Month: April 2018

Ilhwa Kim

Ilhwa Kim, “Seed Paintings”, Hand Dyed Hanji Paper

Korean artist Ilhwa Kim hand-dyes, cuts, and rolls thousands of sheets of Korean mulberry paper to form colorful, three-dimensional works of art that form vibrant patterns and shapes. The artist developed this nearly sculptural way of creating artworks using layers of paper, which she calls “seeds,” to make the surface and sense of her images change from morning to night. Depending on the angle, distance and light situation, each of her pieces transforms in a constantly shifting wave of texture, dimensions, depth, and color while the viewer can spot subtle impressions of eyes, hearts, human figures, and more in the densely packed images.

Calendar: April 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of April

The Thrill of a New Day

The Greek statue Aphrodite of Milos, known as the Venus de Milo, is discovered on April 8, 1820.

The Venus de Milo is an ancient Greek marble statue believed to depict the goddess Aphrodite. It was initially attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles; however, from an inscription on its base, it is now thought to be sculpted by Alexandros of Antioch, a wandering artist who worked on commission. Created between 130-100 BC, it is slightly larger than life and widely known for the mystery of her missing arms. The goddess originally wore metal jewelry — bracelet, earrings, and headband — of which only the fixation holes remain.

The Venus statue is generally asserted as being discovered by Yorgos Kentrotas on April 8, 1820, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos on the island of Milos in the Aegean Sea, which at that time was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The statue was found in two large pieces (the upper torso and the lower draped legs) along with serveral pillars topped with sculpted heads, fragments of the upper left arm and the left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth. Part of an arm and the original plinth was lost following the discovery.

In 1871, during the Paris Commune uprising, many public buildings were burned. The Venus de Milo statue was secreted out of the Louvre Museum in an oak crate and hidden in the basement of Prefecture of Police. Though the Prefecture was burned, the statue survived undamaged.

In the autumn of 1939, the Venus was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. Scenery trucks from the theater Comédie-Française transported the Louvre’s masterpieces to safer locations in the French countryside. During World War II, the statue was sheltered safely in the Chateau de Valençay in the province of Berry, along with the two other sculptures, “Winged Victory of Samothrace” and Michelangelo’s “Slaves”.

When the discoverer, the farmer Yorgos Kentrotas, called upon a French naval officer to help him unearth the sculpture, it began a chain of events that eventually involved the Marquis de Rivière who presented the Venus de Milo to Louis XVIII, The king donated the sculpture to the Louvre the following year 1821 where this statue, a traditional example of Hellenistic sculpture, is on permanent display at the Louvre.

Calendar: April 7

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 7th of April

A Casual Pose

On April 7, 1939 David Frost, the journalist and writer, was born in Tenterdon, England.

David Frost was chosen by writer and producer Ned Sherrin to host the satirical program “That Was the Week That Was” (TW3) after Frost’s flatmate John Bird suggested Sherrin should see Frost’s cabaret act at The Blue Angel nightclub. The series, which ran for less than 18 months during 1962–63, was part of the satire boom in early 1960s Britain and became a popular program.

In 1968 Frost signed a contract worth £125,000 to appear on American television in his own show on three evenings each week, the largest such arrangement for a British television personality at the time. From 1969 to 1972, hosted “The David Frost Show” on the Group W (U.S. Westinghouse Corporation) television stations in the United States. Throughout the years of his show, David Frost, known for his personalized style of interviews, spoke with such personalities as Jack Benny, Tennessee Williams, and Muhammad Ali; he was also the last person to interview Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran following the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In 1977 “The Nixon Interviews”, a series of five 90-minute interviews with former US President Richard Nixon, were broadcast. Nixon was paid $600,000 plus a share of the profits for the interviews, which had to be funded by Frost himself after the US television networks turned down the program, describing it as “checkbook journalism”. Frost’s company negotiated its own deals to syndicate the interviews with local stations across the US and internationally, creating what filmmaker Ron Howard described as “the first fourth network.”

For the show, David Frost taped around 29 hours of interviews with Nixon over a period of four weeks. Nixon, who had previously avoided discussing his role in the watergate scandal which had led to his resignation as President in 1974, expressed contrition saying “I let the American people down and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life”.

David Frost was the only person to have interviewed all eight British Prime Ministers serving between 1964 and 2014 and all seven US Presidents in office between 1969 and 2008. He was very active with the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. His conversations with Nixon became the subject of Ron Howard’s 2008 film “Frost/Nixon”, nominated for five Golden Globes and for five Academy Awards. David Frost died on August 31, 2013 at the age of 74 on board the cruise ship MS Queen Elizabeth, on which he was engaged as a speaker. His memorial stone is in Poet’s Corner of the Westminster Abbey for his contribution to British culture.

Calendar: April 6

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 6th of April

Wet and Heated by the Sun

On April 6, 1906 the first drawn animation film is copyrighted by J. Stuart Blackton.

J. Stuart Blackton was an Anglo-American filmmaker, co-founder of the Vitagraph Studios and one of the first to use animation in his films. ”The Enchanted Drawing” in 1900 is considered to be the first film recorded on standard picture film that included some sequences that are sometimes regarded as animation. It shows Blackton doing some “lightning sketches” of a face, cigars, a bottle of wine and a glass. The face changes expression when Blackton pours some wine into the face’s mouth and takes his cigar.

The technique used in this film was basically the substitution splice: the single change to scenes was that a drawing was replaced by a similar drawing with a different facial expression (or a drawn bottle and glass were replaced by real objects). Thus the effect is not considered animation.

Blackton’s 1906 film “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” is often regarded as the oldest known drawn animation on standard film. He later copyrighted this film on April 6 in 1908. It features a sequence made with blackboard drawings that are changed between frames to show two faces changing expressions and some billowing cigar smoke, as well as two sequences that feature cutout animation.

Blackton’s “The Haunted Hotel” in 1907 featured a combination of live-action with practical special effects and stop-motion animation of objects, a puppet and a model of the haunted hotel. It was the first stop-motion film to receive wide scale appreciation. Especially a large close-up view of a table being set by itself baffled viewers; there were no visible wires or other noticeable well-known tricks. This inspired other filmmakers, including French animator Émile Cohl and Segundo de Chomón, to work with the new technique. De Chomón would release the similar “House of Ghosts” and “El Hotel Electrico” in 1908.

J Stuart Blackton left Vitagraph to go independent in 1917, but returned in 1923 as junior partner to Albert Smith. In 1925, Smith sold the company to Warner Brothers for a comfortable profit. Blackton did quite well with his share until the stock market crash in 1929, which destroyed his savings. He spent his last years on the road, showing his old films and lecturing about the days of silent movies. Blackton died August 13, 1941, a few days after he was hit by a car while crossing the street with his son. At the time of his death he was working for Hal Roach on experiments to improve color process backgrounds.