Month: April 2018

Brian Greene: “We Begin Life as Uninhibited Explorers”

Photographers Unknown, Beguiling the Senses and Enchanting the Mind: Photo Set  One

“We begin life as uninhibited explorers with a boundless fascination for the ever growing world to which we have access. And what I find amazing is that if that fascination is fed, and if it’s challenged, and if it’s nurtured, it can grow to an intellect capable of grappling with such marvels.”

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera, “May Day Procession in Moscow”, Oil on Canvas, 1956, Private Collection

In 1955 Diego Rivera travelled to the Soviet Union for medical treatment. While there he made many sketches, some of which were later used as the basis for oil paintings, as appears to be the case with this artwork.

In the colorful worker’s parade, marchers carry a huge ballon painted with the word “peace” in several languages. One year after painting this scene, Rivera would die of a heart attack at the age of seventy.

Calendar: April 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of April

The Paw Print

April 19, 1946 is the birthdate of English actor and singer, Timothy James Curry.

Tim Curry’s first full-time role was as part of the original London cast of the musical “Hair” in 1968, where he first met Richard O’Brien who went on to write Curry’s next full-time role, that of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 play “The Rocky Horror Show”. Originally, Curry rehearsed the character with a German accent and peroxide blond hair, and later, with an American accent. However, he decided to play Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an English accent after deciding that the character should sound like Queen Elizabeth II.

Curry originally thought the character was merely a laboratory doctor dressed in a white lab coat. However, at the suggestion of director Jim Sharman, the character evolved into the diabolical mad scientist and transvestite with an upper-class Belgravia accent. That character carried over to the film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and made Curry a household name and gave him a cult following. He continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles, and New York City until 1975.

Shortly after the end of the “Rocky Horror Show” run on Broadway, Curry returned to the stage with Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties”, which ran in London and New York from 1975 to 1976. That play was a Broadway hit winning two Tony Awards: Best Performance by an Actor for John Wood, and Best Comedy for the play. “Travesties” also won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, and Curry’s performance as the famous dadaist Tristan Tzara received good reviews.

In 2004, Tim Curry began his role of King Arthur in Eric Idle’s “Spamalot” in Chicago. The show successfully moved to Broadway in February 2005. The play brought Curry a third Tony nomination, again for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Curry reprised this role in London’s West End at the Palace Theater, where “Spamalot” opened on October 16, 2006. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as the Best Actor in a Musical for the role, and also won the Theatergoers’ Choice Award as Best Actor in a Musical.

One of Tim Curry’s best-known television roles (and best-known roles overall) is as Pennywise the Clown in the 1990 horror miniseries “Steven King’s It”. Aside from one “Fangoria” interview in 1990, Curry never publicly acknowledged his involvement in “It” until an interview with Moviefone in 2015, where he called the role of Pennywise “a wonderful part”.

Karl Sterrer

 

Karl Sterrer, (Anatomical Study of Male Figure), Date Unknown

Karl Sterrer, the son of sculptor Carl Sterrer, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, under Painter Alois Delug and Painter Christian Griepenkerl. He became adept at both portraits and landscapes, winning the Prix de Rome in 1908. This was followed by more awards, including the 1919 Reichel Prize.

Karl Sterre was one of the first Austrian artists to explore the genre of German Expressionism, reducing his landscape compositions to their basic essentials, using drypointing’s dark, deep lines. He traveled through Germany and Austria until 1921 when he accepted the position of Professor of Gine Arts at the Academy in Vienna.

Sterrer’s prints and paintings can be found at the Austrian Academy in Vienna, the Dresden Gallery Collection, and at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.

Armand Amar, “Phalene”

Armand Amar, “Phalene” from the album “La Traversée”, 1998

Armand Amar was born in Jerusalem, to an Israeli mother and a Jewish-Moroccan father with a French passport. As a child, he immigrated to Morocco with his father. In 1968, he began playing the congas, practicing the tabla and the zarb in the following years.
In 1976 he met South African choreographer Peter Goss, who introduced him to dance. In the subsequent years, he worked with a number of choreographers in contemporary dance.

Amar’s works are focused particularly on Eastern music. He is the author of several ballets and soundtracks films such as “Get Up and Walk”, “The Trail”, “Indigenous” , “The First Cry”, “Earth from Heaven”, and “Bab Aziz”. He founded the label Long Distance in 1994 with his partners Alain Weber and Peter Gabriel.

Excerpts taken from the film “October12, 2013 Morning by the River” and “November Views at Sunset Hours November 13, 2013” by Tbfxtcxzo

Counting: One, Two, Three

Photographers Unknown, (Counting One, Two, Three)

“I start to count. This is the important part. I have to count right. Not too fast, nor too slow. All the way to one hundred. It must be spoken aloud, without interruption. Whispering is acceptable; the count keeps my wolf to the Dark Wood. It keeps me on safety’s slender path.”
― Michael F. Stewart, Counting Wolves

Nguyen Van Phuc

Nguyen Van Phuc, “Sacrifice”, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 47 x 59 inches

Nguyen Van Phuc, born in 1978, lives and works in Hanoi, Vietnam. He graduated fron the Hanoi Fine Arts University in 2003. He is both a painter and an installation artist using mixed media. His works have been showcased in international exhibitions: Lim Dim, Contemporary Art in Vietnam, the 2009 Behind the Scene in Oslo, Norway, the ArtAsia Miami Exhibition, and the 2008 Asian Contemporary Art Fair in New York..

Calendar: April 18

A Year: Day to Day Men: 18th of April

On a Bed with Black Pillows

The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 happened on April 18 at 5:12 AM.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of northern California on April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Heavy shaking was felt for a distance of 370 miles along the coast of California.. Devastating fires started and lasted for several days. As a result, over eighty per cent of the city of San Francisco was destroyed and up to 3000 lives lost.

The San Andreas Fault is a continental fault that forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate. The 1906 rupture propagated both northward and southward fo a total of 296 miles. The observed surface displacement was about 20 feet; geodetic measurements show displacements up to 28 feet. Shaking was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland as far as central Nevada. Between 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 410,000 residents.

As damaging as the earthquake and its aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control afterward were even more destructive. It has been estimated that up to 90% of the total destruction was the result of the subsequent fires. Within three days, over 30 fires caused by the ruptured gas mains destroyed about 25,000 buildings.

Almost immediately after the quake (and even during the disaster), planning and reconstruction plans were hatched to quickly rebuild the city. Rebuilding funds were immediately tied up by the fact that virtually all the major banks had been sites of the conflagration, requiring a lengthy wait of seven-to-ten days before their fire-proof vaults could cool sufficiently to be safely opened.

The Bank of Italy had evacuated its funds and was able to provide liquidity in the immediate aftermath. Its president also immediately chartered and financed the sending of two ships to return with shiploads of lumber from Washington and Oregon mills which provided the initial reconstruction materials. In 1929, Bank of Italy was renamed and is now known ad Bank of America.

Reconstruction was swift, and largely completed by 1915, in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition which celebrated the reconstruction of the city and its “rise from the ashes”. Since 1915, the city has officially commemorated the disaster each year by gathering the remaining survivors at Lotta’s Fountain,  a fountain in the city’s financial district that served as a meeting point during the disaster for people to look for loved ones and exchange information.