Matthew Bourne: “Swan Lake”

Matthew Bourne, “Swan Lake”

Craig Schwartz, Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake” (Dance Troupe), 2019

Johan Persson, Bourne’s “Swan Lake” (Matthew Ball and Liam Mower), 1995

English choreographer and director Matthew Bourne was born in Hackney in 1960. Leaving full time eduction in 1978, he received employment at routine positions in the arts field; in addition to this work, he directed various amateur dance companies. Bourne enrolled, at the age of twenty-two, in London’s Conservatoire of Music and Dance, formerly the Laban Centre. For his final year, he danced with the center’s Transitions Dance Company, and at end of term in 1985 received a Bachelor of Arts in Dance Theater. After graduation, Bourne spent two more years dancing with the Transition performance company.

In 1987, along with friends and fellow dancers Emma Gladstone and David Massingham, Matthew Bourne established the dance company Adventures in Motion Pictures, where he was AMP’s artistic director from 1987 until 2002. He also became a charter member of the all-male dance company, The Featherstonehaughs, formed in 1988. Bourne danced professionally for fourteen years, including in his own productions, until his final performance in 1999, when he appeared as The Private Secretary in the Broadway production of “Swan Lake”.

As a choreographer and director, Matthew Bourne’s work includes “Spitfire”, a highly colored mixture of the 1845 ballet “Pas de Quatre” and men’s underwear advertising, and “The Infernal Galop” which toys with British illusions about lower-class Parisians, both choreographed during the 1980s. In the early 1990s, he produced “Town and Country”, a humorous exploration of life on a small island, and “Deadly Serious”, a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock films. His revised production of the “Nutcracker!” premiered at Sadler’s Wells in 1992, and returned the following year for a second sold-out season. In 1995, Bourne met and became partners with dancer and choreographer Arthur Pita, who has become a frequent collaborator and is a principle dancer at AMP.

Of Bourne’s work, some of the most acclaimed pieces are those updated from classical ballet’s repertoire, and often infused with contemporary themes. His groundbreaking 1995 “Swan Lake” was a contemporary ballet, based on the Russian romantic work, which became the longest-playing dance production in the history of London’s West End. The ballet took Tchaikovsky’s music and a broad outline of the plot and paired them with an all-male dance company. Bourne’s 1995 “Swan Lake” received over thirty international awards including the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production and Tony Awards for Best Director, Best Choreography, and Best Costume Design.

In the 1995 “Swan Lake”, the roles of the white swan Odette and the black swan Odile, traditionally played by females, were danced by male performers and explored the issue of homoeroticism..Although the traditional story was changed for Bourne’s production, the central theme, the doomed, forbidden love and a protagonist who wishes to transcend conventional boundaries through that love, was still present. That theme had strong ties to the life of the ballet’s composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose homosexuality, although kept private, caused a number of complications in his life.

In 2002, Matthew Bourne founded the production company “New Adventures”. The first success of the new company, “Play Without Words”, premiered in 2002 and won the Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment and Choreography. The play was inspired by the 1963 film, “The Servant” in which the class system is chanllenged by the employer;s servant. Bourne’s revised “Nutcracker!”, also in 2002, received critical acclaim and embarked on a world tour. A Tenth Anniversary edition of “Swan Lake” in 2005 reached new audiences and its success led to an extensive international tour. These productions were followed in 2005 with a choreographed production of “Edward Scissorhands”. and revivals of classical musicals including: “My Fair Lady”, “South Paacific”, “Mary Poppins”, and “Olivr!”, among others.

Matthew Bourne has worked with England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and the London’s National Theatre. He was knighted in the Queen’s 2016 New Year Honors for services to dance, and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award, one of the most coveted honors in the world of dance, in recognition of his outstanding services to the art of ballet. Bourne was presented the Special Award at the 2019 Olivier Awards, in recognition of his extraordinary achievements in dance. This Special Award makes Bourne joint holder of the most ever Olivier Awards, alongside Judi Dench.

Top and Bottom Insert Images: Johan Persson, Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake” (Matthew Ball and Liam Mower) . Middle Insert Image: Johan Persson, “Liam Mower”, Photo Shoot

Travis Chantar

Photography by Travis Chantar

Born in California and raised in the mountains of Idaho by two moms, Travis Chantar studied music in Minnesota and settled in Brooklyn, New York, as an artist and freelance photographer. He first developed a passion for decorating and portrait photography in high school, after which he progressed to creating poster imagery for shows in college. Upon graduation, Chantar combined his enthusiasm for painting and portraiture to produce a solo exhibition entitled “Tribe”, a body painting series which resulted in a published art monograph of the same name. A subsequent series entitled “Flowers” consisted of images of nude sitters adorned with flower and petal arrangements.

In 2014, Chantar began assisting Ryan Pfluger, a New York and Los Angeles based freelance photographer, in his high-profile shoots for publications such as Vogue, New York Times, Billboard, Elle, Netflix, and other image oriented companies. Chantar’s work has included both book and album covers, product campaigns, and portfolio work for creative agencies. Most recently, Chantar published editorials in Risk Magazine, Out Magazine, FGUK Magazine, Natural Pursuits Magazine, Kaltblut Magazine, and VMAN Magazine.

For more information and images, the artist’s website is located at: http://www.chantarphotography.com

Arcangelo Corelli: Music History

Arcangelo Corelli, Concerto in D Major Op. 6 No. 4, 1714, Performed by the Voices of Music Ensemble

Born on February 17, 1653 in Fusignano, Papal States, Italy, Arcangelo Corelli was a violinist and composer of the Italian Baroque era, whose family were prosperous landowners, but not of the nobility. Known chiefly for his influence on the development of violin style and for his sonatas, Corelli’s “12 Concert Grossi “ established the contrast between a small group of soloists and the full orchestra as a popular compositional medium.

Historical records of the poet Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, founder of the celebrated Academy of Arcadians, state Arcangelo Corelli initially studied music under priests, first in the city of Faenza and then in Lugo, before he moved in 1666 to Bologna, a major center of musical culture. Plausible, but largely unconfirmed, historical accounts link his musical education with several master violinists, including Giovanni Benvenuti, Bartolomeo Laurenti, and Giovanni Battista Bassani.

Although it is unclear exactly when Corelli arrived in Rome, it is known that he was actively engaged as a violinist in 1675. He played as one of the supporting violinists in three Lenten oratorios: one at the church of San Giovanni dei Florentini, one held on August 25th for a celebration at the church San Luigi dei Francesi, and one for the ordination ceremony of a noble Chigi family member held at the church Santi Domenico e Sisto. By February of 1675, Corelli was third violinist in the Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi’s orchestra in Rome; by the following year Corelli was second violinist.

Corelli rapidly gain a reputation by playing in a number of ensembles sponsored by wealthy patrons at San Marcello al Corso, for whom he played in oratorios during the Lenten seasons from 1671 to 1679. In June of 1677, Corelli completed and sent his first composition “Sonata for Violin and Lute” to Count Fabrizio Laderchi, a noble in Faenza attached to the household of Prince Francesco Maria de Medici. Corelli’s “Twelve Trio Sonatas (Two Violins and Cello, with Organ Basso Continuo), Opus 1”, dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden, was published in 1681.

From September 1687 to November 1690, Arcangelo Corelli was musical director at the Palazzo Pamphili, where he performed and conducted important musical events, Including conducting an orchestra of one hundred fifty strings for Queen Christina. A favorite of the great music patron Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, Corelli in 1690 entered into the Cardinal’s service where he performed in concerts at Ottoboni’s Palazzo della Cancelleria. Joining him at these concerts were the violinist Matteo Fornari, the cellist G. B. Lulier from Spain, and the harpsichordist Bernardo Pasquini, and other orchestral players.

Corelli had first met Matteo Fornari in 1682, and they soon developed an intimate relationship which lasted until Corelli’s death. Socially protected by Ottoboni and living discreetly among male friends, they devoted their time together to the pursuit of their music which included many performances played together. Their relationship became the inspiration for two compositions by their friend Giuseppe Valentini, who dedicated his trio sonatas to both Corelli and Fornari. During this period, Corelli quietly developed his best-known and most influential works, the orchestral “Concerti Grossi”, and also became one of the most renowned violin teachers, who taught such students as Gasparini, Castrucci, and Locatelli.

In 1702, Corelli went to Naples and performed a composition by the Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, a performance which was probably performed in the presence of its regent, King Philip IV. In 1706, together with composer Bernardo Pasquini and Scarlatti, Corelli was received into the Pontifical Academy of Arcadia in Rome and conducted a concert for the occasion. By 1708 he withdrew from public view and began to revise his compositions. A contemporary of both Lully and Handel, Corelli died in Rome on the 8th of January in 1713.

Arcangelo Corelli left his large art collection of paintings, all his instruments and music, and all future proceeds from it, to Matteo Fornari who readied Corelli’s unpublished “Op. 6 Concertos” for publication with Estienne Roger of Amsterdam. By special decree from the Pope, Corelli was buried next to Raphael in the section of the Pantheon in Rome that holds the remains of painters and architects.

Arcangelo Corelli’s “Concerto in D Major Op. 6”, was published in 1714 in Amsterdam and dramatically affected the style of the baroque concerto for the next generation of composers. The reception of this collection, considered one of the crown jewels of baroque instrumental music, owes a portion of its success to the music publishing boom which began around 1690. Corelli’s signature violin sonata set, “Opus 5”, also widely published, appeared in at least forty-two editions by 1800.

Corelli’s concertos are written in an expanded trio sonata style, in which the two solo violins and cello form a small ensemble within the larger tutti framework, which is performed with all instruments together. The fourth concerto, played in the video linked above, is noteworthy for its suave and serene introduction, the gracefulness of the dance movement, the exceptionally well-balanced counterpoint and harmony, and the furious concluding coda which flows out of the second ending of the last movement.

Note: The video is from the Voices of Music Lamentations of Jeremiah concert held in April of 2014. Played with period instruments and practice,, there isn’t any conductor present at the performance. Kati Kyme and Elizabeth Blumenstock play solo baroque violins; Shirley Edith Hunt plays solo baroque cello; Gabrielle Wunsch and Maxine Nemerovski play ripieno baroque violins; Lisa Grodin plays baroque viola; Farley Pearce plays violone; Hanneke van Proosdij plays baroque organ; and David Tayler plays the archlute.

Karl Sterrer

The Artwork of Karl Sterrer

Born on December 4th of 1885 in Vienna, Karl Sterrer was an Austrian engraver and painter. The son of a sculptor, he studied at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts and was awarded in 1908 the Academy’s prestigious traveling scholarship, the Rompreis, for his landscapes and portraits. Sterrer traveled to the south of Italy in the years 1910 and 1911 to continue his studies and to paint.

Sterrer was one of the first Austrian artists to be intrigued by the works of the emerging German Expressionist artists. Beginning in 1910-1911, he began to strip his landscape compositions to their essentials, by emphasizing the deep, dark lines of his drypoint technique. Sterrer became a member in 1911 of Vienna’s Künstierhaus, at that time the exhibition and meeting hall of the more traditional Vienna Artists’ Society.

In November of 1915, at the beginning of World War I, Karl Sterrer joined the Landsturm, a reserve militia force in Austria, and applied to its propaganda service as a war artist. The following year, he was sent to the Russian and Italian theaters of war where he served until the summer of 1918, at which time he was transferred to the Tyrolean front in western Austria at the special request of the Air Force. Working under the command of the Imperial and Royal Air Force of Austria-Hungary, Sterrer drew and painted portraits of aviator pilots, illustrations of aircraft, and produced advertising posters promoting the purchase of war bonds.

After having been awarded the 1919 Reichel Artists Prize, Karl Sterrer became a Professor of Fine Arts at the Vienna Academy in 1921, where he would teach such future artists as landscape painter Leopold Hauer who was deeply influenced by Egon Schiele’s work: painter Rudolf Hausner, a surrealist considered to be the first psychoanalytical painter; expressionist graphic artist and illustrator Hans Fronius; and Max Weiler, who developed his own naturalistic form of abstraction. Dismissed from his academic post at the time of Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria, Sterrer was reinstated after joining the Nazi Party. However, because of that affiliation, he was again dismissed at the end of World War II; but he was allowed to keep his pension.

After 1946, Karl Sterrer devoted most of his work to religious subjects. In recognition of the scope of his work, he was awarded in 1957 the Austrian State Grand Prize for Fine Art. Karl Sterrer died in June of 1972 at the age of eighty-six and is buried in the Hütteldorfer cemetery in Vienna.

Insert Image:

The success of Karl Sterrer’s exhibition in Maysedergass, Austria, was due in part to the support of his generous benefactor, lawyer and architect Baron Heinrich von Haerdt, who would support Sterrer and his family over the coming years. In the summer of 1913, Sterrer and his family were invited to stay as guests of the Baron at his estate in Styria. Sterrer created several oil and tempera paintings during this stay, of which one was the oil painting “Das Klagelied”.

Dedicated to Baron Heinrich von Haerdtl, the painting is divided horizontally into two parts. In the lower section, a river nymph bends over to kiss a drowned man; the upper section depicts the drowned man’s wife, sitting on the bank of the river Mur and singing a song of grief. These elements formed the basic image of the painting. However, Sterrer transformed and idealized the image by transitioning the river scene into a broad, peaceful lake, plied by sailing boats and overlaid by a blue sky.

The Sterrer family lived close to the bank of the Mur River, which was often a terrifying, loudly rushing body of water. They were acquainted with a woman whose husband, a raftsman, had drowned in the Mur during the early 1910s.

Porfirio Barba-Jacob: “The Blind Hope”

Photographers Unknown, The Blind Hope

Pintad un Hombre joven, con palabras leales
y puras, con palabras de ensueño y emoción;
que haya en la estrofa el ritmo de los golpes cordiales
y en la rima el encanto móvil de la ilusión.

Destacad su figura, neta, contra el azul
del cielo, en la mañana florida, sonreída;
que el sol la bañe al sesgo y la deje bruñida;
que destelle en sus ojos una luz encendida;
que haga temblar las carnes un ansia contenida;
y el cándido mirar, y la ciega esperanza,
compendien el radiante misterio de la vida!

Paint a young man, with loyal and pure
words, with words of reveries and emotion;
and give to the strophe the rhythm of a cordial tone,
to the rhyme, the variable charm of illusion.

Outline his figure out against the blue
of the sky, in the flowery, smiling prime;
let the sun bathe it leaving it burnished
and his eyes sparkling with a burning flame.
Let a restrained yearning make his flesh tremble,
and the torso, the brow, the sinewy arms,
and the candid look and the blind hope,
compound the splendorous mystery of life!

—Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Retrato de un Jovencito (Portrait of a Young Man), 2006

Translation by Nicolás Suescún

Born in July of 1883, Miguel Ángel Osorio Benítez, best known by his pseudonym Porfirio Barba-Jacob, was a Columbian poet and writer of the Post-Modernist period. He was born in Santa Rosa de Osos, a city located in northwest Columbia; however, given to his grandparents soon after birth, Osorio spent his younger years in the countryside in Angostura. He did not receive a typical formal education but was self-taught, learning from his readings and experiences.

As a young man, Miguel Osorio was recruited by the Columbia government to fight in the Thousand Day’s War, its last civil war which ended in 1902. After working briefly as a teacher, he relocated to the capital Bogotá where he founded and managed, under the pseudonym Marin Jiménez, the literary magazine El Cancionero Antioqueño. Relocating in 1906 to Barranquilla, Osorio adopted a new pseudonym Ricardo Arenales in homage to Ricardo Hernández, a companion in his youth. Under this new name, he published the 1906 “La Tristeza del Camino (The Sadness of the Road)”, and the 1907 “Campiña Florida (The Countryside of Florida)”.

In 1908, Miguel Osorio traveled to Mexico which became his adoptive homeland and the major source of his lyrical work. A period of writing and relocations began after his move to Mexico, with journeys through Central America, Mexico and the United States. During this time Osorio contributed writings for many journals and magazines, and in 1917 published a work of fiction entitled “El Terremoto del Salvador (The Salvador Earthquake)”.

As a result of supporting the politician Porfirio Díaz during Mexico’s political crisis, Osorio was forced to flee to Guatemala; but after disagreeing with Guatemala’s authoritative Manuel Estrada Cabrera, he had to relocate to Cuba. In 1918, Osorio returned to Mexico and resumed his writings until 1922 when he was expelled by Mexico’s new president Ivaro Obregón. His flight this time took him to Guatemala. It was there in 1922, Osorio took a new pseudonym, Porfirio Barba-Jacob, which he would use on all further work.

Miguel Osorio, after being expelled in 1924 by Jorge Ubico, one of the more oppressive Guatemalan dictators, traveled to El Salvador where he was deported for his work by its dynastic president Alfonso Quiñónes Molina. This resulted in a three year journey through Honduras, a period residing in New Orleans, and a trip to Cuba. In 1927 Osorio journeyed back to his Columbian homeland for the last time.

During this Columbian stay, Miguel Osorio published writings in the journal “El Espectador” and two collections of poems: the 1933 “Canciones y Elegías (Songs and Elergies)” and the 1937 “La Cancio de la Vida Profunda y Otros Poemas (The Song of Deep Life and Other Poems)”. Osorio returned to his adopted homeland of Mexico, where in January of 1942, he died of tuberculosis in Mexico City at the age of fifty-eight.

Due to his anti-authoritarian writings. Miguel Osorio who identified himself with Ahasverus, the mythical immortal wanderer, lived a restless and bohemian life chased from cities and countries. Remaining open about his gay sexuality in that era’s puritanical society, Miguel Osorio was a perfectionist, who kept revising his work to achieve the lyrical quality and symmetry he desired. Essentially autobiographical but covering universal issues, his poetry tells of his love for his birthplace and nature, the issues of social justice, his relations with others, the darker aspects of human pain, and his own anguishes and vices.

A small collection of eight poems by Porfirio Barba-Jacob can be found at the Poetry International Archives located at: https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/7100/Porfirio-Barba-Jacob/en/tile

Hans Mauli

Black and White Photography of Hans Mauli

Born in Switzerland in 1937, Hans Mauli studied graphic design at university for a career. In the late 1960s, he worked in New York for the celebrated American graphic designer Herb Lubain and was the designer of the art-deco typeface ITC Avant Garde, the font used for the World Trade Center signage. Mauli also worked for Young & Rubicam, a global full-service advertising agency in Paris, and in other world-wide cities including Copenhagen, London, New York, and Paris between the years 1971 and 1991.

Though graphic design was his profession, Mauli always had a passion to be a professional photographer. He moved to the United States in 1991 to focus on his career in photography. Mauli has produced a number of photographic series including: Chinese New Year, Portraits, Italy, Paris, Still Lifes, and two series on life in San Francisco. Recently he has done a series of shoots covering Napa Valley and Saint Helena, including the 2020 Glass and lightning fires in California.

For more information and images of Hans Mauli’s work visit the artist’s site located at: http://www.hansmauli.com

Avel de Knight

The Artwork of Avel de Knight

Avel C. de Knight was a Paris and New York-based artist, educator, curator, and art critic. Born in New York City in April of 1923, he was the son of parents who immigrated to the United States from Barbados and Puerto Rico. De Knight studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1942 to 1943, after which he served in the Army, in a segregated unit, until the end of World War II.

After the war and with the aid of the GI Bill, De Knight traveled in 1946 to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, the Académie Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Julian. In Paris, he discovered an environment that reflected the kind of freedom that an artist of color from the United States needed. He was one of many African American artists living and working in postwar Paris, a group which included expressionist painter Herb Gentry, modernist painter Beauford Delaney, and abstract painter Ed Clark, the first American artist credited with exhibiting a shaped canvas.

Returning to the United States after living ten years abroad, Avel de Knight settled into an apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. In the 1950s, he would go on to win prizes and acclaim for his art, and supplement his income writing reviews as an art critic for the French language weekly “France-Amérique”. De Knight participated in his first group exhibition in 1953, which was held in the Village Art Center in New York City, where he was awarded the Village Art Center Prize for his work. He exhibited his work in one-man shows at the Sagittarius Gallery in New York City, his first solo show in 1957 and the second in October of 1959.

In addition to his painting and work as a critic, Avel de Knight taught at the Art Students League of New York and, as an academician well respected by the faculty and students, at the National Academy of Design for many years. Pursuing his cultural interests, de Knight spent two months in a cultural exchange program for the U.S. State Department in 1961 as an artist-lecturer in the former Soviet Union. During that time, he was particularly attracted to the regions influenced by Islam, such as Samarkand and Bukhara, just north of the Afghanistan border. This experience influenced his late 1960s “Mirage” series which coincided with the growing Black Arts movement in many of the urban centers throughout the United States.

Though Avel de Knight avoided any direct political statements in his work, his paintings and drawings during the latter part of the 1960s through the early 1970s can be viewed as celebrations of a perceived African aesthetic. Along with this sense of beauty, his work reflected the principles of classicism that he had internalized through his studies in Europe. From these sources, as well as Asian art and Ancient Western sculpture, de Knight was able to draw from a broad cross-section of historic world culture influences.

De Knight’s interest in spirituality, which would be more explicit in his later work, was deeply rooted in his early experiences as a member of Manhattan’s La Iglesia Católico de la Milagrosa. Located on the fringe of “El Barrio,” the church was a Spanish National Parish that served a large Spanish-speaking community. In addition to images of hooded saints, one of the most powerful images was a life-size statue of Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows. Identified as the patron saint of the dying, and invoked as an intercessor against plague, the image of Saint Sebastian would be used by De Knight in his work as he saw the AIDS epidemic ravage the community he loved.

Avel de Knight was an Academician member of the National Academy of Design, a member of the American Watercolor Society, Audubon Society of Artists, and a member of the Audubon Society of Artists. He had a long and productive career until his death in 1995, and exhibited widely in both individual and group exhibitions. He won many awards, including the William A. Paxton Prize from the National Academy of Design and the Palmer Memorial Prize both from the National Academy School of Fine Arts, the Emily Lowe Award from the American Watercolor Society, and the Samuel F. B. Morse Medal from the National Academy School of Fine Arts.

Insert Top Image: Kurt Ammann, “Avel de Knight, Paris”, 1950

Insert Middle Image: Maurice Grosser, “Avel de Knight, Christopher Street, NYC”, 1961

Insert Bottom Image: Photographer and Date Unknown, “Avel de Knight”

George Daniell

The Photography of George Daniell

Born in May of 1911 in Yonkers, New York, George Daniell was an American photographer and a painter. His experience in the dramatic landscape of his childhood was the genesis that led to his passion for black and white photography’s cinematic effects. Taking a keen interest in a variety of subjects throughout his life, Danielle shot photos of dock workers in New Brunswick, crabbers on the Hudson, swimmers at Glen Island Beach and ballet dancers on Fire Island, all of which to him presented a fierce and tender celebration of the angular male figure.

George Daniell began his artistic career with a folding Kodak camera and a drawing class at the Grand Central Art School in New York City. He trained as a painter at Yale University, where he graduated in 1934 earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Painting and Photography. After returning to Yonkers, Daniell began photographing fishermen and bathers along the banks of the Hudson River, traveling further to Glen Island, Jones Beach, and Fire Island on subsequent excursions. Moving to New York City and attending courses at the Art Students League, he supported himself as a freelance photographer for publications such as “Time” and “Life” magazines.

In the summer of 1937, Daniell traveled north to Maine, first visiting the art colony at Ogunquit and then continuing up the coast to Monhegan Island. Developing his eye for composition and tonal values, he shot many images of Monhegan’s distinctive houses, rugged terrain, and working fishermen. The publication of many of these Monhegan images in both “Time” and “Life” earned Daniell a reputation as an artist with a keen sense for recognizing the human moments within everyday life. He followed this project in the following year with an internationally acclaimed photo essay about the lives of herring fishermen living on Grand Manan Island, off the coast of New Brunswick.

In 1940 in New York, George Daniell continued his studies of painting at Bronx’s American People’s School, after which he served from 1942 to 1944 in the US Army during World War II. After his discharge he returned to New York City, purchased a house on Fire Island, and continued his freelance photography career. Soon after resuming his work, Daniell met and fell in love with realist-expressionist painter and gallery owner Stephen Dorland. The couple moved in 1960 to Trenton, Maine, near Acadia National Park, to paint and to start a country life together; over the next forty years, they would travel and paint together.

George Daniell’s association with renowned photographer and owner of the famous “291” Gallery, Alfred Stieglitz, would lead to his most known series of work, the celebrity portraits. Meeting Georgia O’Keeffe at the gallery would result in two famous intimate photo shoots, one in 1948 at Daniell’s Fire Island house and one in 1952 at O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, which formed a lasting friendship between the two. Some of the famous subjects included in this celebrity series were landscape painter and friend John Marin, photographer Berenice Abbott, writer Tennessee Williams, and actors Robert De Niro and Greta Garbo.

Over the course of his career, George Daniell spent a considerable amount of time traveling abroad, completing two around the world excursions. Between 1950 and 1954, he photographed many street scenes and images of the local people in Rome and Florence. Returning to Italy for two months in 1955, Daniell shot a series of images depicting the streets and countryside of devastated postwar Italy; he also shot a series of portraits on the movie sets of Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. Marked by a distinct sense of sensuality and interest in his subjects, these two series, which Daniell considered his favorite work, combined his democratic vision and his recognition of the celebrity.

Affected by Stephen Dorland’s death in October of 1983 and suffering from depression, George Daniell was hospitalized and shortly after suffered a stroke which limited his mobility. Drawn to the dark and deep tones of the North Atlantic Coast, which coalesce in his early paintings, Daniell moved to Bar Harbor, Maine where he returned to painting. He continued working as a photographer and painter until his death on September 14, 2002 at the age of ninety-one.

The George Daniell Museum located in South Beach, Florida, houses a full collection of George Daniell’s work which covers the years from 1920 to 1991, and includes paintings, aquarelles, and his more personal photographs. The collection was recently unearthed by his estate and was presented through the cooperation of the German organization Zentraldepot, a security facility with conservators and restorers.

Top and Bottom Insert Images: Self Portraits of George Daniell, George Daniell Estate

Middle Insert Image: George Daniell, “Steve Dorland in Acapulco”, 1944, Silver Gelatin Print, 34.5 x 23.1 cm, George Daniell Estate

Randall Mann: “The Pool Shark Lurked”

Photographers Unknown, The Pool Shark Lurked

Like eelgrass through a glass-
bottom boat on the Silver River,
I see the state, obscured yet pure. Derision,

a tattooed flame crackling
underneath the lewd, uncool
khaki of an amused park worker.

I was the sometimes boy on a leash,
my sliver of assent in 1984 —
as if it were my decision.

The I-75 signage, more than metaphor.
As if I had the right to vote.
The slumber parties then were hidden wood;

the tea so sweet, the saccharin
pink and artificial, like intelligence.
The science sponsored in part by chance.

I made my acting debut with the red
dilettante down the street, “Rusty” Counts,
in Rusty Counts Presents: Suburbs of the Dead,

straight to VHS. My parents phoned a counselor.
A palmetto bug read Megatrends on the fold-
ing chair by our above-ground swimming pool …

The pool shark lurked, but not to fear.
The end unknowable, blue, inmost, and cold,
like the comfort of a diplomatic war.

—Randall Mann, Florida, Poetry, October 2015

Born in Provo, Utah, in January of 1972, Randall Mann is an American poet, the only son of Olympic medalist Ralph Mann. He spent his younger years in Kentucky and Florida, a time in which he was encouraged to read a wide range of literature. In his senior years in high school, Mann’s teachers supported his writing of poetry which he continued into his college years. Mann graduated with a BA and a MFA from the University of Florida. Since 1998 he has lived in San Francisco.

Randall Mann’s poetry is mostly influenced by the English poet Philip Larkin, whose poems are most often reflections of plainness and skepticism, the 1980 Pulitzer Prize Poetry winner Donald Justice who shared his insight into loss and distance, American poet Elizabeth Bishop whose work is formed with precise description and poetic serenity, and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda whose two-volume “Residencia en la Tierra” made him a renowned international poet.

In his work, Randall Mann explores the themes of loss, expectation, brutality, attraction, and the unabashed experiences of living a gay life. He is accomplished in the formalist design of the poem and has a witty sense in where he places his line-breaks. Mann projects a wide range of emotions in his work which is emphasized by the word choice he uses to set the poem’s tone. Usually set in the countrysides around San Francisco or in Florida, his poems often reflect the contrasts between the countryside beauty and the serious social problems inside city life, which includes the spreading of homelessness and random criminal attacks against the gay community.

Mann’s collections include the 2004 “Complaint in the Garden”, which won the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry; “Breakfast with Thom Gunn”, published in 2009 and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the California Book Award; the 2013 “Straight Razor”, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and “Proprietary” published in 2017 and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and Lambda Literary Award.

In addition to his poetry collections, Randall Mann is the author of “The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry”, a 2019 book of criticism in which Mann applies his attention to language, fearlessness, and sharp wit to a collection of musings, reviews, autographical sketches, and readings on the art of poetry. Mann also co-authored the seventh edition of“Writing Poems”, which was published in 2007.

A small collection of Randall Mann’s poetry can be found at the Poetry Foundation located at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/randall-mann#tab-poems

Domenico Baccarini

The Artwork of Domenico Baccarini

Born in December of 1882 at Faenza, Italy, Domenico Baccarini studied sculpture at Faenza’s School of Arts and Crafts under Massimo Campello and drawing under the sculptor and medalist Antonio Berti, who introduced him to the renowned ceramic crafts of the city. Since the Middle Ages, Faenza was considered an excellent ceramic center which was known for its high-quality majolica pottery. After graduating and obtaining a study grant from the city of Faenza, Baccarini attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence between 1900 and 1903.

During this period in Florence, Baccarini associated with many artists including symbolist illustrator and print maker Adolfo De Carolis, painter and engraver Giovanni Costetti, and painter and poet Lorenzo Viani. He produced several sculptures in the years 1901 and 1902, which are now housed in the collection of the municipality of Forli’s Aurelio Saffi Library. These include his sculptural works “Bust of a Young Woman”, “Spring”, “Nymphs”, and “Sensations of the Soul”.

Baccarini visited the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, held in Turin in 1902, and, in the following year, attended the Fifth International Biennial of Art in Venice. Settling in Rome in the autumn of 1903, Baccarini worked as an illustrator for the La Patria newspaper, which later organized an exhibition of his work at its headquarters in summer of 1904. During this time in Rome, Baccarini was in a relationship with the future model for many of his works, Elizabetta Santolini known as Bitta,, who would in 1905 give birth to their daughter Maria Teresa.

In the beginning of 1904, Baccarini achieved admission to the Nude School of the French Academy located in central Rome’s Villa Medici. He often frequented the home of monumental and frieze sculptor Giovanni Prini and met with other artists, such as painters and sculptors Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla, both leading members of Futurist movement, and musician and composer Alberto Gasco, a proponent of musical Modernism. Baccarini exhibited his work in 1904 with success at the Romagna Regional Exhibition of Ravenna.

Returning to Faenza in 1905, Domenico Baccarini began to work in the medium of ceramics. As part of the Art Nouveau and the late symbolism period of Faenza ceramics, he was responsible for some of the most interesting artistic, ceramic and decorative concepts at the turn of the twentieth century. Baccarini played a key role in the renewal of Faenza’s ceramic production, especially that of the Fabbriche Riunite Ceramiche workshop of Achille Calzi and the Manifatture Fratelli Minardi owned by the Minardi brothers, Virginio and Venturino.

While working in ceramic design, Baccarini continued his own drawing and sculptural works, of which three were presented at the Sixth Venice Biennale. He was very engaged in his artwork throughout 1905: exhibiting in Milan’s Fine Art Exhibition for the opening of the Sempione and at the first Exhibition of the Società del Risveglio Cittadino in Faenza. Baccarini also produced illustrations for Rome’s L’Avanti della Domenica magazine and started collaborating with writer and journalist Antonio Beltramelli on illustrations fo the author’s short stories.

After being abandoned by Bitta and suffering economically, Domenico Baccarini returned to Rome where he received a commission from the charity institution, Casa del Pane, for a series of drawings to illustrate their workers in the field. During this second stay in Rome, his already poor physical condition worsened rapidly, which forced his return to his hometown of Faenza. It was there that Domenico Baccarini died on January 31 of 1907, at the age of twenty-four.

For the celebration of the centennial anniversary of the passing of Domenico Baccarini, the Municipal Art Gallery of Faenza held two exhibitions of his paintings and drawings in their collection. On the same occasion, the Museum of Art of Ravenna held an exhibition entitled “Domenico Baccarini: A Meteor of the Early Twentieth Century”, which retraced his life through his work.

Benton Murdoch Spruance

Lithographs by Benton Murdoch Spruance

Born in June of 1904 in Philadelphia, American artist Benton Murdoch Spruance was a painter. educator, and lithographer. Growing up in an affluent suburb, he worked as an architectural assistant after graduating from high school. Spruance studied at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Architecture, and also attended etching and drawing classes at the Graphic Sketch Club, a free art school.

After working in a logging camp for several months in 1924-1925, Benton Spruance enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, whose 1928 Cresson scholarship enabled him to study overseas in France. He studied at the Académie Montparnasse under cubist painter André Lhote, and later was introduced to lithography at the acclaimed Paris print workshop of Edmond Desjobert, with whom Spruance would later work producing many of his lithographs.

After returning to Philadelphia, Spruance began working for an interior design firm and taught part-time at Arcadia College. After receiving a second Cresson scholarship, he traveled to Paris to continue his painting studies with André Lhote. In 1933, Spruance had his first solo show at New York City’s Weyhe Gallery, a print and drawing gallery established in 1919. He was also appointed that same year as professor of the Department of Art at the Pennsylvania Academy.

Although Benton Spruance continued to paint after his return from Paris, he was most active as a printmaker. His art in the 1920s and 1930s portrayed the life of ordinary men and women at both work and play. During this period Spruance’s style varied from naturalistic portraits to a precisionist approach of flattened and layered forms. It was these boldblack and white lithographic compositions with their wide tonal ranges and gradations which established Spruance’s reputation as a lithographer. During this period with the aid of two Guggenheim fellowships, he sketched landscapes throughout Europe and the United States..

During the period of the Works Progress Administration, from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, a deliberate socially conscious agenda characterized Spruance’s lithographs. He began to work in a more highly charged expressionistic style and turned to wartime subjects as a prominent theme. Spruance also began producing psychologically charged portraits of women, which was followed later by themes based on biblical narratives and mythology. At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Germany, Spruance’s work was among the six hundred works of art at the competition held inside the Berlin Exhibition

From the early 1950s Spruance participated in the urban regeneration of the city of Philadelphia and, in 1953, was appointed to the Philadelphia Art Commission. One of his achievements was the passing of a 1959 law where one percent of the budget for every new building in Philadelphia had to be spent upon public art. Avid about the lithographic process, Spruance pioneered many innovations and techniques for the use of color in print making. During the 1960s he produced many color lithographs, which were mostly literary or symbolic in theme.

Despite the demand for his lithographic work, Benton Spruance continued his role as an educator. He started “Prints in Progress”, a program to teach printmaking, through demonstration and participation, to public school students. Spruance was both the chair of the art department at Arcadia University and held the chairmanship at the printing department of the Philadelphia College of Art.

A prolific printmaker with over five hundred editions during his lifetime, Benton Spruance died in Philadelphia on the 6th of December in 1967. In 1968, Barre Publishers, Massachusetts, posthumously published Benton Spruance’s project “Moby Dick: The Passion of Ahab”, a portfolio which illustrated Lawrence Melville’s novel and contained twenty-six color lithographs that were finished in the years just before Spruance’s death.

Top Insert Image: Benton Murdoch Spruance, “Subway Shift, The Second Front”, 1943 Lithograph, 36.8 x 48.6 cm, Private Collection

Middle Insert Image: Benton Murdoch Spruance, Approach to the Station, 1932, Lithograph on Japon Paper, 27.9 x 35.3 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Benton Murdoch Spruance, Nero, 1944, Lithograph Edition of 30, 36.8 x 39.7 cm, Private Collection

James Merrill: “Joyously Assimilate the Sun”

Photographers Unknown, Joyously Assimilate the Sun

“One summer—was he eight?—
They gave him the seed packet
Along with a 2’ by 4’
Slice of the estate.

To grow, to grow—grim law
Without appeal!
He, after all, kept growing every day. . .
Now this redundant chore.

Up sprouted green enough
For the whole canton, had one know to thin it.
Michaelmas found him eye to ey
With a gang of ruffians.

Not askable indoor,
Whose gaudy, wooden attitudes
(“Like pine cones in drag”)
There was scant question of endorsing

—Much as our droll friend, their legatee,
Would rap from them over the years. For instance
Think twice before causing
Just anything to be.

Then: Hold your head high in the stinking
Throngs of kind,
Joyously assimilate the Sun,
Never wear orange or pink.”

—-James Merrill, Alessio and the Zinnias

American poet James Ingram Merrill was born in New York City in 1926, the son of investment banker Charles E Merrill, co-founder of the Merrill Lynch brokerage firm. Brought up in wealth and having had interest in languages since early childhood, he attended St. Bernard’s, a prestigious New York grammar school. As a teenager, Merrill boarded at the Lawrenceville School, where he began to write poetry and became friends with the future novelist Frederick Buechner. During his attendance at Amherst College, his studies were interrupted when he was drafted for service in the US Army during World War II.

After his return to Amherst College in 1945, James Merrill had his first collection of poems “The Black Swan” published in 1946 privately in Athens, Greece, by his English professor and lover Kimon Friar. Merrill wrote his thesis on the French writer Marcel Proust, and took Proust’s themes of nostalgia, loss, and memory as his own. The fusion of archetype and autobiography became the basis his work; Merrill’s self awareness grew, through the writing of verse, within each successive collection of his poems. Although centered on the self, his poems displayed no urgency to reveal what is hidden and, in that sense, are not considered as confessional.

Merrill graduated from Amherst College with honors in 1947. After spending a few years traveling abroad in Europe, he met writer and artist David Jackson in a New York City comedy club. He and Jackson, who would be his partner for thirty years, settled in Stonington, Connecticut, in 1955. Although he was wealthy his entire life from a trust made early in his childhood, Merrill lived a modest life. Understanding the plight of many artists and a philanthropist in his own right, he founded the Ingram Merrill Foundation in 1956, a permanent endowment that subsidized the arts and public television with grants directly to writers and artists.

Already established in the 1970s among the finest lyric poets of his generation, Merrill started incorporating extensive occult messages into his work. With his partner David Jackson, he spent more than twenty years transcribing purportedly supernatural communications during séances using a ouija board. Merrill’s 1976 ouija board narrative cycle “The Book of Ephraim” appeared in the collection “Divine Comedies”, which won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Further installments included the 1978 “Mirabell: Books of Number”, which won the National Book Award for Poetry, and the 1980 “Scripts for the Pageant”.

A writer adept at wordplay and puns, James Merrill was a master of traditional poetic meter and form but also wrote many works in both free and blank verse. As he matured, his early polished and concise work changed to a more informal, relaxed and conversational tone. Often compared to W.B. Yeats with whom he shared an interest in mysticism, Merrill published, in three volumes between 1976 and 1980, his epic poem of 560 pages, “The Changing Light at Sandover”. A postmodern apocalyptic epic, it documents, partly in verse forms, the extended conversations of Merrill and Jackson with their spirit guides over the course of two decades. The poem, winner of the 1982 National Book Critics Circle Award, covers the joys and tragedies of man’s powers and the importance of our efforts to make a good life on earth.

After the publication of his epic poem, Merrill returned to writing shorter, whimsical and nostalgic poetry. These included the 1985 “Late Settings”; a 1988 collection of poems, prose poems and a play in verse entitled “The Inner Room”; and in 1995 his last book “A Scattering of Salts”. Merrill also wrote a memoir “A Different Person” in 1993; this book covers the writer’s block he suffered in his early career and his experiences of gay life in the 1950s, where he describes his friendships and relationships.

James Merrill served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, from 1979 until his death and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards, he also was awarded the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. While wintering in Arizona, Merritt died on February 6, 1995 from a heart attack related to AIDS; his longtime partner David Noyes Jackson died in July of 2001. Merrill’s ashes and Jackson’s remains are buried side by side at Evergreen Cemetery in Stonington. Jackson’s former wife and Merrill’s friend, Doris Sewell Jackson, is buried behind them.

Illustrative Posters of Switzerland

Otto Baumberger, “PKZ (Coat)”, 1923, Lithograph, 90 x 128 cm, Private Collection

Situated in the middle of Europe with a culture having three national languages, Switzerland’s graphic arts, particularly in the illustrative poster field, was highly influenced by its neighbors. Two of its most celebrated Art Nouveau poster illustrators started their careers in the 1890s during the Belle Époque in France: Eugène Samuel Grasset, teacher at the École d’Art Graphique and designer of the Grasset typeface, and Théophile Alexandre Steinlen who became known for his bohemian cabaret posters and advertisements, with their black cat image, for the notorious Le Chat Noir Club.

The new century brought forward a first generation of sophisticated Swiss-born and based poster artists who, without exception, had studied abroad in Paris, Munich, and other European cities. Important figures of this generation whose later works would form a major portion of Swiss illustrative posters include: Emil Cardinaux, a painter, who devoted to the poster medium, produced luxury hotel and travel images with the qualities of Japanese woodcuts; Robert Mangold whose work was inspired by Greek mythology and classical allegorical figures; Otto Baumberger whose realistically rendered work formed a synthesis between typeface and image: and Niklaus Stoecklin who brought a clean, precisely detailed, and realistic style to commercial advertising. All of these artist later became leading members of the Early Modernist movement in Switzerland.

The Swiss Werkbund, an association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists, was established in 1913 and provided a major momentum to the development of the Swiss graphic and printing industry, including its design quality and product marketing. In the 1920s, the association promoted functional industrial design and, coordinated with the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts, made contributions to the development of modern Swiss graphic design.

Ernst Keller, one of the co-founders of the Swiss Werkbund, was a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts from 1918 to 1956. He initiated a graphic design and typography course which used simple geometric forms, vibrant colors, and evocative imagery to explain the meaning behind each typographic design. Many of his students gained international acclaim in the design field, including typeface designer Hans Eduard Meier, who designed the Syntax typeface, and the graphic designers Hermann Eidenbenz, who designed the Graphique and Clarendon typefaces, Lora Lamm, a major innovator of graphic fashion advertising. and Richard Paul Lohse, a pioneer in book design and one of the leading members of the Constructive Art movement.

Both Zurich and the city of Basel were the home bases for design schools, printers, and publishers in the 1930s. Switzerland became an important focus for graphic designers from many countries, due to imposed artistic restrictions and political pressures of the rising National Socialist Party. In the 1930s, a major breakthrough in posters occurred with the work of Swiss photographer Herbert Matter, who had studied and worked with French painters Fernand Léger and Adolphe Mouron Cassandre in Paris. He pioneered the use of photomontage combined with typeface in commercial art. Photomontage was an effect where multiple photo images would be edited into a seamless image for poster use. In 1932 Matter’s series of posters for Swiss resorts and the Swiss National Tourist Office achieved international acclaim.

The “PKZ (Coat)” , one of the most famous Swiss illustrative object posters, is a testament to the graphic skill of Otto Baumberger as well as to the lithographic and publishing skills of J. E. Wolfsenberger, Zurich’s renowned art graphics company. This advertising poster for the clothing line, Paul Kehl of Zurich, was the first object poster by Otto Baumberger in which he omitted all unnecessary text from its design. The advertiser is identified solely through the label on the coat. This poster was also an advertising first in the dramatic use of hyper-realism, as seen in the highly detailed rendering of the coat’s wool fibers.

Insert Top Image: Artist Unknown, “Lotschberg Tunnel, Loetschberg Railway”, 1912, Lithograph, Hubacher and Company Publisher, Bern, Private Collection

Insert Bottom Image: Burkhard Mangold, “Fabbrica di Automobili”, 1907, Lithograph, 84 x114 cm, J. E. Wolfsenberger Publishers, Zurich, Private Collection

Truman Capote: “Occasionally There Were Humans”

Photographer Unknown, Occasionally There Were Humans

“Sometimes on flat boring afternoons, he’d squatted on the curb of St. Deval Street and daydreamed silent pearly snow clouds into sifting coldly through the boughs of the dry, dirty trees. Snow falling in August and silvering the glassy pavement, the ghostly flakes icing his hair, coating rooftops, changing the grimy old neighborhood into a hushed frozen white wasteland uninhabited except for himself and a menagerie of wonder-beasts: albino antelopes, and ivory-breasted snowbirds; and occasionally there were humans, such fantastic folk as Mr Mystery, the vaudeville hypnotist, and Lucky Rogers, the movie star, and Madame Veronica, who read fortunes in a Vieux Carré tearoom.”

—-Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms

Cesare Fracanzano

Cesare Fracanzano, “Two Wrestlers”, 1637, Oil on Canvas, 156 x 128 cm, Museo del Prado

Born in Bisceglie, Apulia in 1605, Cesare Fracanzano was a Mannerist painter who flourished in the seventeenth century. His father, Alessandro Fracanzano, was a nobleman originally from Verona and a late-Mannerist painter. Cesare Fracanzano and his younger brother Francesco learned the art trade from their father; however, they attributed little importance to their father’s style. In 1622, the brothers moved to Naples to study and work.

Cesare Fracanzano returned to the Apulia region in 1626, producing works for the churches and palaces of the nobility. In the period around 1630, he entered the Naples studio of Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera, a proponent of an especially pronounced chiaroscuro technique which added drama to a work by creating a spotlight effect. Fracanzano’s pictorial style was based on Ribera’s teachings; however, he was also influenced by the boldness and dramatic brushwork of Tintoretto and the more classical Baroque styles of the Carracci brothers and Guido Reni of the Mannerist school.

Fracanzano married Beatrice Covelli, of whom little information is known, and settled in Barletta, the main town of Apulia, in south eastern Italy. Their union produced one son, Michelangelo, who was also a painter. After the death of his wife, it is known that he married a model who had posed for several of his works. Cesare Fracanzano died in 1651.

Fracanzano executed many works in his hometown, and only journeyed from town to fulfill commitments for work in Naples, Rome and other cities in Apulia. Works attributed to him include: “Saint John the Baptist”, 1635-40, at the National Museum of Caposimonte in Naples; “Drunken Silenus”, 1630-35, at the Museo del Prado; “Saint Jude Thaddeus” painted circa 1630 and showing the influence of his mentor, the painter Ribera; and the “Immaculate Conception with St. Joseph and St. Nicholas” at the Church of Sant Antonio de Padri Barletta in Apulia.

Cesare Fracanzano’s 1637 “Two Wrestlers” belongs to a group of paintings entitled “History of Rome” which was commissioned for Madrid’s Buen Retiro Palace, a large palace complex built on the orders of Philip IV of Spain and designed for the leisure of the monarchy . Dedicated to depictions of Roman public pastimes, the group includes athletes, gladiators, animal fights, and mock sea battles. As the buildings of the palace complex are no longer extant, the painting is in the collection of Madrid’s Museo del Prado.

Insert Image: Cesare Fracanzano, “Saint Jude Thaddeus”, circa 1630, Oil on Canvas, 91.5 x 79.3 cm, Private Collection