulus Fursten Kunsthändlern in Nürnberg, Germany.

A great range of different styles are represented seemingly increasing in elaborateness, and also illegibility, as the book goes on.

Calendar: March 3

Year: Day to Day Men: March 3

Warmth of the Sun

The third of March in 1585 marks the inauguration of the Teatro Olimpico designed by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Since 1994, the Olympic Theater, along with other Palladian-styled buildings in and around the city of Vicenza, have been listed together as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.

Born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, Republic of Venice in November of 1508, Andrea Palladio was influenced by Roman and Greek architecture and is considered one of those individuals who most influenced the history of architecture. He trained under noted sculptor Bartolomeo Cavazza de Sossano as an apprentice stonecutter for six years. When his contract was finished,  Palladio permanently relocated to Vicenza where his career was unexceptional until 1538. 

Between 1538 and 1539, Palladio rebuilt the Villa Trissino, the Cricoli residence of poet and scholar Gian Giorgio Trissino who  was engaged in a lifetime study of ancient Roman architecture. Due to his work, Palladio received the formal title of architect in 1541. He took several trips, accompanied by Gian Trissino, between 1541 and 1547 to study classical monuments in Rome, Tivoli, Paletrina, and Albano. As a mentor, Trissino introduced Palladio to the history and arts of Rome as well as bestowed on him the name ‘Palladio’ which means the Wise One. 

Throughout his career in Vicenza, Andrea Palladio designed many villas and governmental palaces. His first construction project involving a large town house was the Palazzo Thiene in Vicenza. After the death of its architect Giulio Romano, Palladio finished its construction. He used Romano’s design for the villa’s windows but altered the facade to express a new lightness and grace. Among the villas attributed to Palladio’s architectural designs are the Villa Pisani, his first patrician villa for a Venetian family, and Villa Cornaro, a villa at Piombino Dese that was a mixture of villa rusticate (country house) and suburban villa with a grand salon designed for entertaining.

In 1550, Palladio began construction on the Palazzo del Chiericati, an urban palace built on a city square near Vicenza’s port. It was designed with a two-story facade with a double loggia divided by rows of Doric columns. Paladio’s Palazzo del Capitaniato, the offices of the regional Venetian governor, was a contrasting design of red brick and white stone. The four brick half-columns of its facade formed a strong vertical element that balanced the horizontal balustrades and projecting cornice at the top. Designed in 1565, the Palazzo del Capitaniato was built between 1571 and 1572.

Ranked among his highest masterworks, the Teatro Olimpico was Palladio’s final architectural design and was not completed until after his death. In 1579, the Olympic Academy obtained the rights to build a permanent theater in the old fortress, Castello del Territorio, which had been both a prison and storage depot for gun powder before falling in disuse. Asked to produce a design, Palladio used the space to recreate an academic reconstruction of the Roman theaters he had closely studied. In order to fit a stage and seating area into the building’s wide and shallow space, Palladio had to flatten the semicircular seating area of a Roman theater into an ellipse.

Andrea Palladio died in August of 1580, only six months after the construction on the theater had started. His sketches and drawings were used as a guide; Palladio’s yongest son, Silla Palladio, and Vicenza architect Vincenzo Scamozzi oversaw the final construction work. Scamozzi contributed several rooms to the design and built the rusticated entrance archway that was fitted into the rough, well-worn walls. As Palladio had not left any plans for the onstage scenery, Scamozzi created trompe l’oeil scenery with oil-lamp lighting to give the appearance of long streets receding into the distance. The full Roman-style wood and stucco backscreen is the oldest surviving stage set still in existence. 

The Teatro Olimpico was inaugurated on the third of March in 1585 by a production of Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex” with music by composer and organist Andrea Gabrieli. After only a few productions, the theater was essentially abandoned. The scenes created for the production were never removed and still exist in place. The original lighting system of glass oil lamps has been used only a few times over the years due to the risk of fire; they were lit in 1997 for a production of “Oedipus Rex”. 

Due to conservation issues, current performances in the Teatro Olimpico are limited to four hundred attendees. As heating and air conditioning could damage the delicate wooden structure of the stage sets, performances are held only in the spring and autumn. The theater was a film location for the 1979 film “Don Giovanni” and the 2005 “Casanova”.

The Umshiang Double Decker Bridge

The Umshiang Double Decker Bridge

In Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, man has befriended nature and cajoled it into bending to his ways. People build bridges, but the Khasis of Meghalaya grow bridges. Ficus Elastica or the Rubber Tree produces strong secondary roots from their trunks. These  have been trained to grow in a particular direction using betel-nut trunks, forming sturdy, living bridges over decades. Some of these bridges are more than a hundred feet long. The Umshiang Double Decker Bridge is truly one of a kind in the entire world.

Calendar: March 2

Year: Day to Day Men: March 2

Windows to the City

The second of March in 1842 marks the birth date of Carl Christian Hillman Jacobsen, a Danish brewer, art collector and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, regarded as one of the preeminent museums in Denmark.

Born in Copenhagen, Carl Jacobsen was the son of Danish industrialist Jacob Christian Jacobsen who, in addition to serving a period as Member of Parliament, founded the Carlsberg Laboratory, a biochemical research center that examined the process of brewing. Carl Jacobsen’s initial education was at the Borgerdyd School in the Christianshavn neighborhood of Copenhagen. Beginning in 1866, he began a four-year study abroad of Europe’s leading breweries.

Upon his return to Denmark, Jacobsen was employed at a brewing annex of his father’s Carlsberg brewery; however, bitter conflicts developed between father and son. His father, due to the family tensions, founded the Carlsbergfondef (Carlsberg Foundation) which he endowed with the controlling shares of the business. In 1882, Carl Jacobsen founded his own brewery, the Valby Brewery, and later changed its name to Ny Carlsberg (New Carlsberg). Jacob Jacobsen changed the name of the original brewery to Gammel Carlsberg (Old Carlsberg).  

A reconciliation between Carl Jacobsen and his father was eventually achieved in 1886. Upon the death of his father in April of 1887, Carl did not obtain control of the Gammel Carlsberg brewery. It was not until 1906 that the two Carlsberg breweries merged into one entity with Carl Jacobsen chosen as Chief Executive Officer by the Carlsberg Foundation, the majority owner. Jacobsen would remain as CEO of the newly established Carlsberg Group until his death in 1914.

Carlsberg Brewery finished its first brew in November of 1847; the exportation of Carlsberg beer began in 1868 with one barrel shipped to Edinburgh, Scotland. Since then, the Carlsberg Group has become a multinational brewer whose flagship brand is Carlsberg beer. Currently it is the sixth largest brewery in the world based on revenue. The Carlsberg Group has facilities throughout European and Asian countries; it is the brewer of such beers as Tuborg, Kronenbourg, Somersby Cider, Holsten and more than five hundred local beers.

Carl Jacobsen was not a political individual as was his father, but rather a cultural enthusiast. Known for his interest in Greek and classical art, he was an avid antique collector. His collecting led to the 1897 founding of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek to which he donated his entire collection of antiques. Jacobsen was also interested in architecture and employed the leading Danish architects of the time, including historical architect Jens Vilheim Dahlerup, to design his brewery sites. He was responsible for the restoration work done on several public buildings and churches in Copenhagen as well as financing the city’s 1913 iconic harbor sculpture “The Little Mermaid”. 

Jacobsen was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Académie des Beaux-Arts as well as honorary member of the Société des Artistes Français. He was awarded a Knighthood in the Order of Dannebrog in 1888 and received in 1912 the Grand Cross, a reward for meritorious service to Denmark. Carl Jacobsen died in January of 1914 and was buried in the family’s mausoleum at Jesus Church in Copenhagen.

Arthur Hovhannisyan

Arthur Hovhannisyan, ”Barrier”,  2018, Oil on Canvas, 150×160 cm

Arthur Hovhannisyan is a contemporary Armenian artist and a member of the Artists’ Union of Armenia, lecturing at the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts since 2010. He is a graduate of Terlemezyan State College of Fine Arts and a graduate of the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts with a PHD in Art History.