Year: 2019

Gloria Grahame: Film History Series

tumblr_po4zqc02cP1qadho7o1_500

Gloria Grahame, “Human Desire”, 1954, Director Fritz Lang, Cinematographer Brunett Guffey

Gloria Grahame Hallward, born November 28, 1923, was an American film star, singer, and stage and television actor. After appearing on Broadway for several years, she was signed to a contact with MGM Studios in 1944 . Two years after her film debut in “Blonde Fever”, she was given the role of flirty Violet Bick, saved from disgrace by Stewart’s George Bailey,  in the 1946 “It’s A Wonderful Life”. Her contract was then sold to RKO Studios in 1947 which featured her in several film noir pictures, portraying beautiful, flawed but seductive, women.

Gloria Grahame received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role portraying Ginny Tremaine in the 1947 “Crossfire”, a film noir drama based on the theme of anti-Semitism. In 1950 she appeared with Humphrey Bogart in Columbia Pictures’ film “In a Lonely Place”, garnering praise from critics. Her very short role of nine minutes playing southern belle Rosemary Bartlow in the 1952 “The Bad and the Beautiful” won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Grahame appeared in two films directed by Fritz Lang: the 1953 film noir “The Big Heat”, a crime drama co-starring Lee Marvin and Glenn Ford; and the 1954 film noir “Human Desire”, playing the femme fatale Vicki Buckley opposite her jealous film husband played by Broderick Crawford. As her film career began to wane, Grahame returned to the stage and made several guest appearances on television, including “The Twilight Zone” and “The Fugitive”.

After an initial bout with breast cancer in 1974, which had gone into remission, Gloria Grahame was again diagnosed with its return in 1980. Despite her failing health, she continued to work on stage in England and the United States. At the age of fifty-seven in 1981, Gloria Grahame was admitted to Saint Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, where she passed a few hours after admittance. She is buried at the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. For her work in the film industry, Gloria Grahame has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. An account of Grahame’s final years of life, based on recollections of actor Peter Turner, was presented in the 2017 film “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”.

Main Image reblogged with thanks to http://doctordee.tumblr.com

Tope Insert Image: Burnett Guffey, “Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart”, 1950, “In a Lonely Place, Film Still

Bottom Insert Image: Charles Lang, “Gloria Grahame”, 1953, “The Big Heat”, Film Still

Junichirō Tanizaki: “In Praise of Shadows”

Photographers Unknown, In Praise of Shadows

“We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce, then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.”
― Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

Simona Panova: “That Color was Everywhere Around Me”

Photograper Unknown, (Amid a Field of Gray)

“Gray.
The overcast skies had the colour of deadened stones, and seemed closer than usually, as though they were phlegmatically observing my every movement with their apathetic emptily blue-less eyes; each tiny drop of hazy rain drifting around resembled transparent molten steel, the pavement looked like it was about to burst into disconsolate tears, even the air itself was gray, so ultimate and ubiquitous that colour was everywhere around me.
Gray…”

Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice

Duncan Grant

Duncan Grant, “George Mallory”, 1913, Oil on Canvas, 22 x 25 Inches, Private Collection

Born in 1885 into a military family, Scotish painter Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, an English group of artists and scholars associated with the French Bohemian Movement.  He studied at the St. Paul’s School in London and for five years attended the Westminster School of Art. Traveling abroad after finishing school, Duncan met and became apprenticed in 1906 to French painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, a successful self-taught portrait painter working in Paris and London.

Returning to England, Duncan Grant was introduced by his cousin Lytton Strachey to the Bloomsbury Group which included the Strachey brothers, Virginia Woolf , Vanessa Bell and her husband English art critic Clive Bell, and artist and art critic Roger Fry. This Modernist art group gathered to discuss philosophical and aesthetic questions, and believed in the value of truth and friendship. Open and shifting intimate relationships developed among its members, leading to Duncan fathering a child with Vanessa Bell. Although Vanessa was greatly in love with Duncan, he, an active and well-known gay man, had many relationships with other men, particularly in the Bloomsbury group.

Duncan Grant joined the London Group in 1919, changing his painting from abstraction to landscapes and still lifes. In 1920 he had his first of many solo shows in London. In 1922 Duncan and Vanessa Bell began producing furniture, textiles, and other interior designs. Now a renowned artist, he represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in the years 1926, 1932 and 1940. A revived interest in his work produced a retrospective exhibition in 1959 and another one-man show in 1975 in New York City.

At the age of sixty, Duncan Grant met the young Paul Roche, who became the main love of his late life. Duncan continued working on his art, mainly decorative projects and private commissions. His lover, Paul Roche, tended to his needs in his later years, until Duncan’s death by pneumonia at the age of ninety-three. He is buried beside Vanessa Bell in the churchyard of Saint Peter’s Church in West Firie, East Sussex, England.

The above painting of George Herbert Leigh Mallory, the mountaineer, is one of many portraits that Duncan Grant painted of his close friend. Mallory was a friend to many of the Bloomsbury Group, particularly with the English writer and critic Giles Lytton Strachey.

J. P. Donleavy: “Where All is Told and Telling”

Photographer Unknown, (The Ginger Man)

“Come here till I tell you. Where is the sea high and the winds soft and moist and warm, sometimes stained with sun, with peace so wild for wishing where all is told and telling.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man, 1955

Images reblogged with thanks to http://bordjack.tumblr.com

Paul Lockhart: “Mathematics is the Music of Reason”

 

Six Gifs by Circle Art

“Mathematics is the music of reason. To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion—not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don’t understand what your creation is up to; to have a break-through idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed and overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive, damn it.”
― Paul Lockhart , A Mathematician’s Lament

Images reblogged with thanks to the artist’s site: http://circleart.tumblr.com

Carl Van Vechten

Bessie_Smith_(1936)_by_Carl_Van_Vechten

Carl Van Vechten, ” Bessie Smith Holding Feathers”, 3 February 1936, Restored by Adam Cuerden, Library of Congress

Accomplished photographer, Carl Van Vechten was an author, critic, and a supporter of Harlem Renaissance artists. After moving to New York City, he was hired by The New York Times as an assistant to the music critic. In 1908 Van Vechten became the Paris correspondent for The New York Times, returning in 1909 to become the first American critic of modern dance. In the period from 1913 to 1914, he worked as the drama critic for the Times.

In the early 1930s, Carl Van Vechten began photographing his large circle of friends with a 35 mm Leica camera, given to him by the Mexican painter Miguel Covarrubias. His earlier career as a writer with the New York Times and his theater connection through his actress wife provided him with access to new and established artists and cultural figures of the time. His portraits were usually busts or half-length poses in front of backdrops, using an assistant for lighting setups but developing his own photographs.

His portfolio of photographic works was a ‘who’s who” of America’s cultural icons of the early to middle 1900s. His portfolio includes images of Eugene O”Neill, Gertrude Stein, actress Anna May Wong, Langston Hughes, Pearl Bailey, and many others. His works were exhibited at Bergdorf Goodman in 1933, at the annual Leica Eshibitions between 1934 and 1936, and at Museum of the City of New York in 1942 and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1951.

Carl Van Vechten felt srongly that his work documenting the period of the 1900s should be availabe for scholarly research. With that in mind, he donated, during his lifetime, his collection of manuscripts, clippings, letters, and photographs to several university libraries. He remained an active photographer and writer until his death in 1964. The Library of Congress acquired Van Vechten’s assistant of twenty years Saul Mauriber’s collection of 1,400 photographs in 1966. The Museum of the City of New York also holds an extensive collection of over 2,000 images.

Top Insert Image: Carl Van Vechten, “Self Portrait”, May 8 1934, Gelatin Silver Print, Van Vechten Collection, Library of Congress, Washington DC

Bottom Insert Image: Carl Van Vechten, “Actress Amy May Wong”, 1932, Gelatin Silver Print, Van Vechton Collection, Library of Congress, Washington DC

Tom Wolfe: “The Present We Know is Only Movies of Our Past”

 

The Faces of Man: WP Set Two

“A person has all sorts of lags built into him Kesey is saying. Once the most basic is the sensory lag, the lag between the time your senses receive something and you are able to react. One-thirtieth of a second is the time it takes if you are the most alert person alive and most people are a lot slower than that…. You can’t go any faster than that… We are all doomed to spend the rest of our lives watching a movies of our lives – we are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1 30th of a second ago. We think we are in the present but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movies of the past and we will really never be able to control the present through ordinary means.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Electrid Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1968

 

Joseph Conrad: ” The Mirror of the Sea”

Photographer Unknown, Title Unknown, (Dolphin Sails)

“Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake, and vanish into a great silence in which your ship moves on with a sort of magical effect.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme, “A Bischari Warrior”, 1872, Oil on Canvas, 40.6 x 33 cm, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor of the academicism style, painting historical themes, portraits, Greek mythology, and oriental and Middle-East themes. He studied under the historical painter Paul Delaroche and later attended the atelier of Charles Gleyre, a Swiss artist who took over Delaroche’s studio in 1843. Gérôme attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris but failed to enter the notable Prix de Rome due to inadequacy in his drawing skill.

Gérôme won a third-class medal at the 1847 Paris Salon Exhibition for his 1846 painting “The Cock Fight”, which is viewed as a high point of the Neo-Grec movement. He took a second-class medal at the 1948 Prix de Rome Exhibition for his painting “Bacchus and Cupid”. Gérôme received two important commissions between 1852 and 1854 which enabled him to widely travel: the large historical canvas, “The Age of Augustus”, for the court of Napolean III, and his “Last Communion of Saint Jerome” for the Church of Saint-Séverin in Paris.

Jean-Léon Gérôme visited Egypt in 1856 for the first time, traveling up the Nile to Cairo, across the Sinai Peninsula, and eventually to Damascus. This trip began the start of his many orientalist paintings depicting the Arab religion, landscapes of the North African regions, and genre life of the its peoples. He made multiple studies and sketches of the landscapes and gathered costumes and artefacts as studies for his oriental scenes. Between 1864 and 1904 Gérôme taught at his own atelier at the École des Beaux-Arts, one of three professors, teaching his students a progession of drawing skills before they were allowed to work in oils.

Jean-Léon Gérôme died in his atelier on the 10th of January 1904. He was found in front of a portrait of Rembrandt and close to his own painting “Truth Coming Out of Her Well”. At his own request, he was given a simple burial service. But the Requiem Mass given in his memory was attended by a former president of the Republic, most prominent politicians, and many painters and writers. Gérôme is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery in front of the statue “Sorrow” that he had cast for his son Jean who had died in 1891.

José Saramago: “All the Names”

The Parts and Pieces Making a Whole: Set Four

“Don’t be afraid, the darkness you’re in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you’ve never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn’t frighten you…my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside” 

José Saramago, All the Names

Miguel Viladrich Vila

Miguel Viladrich Vila, “Arab with Goat”, 1933, Oil on Canvas

Miguel Viladrich Vila was born in Torrelameu, Catalonia, Spain in 1887. In his early life, he studied architecture in Barcelona. Receiving a scholarship in 1907, Vila moved to Madrid and dedicated himself to painting. He traveled throughout Spain with sculptor Julio Antonio, sketching and painting gypsies and women wearing traditional costume. Vila went to Paris in 1909 and then onto Florence and Rome, studying the works of Botticelli and da Vinci. In 1910, Vila took part in Madrid’s National Exhibition of Fine Arts, entering his symbolist painting “My Funerals Presided Over by Death”.

Returning to Madrid, Vila frequented the New Cafe Levante, a gathering place for intellectuals, including the Spanish writer and dramatist Gomez de la Serna and painter Romero de Torres. In 1911, Vila produced his four painting series of “Gypsy of Seville”. Traveling with his friend and sculptor Julio Antonio, Vila met Catalan artist Anglada Camarasa, who helped both the artists with financial support. Villa exhibited works at the Annual Salon in Paris, selling works for the first time to Spanish and North American collectors.

Miguel Viladrich Vila travel as his reputation grew, throughout Spain, France, Italy and South America. While in Argentina he met Ana Morera, a painting teacher, whom he married in 1919. A trip to New York in 1926 resulted in the sale of thirty-six oil paintings to art patron Archer Milton Hutington, who established the first Hall of the Hispanic Society of America. In the decade of the 1930s, Vila traveled regularly to Morocco, painting a series of Moorish figures and tradesmen. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1940, where he remained until his death in 1956.

Images reblogged with thanks to http://thouartadeadthing.tumblr.com