Walter Crane

Walter Crane, “Pegasus”, 1889, Pencil, Watercolor, and Bodycolor with Gum Arabic on Paper Laid on Linen, 71 x 71 cm, Private Collection

Born in Liverpool, England in August of 1845, Walter Crane was an English illustrator, painter, and designer primarily known for his illustrations of children’s books. Son of portrait painter Thomas Crane, he served as an apprentice to wood engraver W. J. Linton in London where he was able to study the works of the contemporary painters Dante Rossetti and John Millais, as well as the Italian masters. Crane’s most important technical development was derived from his study of Japanese color wood-prints: he used these techniques in his 1869 to 1875 series of toy books.

Crane’s early paintings showed the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly John Ruskin’s works, and can be seen in Crane’s 1862 painting “The Lady of Shalott”, produced as an illustration for poet Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ballad of the same name. In 1864, Crane began to illustrate a series of sixpenny books of nursery rhymes for the color printer Edmund Evans. A more elaborate series, with influences from both the Japanese prints and early-Florentine painting, was begun in 1873 with the book “The Frog Prince”.

A strong instructive, moral element underlies much of Walter Crane’s work. For several years, he contributed weekly cartoons to the politically socialist periodicals “The Commonweal” and “Justice”. These cartoons were later published in a collection entitled “Cartoons for the Cause” as a souvenir for the 1896 International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress in London. Between 1893 and 1899, Crane was art director of the Manchester School of Art, and then of Reading College, and finally was principal fo the Royal College of Art in Kensington, London for two years.

Walter Crane worked with English designer and craftsman William Morris in 1894 on the page decorations of “The Story of the Glittering Plain”, printed in the style of sixteenth-century Italian and German woodcuts. Considered to be the best of Crane’s book illustrations are those in poet Edmund Spenser’s works, the 1895-97 “Faerie Queene” and “The Shepheardes Calendar”, published in 1897, both known for their design and vivid detail. He also illustrated the “Mrs Molesworth” collection of children’s novels, the 1873 edition of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, Oscar Wilde’s 1888 “The Happy Prince and Other Stories”, and British schoolteacher Nellie Dale’s instructive primer series “Teaching English Reading”, published between 1898 and 1907.

Walter Crane’s life ended on a tragic note. His wife of forty-four years, Mary Francis Crane, was found dead on the railroad tracks near Ashford Kent, England, ruled apparently a self-inflicted death due to temporary insanity. Heart broken, Walter Crane died three months later on March 14, 1915, in Horsham, Sussex, leaving behind three children.

Top Insert Image: Frederick Hollyer, “Walter Crane”, Detail, Date Unknown, Platinum Print, 14.5 x 10.3 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Bottom Insert Image: Walter Crane, “Britomart”, 1900, Watercolor on Paper, Library of Decorative Arts, Paris

Image reblogged with many thanks to: https://hadrian6.tumblr.com

Noriko Takasugi, “Yayoi Kusama”

Noriko Takasugi, “Yayoi Kusama in Costume”

This portrait of artist Yayoi Kusama dressed in costume, seated in front of one of her pumpkin paintings, was taken at her Tokyo studio by photographer Noriko Takasugi. Currently based in Tokyo, Takasugi majored in clinical psychology at Waseda University and participated in the Place M Photography Collective in Tokyo. She graduated with a masters degree in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of Arts. She worked as an editor for monthly graphic magazines and is now focused on her photography, with a particular emphasis on the people of Fukushima.

Born in March of 1929, avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama works primarily in sculpture, painting, and installation projects, but is also active in film, fashion, poetry, and performance art. She was an influential figure in the postwar New York art scene, staging provocative happenings and exhibiting works such as her “Infinity Nets”, hallucinatory paintings of loops and dots. Her “Narcissus Garden”, an installation of hundreds of mirrored balls, earned Kusama notoriety at the 1996 Venice Biennale, where she attempted to sell the individual spheres to passerby. She is often considered an influence on Andy Warhol and a precursor to Pop Art.

The website for Yayoi Kusama, including up-coming exhibitions can be found at: http://yayoi-kusama.jp

Charles Robert Gatewood

Photographs by Charles Gatewood

Born in November of 1942 in Elgin, Illinois, Charles Robert Gatewood attended the University of Missouri, earning a degree in anthropology. It was during his first year of graduate work at the university that he began his photographic work. Studying sociology at the University of Stockholm, Gatewood apprenticed with a group of documentary photographers, worked as a darkroom technician, and began shooting photos of jazz artists on tour.

After returning to the United States in 1966, Gatewood settled in New York City, where he worked at the Jaffe-Smith photography studio in Greenwich Village. He was hired in 1969 as a staff photographer for the weekly The Manhattan Tribune, covering the upper West Side. It was at this time that he started freelancing assignments for Time magazine, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone magazine. Gatewood’s first major celebrity photograph “Dylan with Sunglasses and Cigarette” was taken at a 1966 Swedish news conference and syndicated to publications worldwide.

Gatewood continued to work as a freelancer for Rolling Stone, producing,, among other works, a series of portraits of the writer William S. Burroughs in the early 1970s, and covering political demonstrations, Gay Pride celebrations, and Manhattan’s downtown music and arts scene. He gravitated toward photographing extreme behavior, extreme people and extreme situations, with particular interest in the annual New Orleans’ Mardi Gras.

The gritty, often sexually explicit, photographs taken by Gatewood were rejected my many publishers before the small New York publishing house Strawberry Hill agreed to publish his “Sidetripping” in 1975. The book’s photos are a first-hand account of the 1960s and 70s counter-couture with an introduction and narrative by William Burroughs. It was in the mid 1970s that the majority of his famous celebrity portraits were taken including Andy Warhol, Sly Stone, Etta James, Carlos Santana, and Bernado Berolucci.

From 1978 to 1987, Gatewood lived near Woodstock, New York, working in Manhattan and elsewhere. His photos from this period include social protests, outlaw bikers, nature photos, and portraits, including Quentin Crisp and dark comedy writer Michael O’Donoghue. Gatewood was awarded a grant in 1984 by the New York State Arts Council to publish his book “Wall Street”, which was recieved the Lieca Medal of Excellence for Outstanding Humanistic Photojournalism. In 1987, Gatewood relocated to San Francisco, spending the years from 1998 to 2010 as photographer for the tattoo magazine “Skin and Ink”.

Gatewood’s many photo collections include the 1977 “People in Focus”, “Primitives” in 1992, and the 1999 “Badlands”. He was the subject of two film documentaries: Mark and Dan Jury’s “Dances Sacred and Profane” in 1985, and Bill MacDonald’s “Forbidden Photographs: The Life and Work of Charles Gatewood” in 2003. Charles Gatewood died in San Francisco on April 28, 2016, at the age of seventy-three, after sustaining injuries in a fall from his balcony three weeks earlier. An apparent suicide, Gatewood left three notes behind.

James Baldwin: “Giovanni’s Room”

Photographers Unknown, The Faces of Man: WP Photo Set Eight

“For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey’s bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.”

—James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

Konstantin Sorokin

Konstantin Sorokin, “Aboulfeit Djibrine Musa”, Photo Shoot

Konstantin Sorokin is a Moscow based photographer specializing on fashion and portraits. Besides his creative activities, he is actively sharing the experience of photography by teaching students and organizing seminars and lectures in different cities worldwide.

Images reblogged with thanks to: https://celebswhogetslepton.tumblr.com

Brixel Mirror

BREAKFAST, “Brixel Mirror”, 2018, Kinetic Art Installation, Brooklyn, New York

Founded in 2009, BREAKFAST is a new media artist collective focused on creating innovative software and hardware driven artworks. These sculptures connect viewers to far-away places through interactive experiences, telling stories about our rapidly changing world.

The studio’s practice employs a unique blend of mechanical engineering, computer science, and playful aesthetics to invite audiences to reflect on the relationship between the physical and the digital, as well as the global and the intimate. The sculptures reflect the evolving relationship between human bodies and the technological innovation of the information age.

The “Brixel Mirror” is a 19 foot wide by 6 foot-tall installation made up of 540 Brixels, black on one side and polished aluminum on the other. The kinetic sculpture is the first installation built by BREAKFAST to utilize their new technology, which is a digitally controlled system that rotates each “brick” to make them act as pixels. The “Brixel Mirror” can cycle between various content, including “Silhouette” where, when you approach the installation, the Brixels directly in front of you rotate, creating a mirror that matches your silhouette that moves with you giving a one-to-one reflection.

BREAKFAST’s artworks have been exhibited worldwide, including the World Trade Center in New York City, the Houston Space Center in Texas, the 2019 Momeni Exhibition in Hamburg, Germany, Google in Moscow, and at Christie’s in New York City. There are many permanent installation sites, including the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, the WNDR Museum in Chicago, and the Hudson Yards in New York City.

Many thanks to BREAKFAST’s site: https://breakfastny.com/works

Luka Šulic: Music History

Luka Šulic, “Csárdás”, June 2015, Composed by Vittorio Monti, Arranged by Valter Dešpalj, Accompanied by the Zagreb Soloists , Lisinski Concert Hall,Zagreb, Croatia

Italian composer and violinist Vittorio Monti was born in Naples and studied violin and composition at the Conservatorio di San Peitro a Majella. He received an assignment in 1900 as the conductor for the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris, where he wrote several operettas and ballets. Monti wrote his composition “Csárdás”, based on a traditional Hungarian folk dance, for violin, mandolin, or piano in 1904.

“Csárdás” is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods and tonality.The work, containing arrangements for a number of solo instruments and an orchestra, is composed of seven different sections, each of a different tempo and occasional different key from the preceding one.

Born in Maribor, Slovenia in August of 1987, Luka Šulic is a Croatian-Slovenian cellist, a member of the cello group “2Cellos”, along with Stjepan Hauser. He began his musical education when he was five years old and became, at the age of fifteen, one of the youngest student to enter the Music Academy in Zagreb. There he studied for three years under Professor Valter Dešpalj, a cellist from the Juilliard School and Moscow Conservatory. Šulic continued his studies in Vienna with Reinhard Latzko and finished his master’s degree with Mats Lidstrom at London’s Royal Academy of Music in 2011.

Luka Šulic has given a number of solo and chamber music appearances in Europe, South America and Japan in major venues such as Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Musikverein and Konzerthauswon. He has won a series of top prizes at the prestigious international music competitions including first and special prize at the 2009 VII Lutosławski International Cello Competition in Warsaw, and first prize at the 2011 Royal Academy of Music Patron’s Award in Wigmore Hall.

Luka Šulic was awarded a Ribbon of an Order of Danica Hrvatska for a special contribution to the culture and promotion of Croatia in the world. His site with a listing of upcoming live performances can be found at: https://lukasulic.com

Cormac McCarthy: “The Sky to the North Had Darkened”

Photographer Unknown, (Imminent Storm)

“By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as the eye could see. They grouped in the road at the top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place n the iron dark of the world.”

—Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Marco Berger: “Un Rubio”

Artist Unknown, (The Subway Ride), Computer Graphics, Gay Film Gifs, “Un Rubio”, 2019

“But if pressed, I’d have to say that what I love most about the subways of New York is what they do not do. One may spend a lifetime looking back—whether regretfully or wistfully, with shame or fondness or sorrow—and thinking how, given the chance, things might have been done differently. But when you enter a subway car and the doors close, you have no choice but to give yourself over to where it is headed. The subway only goes one way: forward.. .

Every car on every train on every line holds a surprise, a random sampling of humanity brought together in a confined space for a minute or two – a living Rubik’s Cube.”

–Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

Note: Initially released in Germany in April of 2019, “Un Rubio ( The Blonde One)” is an Argentine movie directed by Marco Berger. The movie tells the story of two men who begin a romantic relationship in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The role of Juan is played by the actor and choreographer Alfonso Barón; the role of Gabriel, his colleague and roommate, is played by Gaston Re.

Gifs reblogged with thanks to: https://doctordee.tumblr.com

Ted Shawn and Company

Ted Shawn and Company at Greek Theatre Pageant, 1918, New York Public Library Collection

“Know thyself deathless and able to know all things, all arts, sciences, the way of every life. Become higher than the highest height and lower than the lowest depth. Amass in thyself all senses of animals, fire, water, dryness and moistness. Think of thyself in all places at the same time, earth, sea, sky, not yet born, in the womb, young, old, dead, and in the after death state.”
― Muata Ashby, Ancient Egyptian Proverbs

Ted Shawn: Dance History

Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers, “Kinetic Molpai”, 1935, Jacob’s Pillow, Music Added to Video in 1985 by Jess Meeker and John Sauer

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in October of 1891, Ted Shawn was one of the first notable male pioneers of American modern dance. While attending the University of Denver, he contracted diphtheria at the age of nineteen, causing him temporary paralysis form the waist down. During his physical therapy in 1910, Shawn was introduced to the art of dance by Hazel Wallack, a former dancer with the Metropolitan Opera. He relocated to Los Angeles two years later, joining an exhibition ballroom dance troupe with dancer and choreographer Norma Gould as his partner.

Ted Shawn moved to New York City in 1914 where he met Ruth St. Denis, a teacher and modern dance pioneer. They married in August of 1914, with St. Denis becoming a dance partner and a creative outlet for Shawn. Both artists, believing in dance as an art form integral to everyday life, combined their artistic vision and business knowledge to open the first Denishawn School in Los Angeles in 1915. Renowned for its influence on ballet and experimental dance, this school became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company.

Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Davis established an eclectic mix of dance techniques including a freeing of movement in the upper body and experimental ballet, often done without shoes. With the additions of North African, Spanish, and Amerindian influences to St. Denis’ eastern style, they broke with the established European tradition. Their choreography ushered in a new era of modern dance, drawing from these indigenous, ancient, and international dance traditions.

In the early 1930s, due to marital problems and finances, Ted Shawn left to form an all-male dance company consisting of athletes he taught at Springfield College in Massachusetts. His mission was to fight for the acceptance of the American male dancer and to present a male perspective on the dance art form. On July 14, 1933, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers had their premier performance at Shawn’s farm in Lee, Massachusetts. This event, known as Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, would transform into the now existing dance school, retreat, and theater at the former farm.

Shawn produced many innovative and controversial choreographies with His Men Dancers, which included performances entitled “Ponca Indian Dance”, “Maori War Haka”, “Hopi Indian Eagle Dance” and “Kinetic Molpai”. Through these creative dance performances, Shawn showcased masculine and athletic movement which gained in popularity. The company toured more than 750 cities in the United States and Canada, and achieved international success in Havana, Cuba, and London. Their final show was a homecoming performance at Jacob’s Pillow on August 31, 1940, ending a seven year tour.

During the years of the company,, Ted Shawn’s comradeship and interactions with the men in his troupe evolved into a love relationship with Barton Mumaw, one of the leading stars of the company, which lasted from 1931 to 1948. Shawn would later form a partnership with John Christian, the stage manager of the company, with whom he stayed from 1949 until his own death in January of 1972. Ted Shawn’s final appearance on stage was at the Ted Shawn Theater of Jacob’s Pillow in “Siddhas of the Upper Air”, where he reunited with Ruth St. Denis for their fiftieth anniversary.

Ted Shawn was a Heritage Award recipient of the National Dance Association in 1965 and was inducted into the National Museum of Dance’s Hall of Fame, located in Saratoga Springs, in 1987. His works, including his nine published books providing a foundation for modern dance, are now in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and in the archives of Jacob’s Pillow.

Many thanks to the Jacob’s Pillow site: https://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org

Luke Nugent, “Lithunium Snow”

Luke Nugent, “Lithunium Snow”, Photo Shoot

Luke Nugent is a British photographer living in London and working internationally. He studied photography at London’s University of Greenwich, and has been shooting professionally since his late teens. Working primarily in the fields of music, portraiture and fashion, Nugent works with top models, musicians and personalities to develop imagery of a high technical and aesthetic standard. He has experience assisting world renowned photographer Rankin and has collaborated on various projects for Nick Knight’s award winning fashion website “SHOWstudio” including editorial features, video projects and live events.

Born in October of 1998 in Haarlem, Netherlands, Nils Kuiper, known as Lithunium Snow, is a model in the alternative modeling world, having been featured in publications like Dark Beauty Magazine and Gothesque Magazine. In 2016, he won the title of Mr. Alternative.

The website of photographer Luke Nugent can be found at: https://lukenugent.co.uk

Giovanni Francesco Susini

Giovanni Francesco Susini, “The Farnese Bull”, 1613, Bronze, 46.5 x 38 x 38 cm

Giovanni Francesco Susini, known as Gianfrancesco, was born in Florence, Italy, in 1585. He was trained as a junior member in the Florence workshop of Flemish sculptor Giambologna, where his uncle was the principal bronze-caster. In 1624-1626, Gianfrancesco spent time in Rome where he experienced both the classical and the emerging statuary of the Baroque movement; however, he had already established for himself a Mannerist style of exaggeration and tension in his work.

Gianfrancesco’s first independent commission, by the Medici Grand Dukes, was a bronze bas-relief for a chapel altar in 1614. For a sculpture to be placed in the Medici family’s Boboli Gardens, he produced a small figurative bronze with thrashing figures set on a small oval plinth. Gianfrancesco also contributed two other works to the Boboli Gardens; “Cupid Breaking a Heart with a Hammer” and “Cupid Shooting an Arrow”, both set in the Vasca dell’Isola, or the Island Basin of the Gardens. In 1615 for the main entrance of the Santissima Annunziata, he created two containers of bronze for holy water, acquasantiere, to be placed on the columns.

Gianfrancesco’s designs usually employ complicated, balanced relationships of figures, usually two or three, meant to be appreciated from multiple viewpoints. All of his bronze smaller works, including the table sculptures, were finely cast and finished, viewable from all sides.

Few sculptures by Gianfrancesco bear his signature. A signed marble statue “Bacchus and a Young Satyr” is exhibited in the Louvre Museum; the 1627 “Abduction of Helen” now in the Los Angeles Getty Museum; the 1639 “Venus Burning the Arrows of Love”, the 1638 “Venus Chastising Love”, and the “Gaul Committing Suicide”, all now in the Louvre. Gianfrancesco’s small bronze “David with the Head of Goliath” is now at the Liechtenstein Museum in Venice. Both sculptor and caster, Giovanni Francesco Susini died in Florence, Italy, on October 17, 1653.

Inspired by the ancient marble sculpture of the Farnese Bull excavated from the Baths of Caracall in 1545, Gianfrancesco made his bronze group “The Farnese Bull” in 1613. The group was expertly cast in several components, invisibly joined together, and engraved. Several castings of this work were made, located now at the Galleria Borghese, noted in the collection with a ebony pedestal in 1625, and at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg;

The rather obscure myth behind this sculpture can be located in Lemprière’s “Classical Dictionary” published in 1788:

“Dirce was a woman whom Lycus, King of Thebes, married after he had divorced Antiope. When Antiope became pregnant by Jupiter, Dirce suspected her husband of infidelity to her bed, and imprisoned Antiope, whom she tormented with the greatest cruelty. Antiope escaped from her confinement, and brought forth Amphion and Zethus on mount Cithæron. When these children were informed of the cruelties to which their mother had been exposed, they besieged Thebes, put Lycus to death, and tied the cruel Dirce to the tail of a wild bull, which dragged her over rocks and precipices, and exposed her to the most poignant pains, till the gods, pitying her fate, changed her into a fountain, in the neighborhood of Thebes.”

Paul Schulenburg

Oil Paintings by Paul Schulenburg

Born in 1955, Paul Schulenburg grew up in the small town of Niskayuna, near Albany, New York. He was encouraged by his family, including his painter grandfather, to pursue his passion for drawing and painting. Schulenburg studied at the Boston University School of Fine Arts, undertaking the fundamentals of classical art with emphasis on anatomy and form, color, composition, and draftsmanship. He achieved his BFA in 1979.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Schulenburg created artwork for publications, winning several awards for his work. His former clients included Cigna, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Time magazine, The Wall Street Jounal, and Prentice Hall. Schulenburg concentrated on full-time painting beginning in 2000, with his first show being exhibited at Addison Art Gallery in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Schulenburg’s “Shoveling Ice’, a painting of a Cape Cod fisherman, was featured as the cover artist on the July 2007 issue of American Art Collector. Later works of his were featured on the June issues of 2009 and 2010. Schulenburg had two solo shows, along with exhibiting in group shows, at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, which added several of his works to its permanent collection.

Living currently in Massachusetts, Paul Schulenburg paints primarily in the outer parts of Cape Cod. He follows in the tradition of narrative artists Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper and Charles Hawthorne, recording and revealing the daily lives of his subjects. Schulenburg is a member of the Copley Society of Art in Boston and his work is represented by the Addison Art Gallery in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Italo Calvino: “Some Strange Animal”

Photographers Unknown, A Collection: Some Strange Animal

“In short, I often found myself in situations different from others, looked on as if I were some strange animal. I do not think this harmed me: one gets used to persisting in one’s habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority.

But above all I grew up tolerant of others’ opinions, particularly in the field of religion, remembering how irksome it was to hear myself mocked because I did not follow the majority’s beliefs. And at the same time I have remained totally devoid of that taste for anticlericalism which is so common in those who are educated surrounded by religion.

I have insisted on setting down these memories because I see that many non-believing friends let their children have a religious education ‘so as not to give them complexes’, ‘so that they don’t feel different from the others.’ I believe that this behavior displays a lack of courage which is totally damaging pedagogically. Why should a young child not begin to understand that you can face a small amount of discomfort in order to stay faithful to an idea?

And in any case, who said that young people should not have complexes? Complexes arise through a natural attrition with the reality that surrounds us, and when you have complexes you try to overcome them. Life is in fact nothing but this triumphing over one’s own complexes, without which the formation of a character and personality does not happen.”

—Italo Calvino, Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings