Month: July 2018

Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders, Title Unknown, (Gold Medal Flour), Polaroid Film

Filmaker Wim Wenders, now 73, was given his first camera as a child in Dusseldorf by his father, a doctor. it became the start of his career in films and photography. He reckons he took more than twelve thousand Polaroids between 1973 and 1983, when his career as a film-maker really took off, but only 3,500 remain.

“The thing is, you gave them away. You had the person in front of you, whose picture you had just taken, and it was like they had more right to it. The Polaroids helped with making the movies, but they were not an aim in themselves. They were disposable.” – Wim Wenders

Left Side / Right Side

Photographer Unknown, (Left Side / Right Side)

“The Coin of Life example: Say you have a coin with heads on one side and tails on the other side. One side would mean good and the other bad, based on your interpretation or bet of which side of the coin represents a win for you. However, you can’t decide the outcome and the coin flips many times throughout your life. Finding balance is flipping the coin in such a way that neither of the sides is of greater importance to you, but if the coin lands on the middle bit, you realize that the space between what you consider good or bad is so small and the probability of landing there is also incredibly small without continuous practice. However, no matter the outcome, you choose to accept the coin as it is, with both sides, and appreciate the importance of both in your life. For the coin of life has meaning and value no matter what side it lands on. It’s each individual’s choice whether to bet on the outcome or not, but ultimately your coin of life will be spent somehow.”
― Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

Reblogged with thanks to https://archiesdirtyblog.tumblr.com

Calendar: July 7

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

Casual Attitude

July 7, 1880 was the birthdate of the American inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder.

Otto Rohwedder was born in Davenport, Iowa, the son of Claus and Elizabeth Rohwedder, of ethnic German descent. He attended the public schools in Davenport, eventually becoming an apprentice fo a jeweler to learn a trade. He continued his studies, graduating with a degree in optics from the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Otology in Chicago.

Otto Rohwedder became successful in his career as a jeweler, expanding his business to three locations in Saint Joseph, Missouri, where he had settled with his wife and two children. He used his experience with watches to invent new machines in his spare time. Convinced that he could develop a machine that would slice bread, Rohwedder sold his jewelry stores to fund his efforts. In 1917 a fire broke out in his factory, destroying his prototype and his blueprints. Forced to find new funding for his project, it took several more years before he could bring his machine to market.

In 1927 Otto Rohwedder successfully designed a machine that not only sliced the bread but wrapped it afterwards. He applied for patents and sold the first machine to Frank Bench of the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri, in 1928. The first loaf of automatically sliced bread sold commercially on July 7, 1928, on Rhowedder’s forty-eighth birthday. Sales of the machine to other bakeries increased and sliced bread became available across the country.

In 1930 the Continental Baking Company of New York City introduced their “Wonder Bread” as a sliced bread. Other major companies saw the success of the marketing and followed with their own sliced products. The availability of standardized slices boosted the sales of the 1926 invention, the automatic pop-up toaster. For the first time, American bakeries in the year 1933 sold more sliced than unsliced bread loaves.

Otto Rohwedder was granted seven patents for his bread slicing and handling machines between the years 1927 to 1936. In 1933, he sold his patent rights to the Micro-Westco Company of Bettendorf, Iowa, and joined the company. He became vice-president and sales manager of the Rohwedder Bakery Machine division. His original bread-slicing machine is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Mike Fudge

Mike Fudge, “Kuba Dunny”, Dark Version, New Release by KidRobot

“I think of Kuba as a sculpted figure created by a member of this imaginary tribe”, says Fudge of his totemically styled Dunnydecoration. Noting that the piece’s title “comes from the human-like bear characters I often name Kub”, Fudge explains that the “story of Kuba relays that the figure has been uncovered in ancient sites all over the world, suggesting there is a connection and contact [between these cultures] that we knew nothing of previously”. And if “all these cultures had previous contact amongst each other”, the artist ponders of his piece’s fictional backstory, “then maybe there is something we have yet to find out about their ability to communicate or travel”.

As a potential answer to his own hypothetical question, Fudge muses that maybe “it was Kuba who allowed these ancients to transcend the laws of the universe and spread what seemed like impossible knowledge to every corner of the earth”. But the powers accredited to Kuba don’t end there, according to its creator. The “dark version of Kuba“, which is limited to 1300 pieces worldwide, “can bring upon its owner the ability to see into the future and peer into the past”, says the artist.

https://www.kidrobot.com/collections

Leon Joseph-Florentine Bonnat

Leon Joseph-Florentine Bonnat, “Study for Jacob Wrestling with the Angel”, 1876, Pencil and Black Chalk on Paper, 14 x 20 Inches, Dahesh Museum of Art, New York

This is either a highly finished study for, or a variant after, a painting that Bonnat exhibited at the Salon in 1876, current location unknown. With its emphasis on tensed musculature and the interaction of anatomical forms, this work illustrates perfectly how integral the numerous life drawings of nude male models were to an artist’s formation of fully realized narrative compositions.

As an artist and a teacher, Bonnat was adamant in the fundamental importance of skillful drawing. In a letter translated and published in The American Magazine of Art in 1916, Bonnat declared: “Drawing and form: from those foundations we never stray; we cannot, we ought not to, because they are the conditions absolutely requisite to eternal beauty; and from antique art to contemporary, in passing through all the great epochs…it is by form and drawing alone that the world has been enriched with so many masterpieces.”

Calendar: July 6

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

Torso Stretch

July 6, 1907 was the birthdate of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Considered one of the Mexico’s greatest artist, Frida Kahlo was born in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. She grew up in the family’s home which was later known as the Blue House or Casa Azul. Frida Kahlo had poor health in her childhood. She contracted polio at age of six and had to be bedridden for nine months.

Frida Kahlo attended the renowned National Preparatory School in Mexico City. It was here that she first met Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who was working on a mural called “The Creation”. Kahlo reconnected with Rivera in 1928 and the two started a romantic relationship, getting married in 1929. During the following years they moved to San Francisco, New York City and Detroit, based on Diego Rivera’s work.

In 1938, Frida Kahlo became a friend of Andre Breton, who was one of the primary figures of the Surrealism movement. That same year she had an exhibition in New York City and sold some of her paintings and received two commissions for future works. One commission was from Clare Boothe Luce; the result was the 1939 painting “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale” telling the story of Luce’s friend Dorothy’s leap to her death.

In the year of 1944, Frida Kahlo painted one of her most famous portrait, “The Broken Column”. In this painting she depicted herself naked and split down the middle, her spine shattered like a  column. She wears a surgical brace in the painting and there are nails all through her body, which is the indication of the consistent pain she went through. During that time, she had several surgeries forcing her to wear special corsets to protect her spine. She sought medical treatment for her chronic pain but treatments were unsuccessful.

In the year of 1953, Kahlo had a solo exhibition in Mexico. Although she had limited mobility at that time, she showed up on the exhibition’s opening ceremony. She arrived by ambulance,  welcomed the attendees, and celebrated the ceremony in a bed the gallery had set up for her. Frida Kahlo’s last public appearance was at a demonstration on July 2, 1953, against the overthrow of President Arbenz of Guatemala. One week later, after her 47th birthday, Frida Kahlo passed away at her beloved Blue House.

Frida Kahlo’s fame grew after her death. Her Blue House was opened as a museum in the year of 1958. In 1970s the interest in her work and life was renewed due to the feminist movement, since she was viewed as an icon of female creativity. In 1983, Hayden Herrera published his book on her, “A Biography of Frida Kahlo”, which drew more attention from the public to her works. In 2002, the movie “Frida” was released and was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning Best makeup and Best Original Score.

Carlo Crivelli

Carlo Crivelli, “Saint Stephen”, 1476, Tempera and Gilding on Panel, national Gallery, London

Carlo Crivelli painted in tempera only, despite the increasing popularity of oil painting during his lifetime, and on panels, though some of his paintings have since been transfered to canvas. His predilection for decoratively punched gilded backgrounds is one of the marks of this conservative taste, in part imposed by his patrons. Of his early polyptychs, only one, the altarpiece from Ascoli Piceno, survives in its entirety in its original frame. All the others have been disassembled and their panels and predella scenes are divided among several museums.

This panel showing Saint Stephen is part of the large “Demidoff Altarpiece” made for the high altar of San Domenico in Ascoli Piceno, east-central Italy.

Saint Stephen was the first Christian martyr. He was a lay assistant to the priest of the first Christian community in 1st-century Palestine and was responsible for a daily distribution of food to the poor. Accused of blasphemy against Moses and God, he was tried by a religious council. As he spoke in defence of his belief in Christ as the Messiah, those watching him saw the face of an angel. Enraged, the council stopped the trial and took him out of the city where he was stoned to death.

Joyce Pensato

The Work of Nat.Brut Artist Joyce Pensato

Brooklyn born artist, Joyce Pensato’s skill for accumulation has become central to her identity and, consequently, her approach to art-making. Mess, dirt, and detritus – these are the properties that are ingrained in the artist’s work. To Pensato, pop culture, it transpires, equates to troublesome histories indicated by soiled physical appearances.

Her large-scale enamel paintings and charcoal drawings mimic the mess of her studio. The faces of her comic-book characters appear through a vigorous blast of layered drips and scratches, mainly in black, white and silver. Her brushstrokes are fierce and unending, often giving the impression of having been sprayed on at great speed.​