Month: June 2018

Jerzy Marek

Jerzy Marek, “Spots”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas

Jerzy Marek was born in Poland in 1925 and showed early promise in both art and woodcarving.  But the outbreak of World War II in 1939, when he was only fourteen, put a complete hold on his artistic career for many years.  He ended the War with the British Army in Italy and finally settled in the United Kingdom in 1948.  For the next many years, Jerzy pursued a successful career as a civil engineer and bridge designer.

He started painting in oils in 1970 and initially spent much of his leisure time encouraging other artists locally in the Preston area where he eventually found himself.  This group became known as the “Marek Circle” and even included his mother-in-law Margaret Baird who subsequently became a successful primitive artist in her own right.  After taking early retirement in 1983, Marek began to concentrate on his painting.

His early work featured sporting themes; but these soon gave way to pastoral themes and then close-ups of animals and birds, all painted from memory. Jerzy Marek’s work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide including Glasgow, Paris, Hamburg and many other cities.  Reference to his work is made in the Rona Guide to the World of Naïve Art as well as Muller’s World Encyclopedia of Naive Art.  Jerzy Marek died in early 2014 at the age of 90.

Calendar: June 18

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

Not Clark Kent

June 18, 1969 was the release date of Sam Peckinpah’s western “The Wild Bunch”.

In 1967, Warner Brothers-Seven Arts producers Kenneth Hyman and Phil Feldman were interested in having Sam Peckinpah rewrite and direct an adventure film. At the time, William Goldman’s screenplay “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. It was quickly decided that “The Wild Bunch”, which had several similarities to Goldman’s work, would be produced in order to beat “Butch Cassidy” to the theaters.

Peckinpah’s epic work was inspired by his hunger to return to film work, the violence seen in 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde”, America’s growing frustration with the Vietnam War, and what he perceived to be the utter lack of reality seen in Westerns up to that time. He set out to make a film which portrayed not only the vicious violence of the period, but as well the crude men attempting to survive the era. Multiple scenes involving slow motion action sequences inspired by Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”, characters leaving a village as if in a funeral procession, and the use of inexperienced locals as extras, would become fully realized in “The Wild Bunch” film.

The film was shot in the anamorphic format, a technique of shooting a widescreen picture on a standard 35 mm film. This arose from the desire to maximize the overall image detail while retaining the use of standard cameras and projectors. Telephoto lenses were used by cinematographer Lucien Ballard to compress foreground and background images in perspective. The editing of the film is notable in that shots from multiple angles were spliced together in rapid succession, often at different speeds, placing greater emphasis on the chaotic nature of the action and the gunfights.

Peckinpah would film the major shootouts with six cameras, operating at various film rates, from 24 frames per second stepping up to 120 frames per second. When the scenes were eventually cut together, the action would shift from slow to fast to slower still, giving time an elastic quality never before seen in motion pictures up to that time. By the time filming wrapped, Peckinpah had shot 333,000 feet of film with 1,288 camera setups. Editor Lou Lombardo and Peckinpah remained in Mexico for six months editing the picture.

The violence that was much criticized in 1969 remains controversial. Peckinpah noted it was allegoric of the American war in Vietnam, the violence of which was nightly televised to American homes at supper time. He tried showing the gun violence commonplace to the historic western frontier period, rebelling against sanitized, bloodless television Westerns and films glamorizing gunfights and murder: “The point of the film is to take this façade of movie violence and open it up, get people involved in it so that they are starting to go in the Hollywood television predictable reaction syndrome, and then twist it so that it’s not fun anymore, just a wave of sickness in the gut … it’s ugly, brutalizing, and bloody awful; it’s not fun and games and cowboys and Indians.”

George Tooker

George Tooker, “The Waiting Room”, 1959, Egg Tempera on Wood, Smithsonian American Art Museum

George Tooker grew frustrated with the bureaucracy while trying to obtain building permits for a house he bought in New York. He painted several images that show “faceless” government workers and run-down people getting nowhere. The clinical interior of “The Waiting Room” evokes the conformity of the 1950s and emphasizes the pale, drawn expressions on the figures.

The people stand in numbered boxes, evoking ideas of standardization that force people into predefined categories. The man on the left appears to be in charge of the “sorting,” creating a sinister view of government scrutiny.

“The Waiting Room is a kind of purgatory—people just waiting—waiting to wait. It is not living. It is a matter of waiting—not being one’s self. Not enjoying life, not being happy, waiting, always waiting for something that might be better—which never comes. Why can’t they just enjoy the moment?”                 -George Tooker

Josiah Bancroft: “Formed in the Ether of Emotions and Dreams”

Photographers Unknown, A Collection of Images Formed in the Ether

“But what was excruciating at first turned cathartic the more he talked. In telling his story, he discovered that he had developed definite ideas about his own motives and decisions. These ideas seemed to have formed in the ether of emotions and dreams, that wooly fog that lay outside the footlights of the conscious mind. They were not large revelations, but were rather like the little epiphanies one suffers and enjoys over a morning cup of tea.” 

—Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

Sven Fennema

Sven Fennema, “Corridorio di Tristezza”, from his “Rise and Fall” Series

Sven Fennema was born in 1981 in Xanten, Germany. He currently lives and works ooutside of Dusseldorf. He started his journey into photography in 2007 and started his own company, Living Pictures, in 2009. The focus of his photography is “Lost Places” – deserted places and buildings, stripped of their functions. Whether if it’s a hidden fairytale castle, rust-eaten industrial sites or former mental hospitals. Fennema tells their stories, good as well as bad ones. He captures the ailing motifs in a touching world, somewhere in between the past and today in vibrant and living pictures.

His company site is https://www.sven-fennema.de.  His photographs and books are available from this site.

Stanley Borack

Illustrations by Stanley Borack

Born in Brooklyn, Stanley Borack served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and studied art at the Art Students League of New York under the G.I. Bill.  He began his career as professional illustrator in 1950 and, up until he retired at the end of the 1970s, he did hundreds of covers for pulp magazines and paperback book publishers.  Among collectors, he is especially known for the racy covers he did for Ted Mark’s Man From O.R.G.Y. series.  After retirement, his spent his remaining years doing painting of the Old West for fine art galleries across the country.

Calendar: June 17

A Year: Day to Day Men: 17th of June

Perched for the Dive

June 17, 1631 marks the passing of Mumtaz Mahal, the Empress consort of the Mughal Empire.

Arjumand Banu was born to a family of Persian nobility in Agra, India. She was the daughter of Abu’l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian office-holder in the Mughal Empire, and Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir. She was married at the age of nineteen in April of 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan. The marriage, though arranged, was a love-match.

After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan gave her the title “Mumtaz Mahal” Begum meaning “the Exalted One of the Palace”. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favor which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives.

Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan’s entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser.

At Mumtaz’s intercession, Shah Jahan forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honor of the land — his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz  patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. She also provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men.

Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in city of Burhanpur on June 17, 1631 while giving birth, after a prolonged labor of approximately 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a military campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan’s uncle. The emperor was reported as being inconsolable; he went into secluded mourning for a year.

In December of 1631 her body was transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja back to Agra. After concluding an existing military campaign, Shah Jahan began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete. The Taj Mahal is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion; the beauty of the monument is taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal’s beauty. The body of Mumtaz and later that of Shah Jahan were placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca.

Marshall Fredericks

Marshall Fredericks, “Fountain of Eternal Life (Cleveland War Memorial)”, 1964, Bronze, 10.5 meters, Civic Center, Cleveland, Ohio

Marshall Fredericks, born of Scandinavian descent, settled in Cleveland, Ohio, with his family early in life. He graduated fromthe Cleveland School of art in 1930 and journeyed abroad on a fellowship to study with Swedish sculptor Carl Miller. After World War II, he worked continuously on his numerous commissions for fountains, memorials, free-standing sculptures, reliefs, and portraits in bronze and other materials. Fredericks worked on this monument for a period of nineteen years.

The fountain is composed of a large granite basin in which water will continually move and spray. Centered within is the 10 ½ foot sculptured bronze sphere representing the Universe as man has imagined it. Its design contains symbols of Eternal Life and Spirit derived from ancient myths. Set in the basin rim are polished bronze plaques containing the names of over five thousand men and women who gave their lives for their country. Carved in the basin is the biblical  inscription from Psalm 36:9, “For with Thee is the Fountain of Life; In Thy Light shall we see light.”

Four monolithic Norwegian emerald pearl granite carvings, each 4 by 12 feet and weighing approximately ten tons each, are set at four points and depict the four corners of the earth from which come the major religions. The monumental bronze central figure, cast in Norway, towers 43 feet above the basin. This figure expresses the main theme of the Fountain, namely, the spirit of mankind rising out of the encircling flames of war, pestilence, and the destructive elements of life, reaching and ascending to a new understanding of life.

The monument was commissioned in 1945 at the end of World War II. The Cleveland Press promoted the project, raising $250,000 in donations from private citizens and various organizations. The groundbreaking at the site of the Civic Center Mall in Cleveland, Ohio, occurred in 1955. The initial dedication was on Memorial Day of 1964. The monument had two more rededications in 2004 and 2014, at which time additinal names of fallen soldiers were added.

Source: marshallfredericks-blog-blog

Odile Decq

Odile Decq, Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark Museum, Nanjing, China

The Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark, near the city of Nanjing, is a geological and paleo-archaeological museum. This geological museum can be found in the beautiful valley between Tangshan and Fangshan, two volcanic mountains. Not only does the museum reveal a 700-million-year slice of earth’s geological history, but the discovery of ancient hominid remains in a cave here in the 1950s sparked worldwide speculation about the early origins of mankind.

The architect of the project was Odile Decq, the founder of Studio Odile Decq. She is an award-winning French architect, urban planner and academic. She graduated in 1978 from Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Paris- La Villette with a diploma in Urban Planning. Okile Decq was awarded the Golden Lion of Architecture during the Venice Biennale in 1996.

Since 1992, Odile Decq has been a professor at the Ecole Soeciale d’Architecture in Paris where she was elected head of the Department of Architecture in 2007. She left in 2012, opeining her own school, the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, in Lyon, France. The Institute, cofounded with architect Matteo Cainer, opened in 2014.