Month: May 2018

Hans Von Marées

Hans Von Marées, “The Orange Grove”, 1873, Fresco, Stazione Zoologica, Naples, Italy

Born in 1837 in Elberfeld, Prussia, Hans Von Marées studied at the Berlin Academy from 1853 to 1855. In 1854, he also entered the studio of painter and printmaker Car Steffeck. Marées moved to Munich where he worked for eight years, influenced by the historical school of painting. He then traveled to italy in 1864 where he lived for twenty years. In 1873 he received his most important commission, the painting of the frescoes in the library of the newly built Stazione Zoologica, the zoological museum in Naples. The frescoes consisted of landscape scenes with figures, intended to express the joys of sea and beach life. “The Orange Grove” is a fresco from that series.

Hans Von Marées initially specialized in portraiture but later turned to painting mythological subjects. He developed an individualistic technique of overpainting tempera with layers of oil, creating a depth of color quite unlike the muted tones of his fellow artists. During the 1880s, Marées painted four triptychs of importance: “The Judgement of Paris”, “The Hesperides”, “The Wooing”, and “Three Saints on Horseback”. He spent his last years of his life in Rome, supported by his patron, art theorist Konrad Fiedler. Marées died at the age of 49 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome in the rione of Testaccio.

In 1935, Hans Von Marées’s painting “Die Labung,(The Refresment)” was stolen by the Nazi regime,.   In 1980 the painting came into the possession of the Museum Wiesbaden, the museum of art and natural history in Wiesbaden, Germany. In order to fulfill the museum’s project of identifying and returning Nazi-plundered artwork, the museum showed only the back side of the painting until it could gather enough donations to purchase the work.

Insert Image: Hans von Marées, “Doppelbildnis Marées und (Franz) Lenbach”, 1863, Oil on Canvas, 54.3 x 62 cm, Schack Collection, Munich, Germany

Guy Jones, “1911: A Trip Through New York City”: Film History Series

Guy Jones, “1911: A Trip Through New York City”

Videographer Guy Jones edited century-old film to more accurately match the video standards of the present day. For the black and white clip of New York City in 1911 shown above, Jones slowed down the film’s original speed and added ambient sound to match the activity seen on the city’s streets. The subtle additions allow for a more engaging experience when viewing of the 20th-century footage, and presents the urban milieu in a more realistic light.

This particular film print was created by the Swedish company Svenska Biografteatern company during a trip to America, and remains in mint condition.

Calendar: May 21

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of May

Opposites: Torrid and Frigid

May 21, 1792 is the date of Japan’s Mount Unzen’s deadliest volcanic eruption.

Mount Unzen consists of a group of composite volcanic domes located on Japan’s Shimabara Peninsula east of Nagasaki. This area has seen extensive volcanism over millions of years. The oldest volcanic deposits in the region date from over 6 million years ago, and extensive eruptions occurred over the whole peninsula between 2.5 and 0.5 million years ago.

Unzen’s deadliest recorded eruption occurred on May 21 in 1792, with a large igneous rock lava flow coming from the Fugen-dake dome. The east flank of the Mayu-yama dome collapsed unexpectedly following a post-eruption earthquake, creating a landslide into Ariake Bay. This caused a mega-tsunami that reached a height of 330 feet. The wave surge devastated nearby areas, causing further widespread damage and death. Most of the estimated 15,000 deaths caused by the event are believed to have resulted from the landslide and the tsunami. The scar created from the Mayuyama landslide remains visible today.

After 1792, the volcano remained dormant until November 1989 when an earthquake swarm, a series of earthquakes in a short time, began about 12 miles underneath and 6 miles west of the Fugen-dake dome. Over the following year, earthquakes continued, their hypo-centers gradually migrating towards the summit. The first steam blast eruptions began in November 1990, and after inflation of the summit area, fresh lava began to emerge on May 20, 1991.

The threat of further disastrous events prompted authorities to evacuate 12,000 residents from their homes. On June 3, 1991, the volcano erupted violently, possibly as a result of depressurization of the magma column after a landslide in the crater. A pyroclastic flow triggered by the collapse of a lava dome reached 3 miles from the crater and claimed the lives of 43 scientists and journalists, including volcanologist Katia and Maurice Krafft and Harry Glicken.

From 1993 onward, the rate of lava effusion gradually decreased, and eruptions came to an end in 1995. Since then heavy rains have frequently caused pyroclastic material, rocky debris and water to flow down the slopes. Dikes have been constructed in several river valleys to channel the lava flows away from vulnerable areas.

Dario Wolf

Dario Wolf, “Gli Amici, (The Friends)”, 1924, Copper Etching, 16.7 x 13 cm, Private Collection

Dario Wolf was born in Trento, Italy on December 3, 1901. He completed high school in Rome with honors in the art of composition and painting of the nude. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Sigismund Lipinskj. In 1924, still a student, Wolf won the Calderon prize for his entered drawing of a nude.

He started his career as an engraver in 1921 with the wood engraving “Furor Animae” and established himself as an etcher with the plates “Powerful-Powerless”, “Superstition” and “Destiny”. He was a member of the Group of Engravers and Roman Artists, composed of twenty-five Italian and foreign artists.

Dario Wolf devoted himself to the process of etching on metal and the technique of aquatint, producing “The Accordion Player”, on a large zinc plate in 1957. He was one of the very few who devoted themselves to engraving in steel technology, the “black style” as attested by his important 1963 engravings:: his “Ethiopian” in 1966,  and his “Vicolo dei Birri” in 1968.

“Etching is an art that can benefit more than any other to express moods fleeting, to realize the innermost thoughts and most complex, to express the life of things real and unreal atmosphere that goes from deep velvety shadows stretched to wrap lights enchanted ”- Dario Wolf

Markus Zusak: “Their Spirits Came Toward Me”

Photographer Unknown, (Their Spirits Came Toward Me), Computer Graphics, Film Gifs

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.”

― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Eric Itschert

Eric Itschert, “Nude Boy Swimming”, 2017, Drawing and Watercolor on Arches Paper

Eric Itschert was born in 1954 in Overijse, Belgium. While still in secondary school, Eric followed oil painting classes with the painter Georges Lambillotte. He studied at St Serge in Paris in the summer of 1973, Itschert obtained his certificate of architecture in 1978 at the Ecole Supérieure d’Architecture Saint-Luc in Brussels.  He continued his painting studies with Bernard Frinking in 1986 and 1987;  and during his time spent on Paros in the Cyclades in 1989, where he developed his technique of tempera painting.

Calendar: May 20

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of May

Within the Hedge

The Kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device, was first publicly displayed on May 20, 1891.

First described in conceptual terms by Thomas Edison in 1888, the Kinetoscope was largely developed by Edison Labs employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892, leading most modern scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for turning the concept into a practical reality.

Only sporadic work was done on the Kinetoscope for much of 1890 as Dickson concentrated on Edison’s unsuccessful venture into ore milling. By early 1891, however, Dickson, his new chief assistant, William Heise, and another lab employee, Charles Kayser, had succeeded in devising a functional strip-based film viewing system. In the new design, whose mechanics were housed in a wooden cabinet, a loop of horizontally configured 19 mm film ran around a series of spindles.

The film, with a single row of perforations engaged by an electrically powered sprocket wheel, was drawn continuously beneath a magnifying lens. An electric lamp shone up from beneath the film, casting its circular-format images onto the lens and thence through a peephole atop the cabinet. A rapidly spinning shutter permitted a flash of light so brief that each frame appeared to be frozen. This rapid series of apparently still frames appeared, thanks to the persistence of vision phenomenon, as a moving image.

Dickson, himself, starred in the first public demonstration, which was given on a prototype Kinetoscope at the laboratory for approximately 150 members of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs on May 20, 1891. When the women looked through the peephole, they saw a man who bowed his head, smiled, and waved his hands holding his hat. Dickson was the man in the 3-second-long movie, which is often referred to as “Dickson Greeting”.

The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope did not come until May 9, 1893, at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture, the Kinetoscope also had a major impact in Europe; its influence abroad was magnified by Edison’s decision not to seek international patents on the device, facilitating numerous imitations of and improvements on the technology.