Author: ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

https://www.instagram.com/wolvesofgray This blog is a refugee and a survivor of the Great Tumblr Inquisition of December 17th, 2018. I am gay artist, who received training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now, a retired high-end fine art framer living in Maryland, USA. My interests and studies in life run a wide gamut from art to history and from the scientific to the esoteric. I have been building this blog of images and texts for the last eight years. My wish is that my posts pique the interest of viewers and encourage them to experience more.

Calendar: June 15

A Year: Day to Day Men: 15th of June

Black and Yellow Plaid

On June 15, 1878,  photographer Eadweard Muybridge used high-speed photography to capture a  horse’s motion.

Former California Governor Leland Stanford was an imperious, headstrong captain of industry who had helped build the transcontinental railroad and would later found the university that bears his son’s name. He retired to the life of a country horse breeder; and he wanted proof of what his eyes told him: that a horse has all four feet in the air during some parts of his stride.

Many photographers at that time were still using exposures of 15 seconds to one minute. Automatic shutters were in their infancy: expensive and unreliable. Eadweard Muybridge, a successful landscape photographer at that time, devised more-sensitive emulsions and worked on elaborate shutter devices. He also rigged a trip wire across a racetrack, letting the horse’s chest push against the wire to engage an electric circuit that opened a slat-shaped shutter mechanism to make the exposure.

This system produced an “automatic electro-photograph” on July 1, 1877. It showed Occident, a Stanford-owned  racehorse, seemingly with all four feet off the ground. The press and the public failed to accept this as proof, however, because what they actually saw was obviously retouched. (The photo had been reproduced by painting it, then photographing the painting, then making a woodcut of the photo for the printing on paper.)

Muybridge continued his labors with the engineering help of Stanford’s Central Pacific Railroad. They installed 12 evenly spaced trip wires on Stanford’s Palo Alto racetrack. When a horse pulled a two-wheeled sulky carriage over the wire, the wheels depressed the wire, pulling a switch that opened an electrical circuit that used an elastic band to open a rapid-fire sliding shutter mechanism in the side of a purpose-built shack. Inside the shack, behind a row of 12 shutters, was a row of 12 cameras. Opposite the shack was a white wall with vertical lines matching the distance of the trip wires and cameras.

So, on June 15, 1878, before assembled gentlemen of the press, Stanford’s top trainer drove Stanford’s top trotter across the trip wires at about 40 feet per second, setting off all 12 cameras in rapid succession in less than half a second. About 20 minutes later, Muybridge showed the freshly developed photographic plates. The horse, indeed, lifted all four legs off the ground during its stride. Remarkably, this was not in the front-and-rear-extended “rocking-horse posture” some had expected, but in a tucked posture, with all four feet under the horse.

Muybridge refined his invention, increasing the cameras from one to two dozen, and developed an electromagnetic timer that opened shutters independently of any trip wires. That allowed him to study the nonlinear motions of other four-footed animals, human athletes, a nude descending a staircase and even birds. Muybridge went on to publish a series of finely printed, large-format books of his stop-motion photographs.

Steven Erikson: “Shadow is Ever Besieged, for That is Its Nature”

Photographer Unknown, (Light and Shadow Upon a Figure)

“Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.”

― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

Lorii MeyersL “Always Being a Good Sport”

Photographer Unknown, (The Sportsmen)

“True sportsmanship is…
Knowing that you need your opponent because without him or her, there is no game.
Acknowledging that your opponent holds the same deep-rooted aspirations and expectations as you.
Knowing that, win or lose, you will walk off the course with pride.
Always taking the high road.
And always, always, always being a good sport.”

― Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book

Time Stopped

Photographer Unknown, (Time Stopped: A Fraction of a Second Until 10:10)

“The main thing you remember is the noise. All that water cascading around you sounds kind of brutal, kind of dangerous, but time has stopped, so all you do is try to hang on and hope that nature, the ocean, treats you well. I just recall seeing another surfer way down the beach, and then it was all over and I was out, and safe, going wow, wow, that was a gift from nature.”
― Robert Black

The Wood Dragon

Chinese Carved and Painted Wooden Dragon, 1880, Wood, 11 x 34 x 13 Inches

This Chinese sea dragon is from the late 19th century, most likely being a temple carving for above a doorway. It portrays an undulating movement in its form, with the head turned back to the scaled, serpentine body. The mouth is open in a smile and the eyes are large with eyelashes. It is painted in strong reds and greens with gilt highlights.

Calendar: June 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of June

The Toucan in the Forest

June 14, 1933 was the birthdate of Józef Lewinkopf, a Polish-American novelist known by the name Jerzy Kosinski.

Józef Lewinkopf was born to Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosinski, which his father gave to him. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance, often at great risk. After the war ended, Kosinski and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra, in southwestern Poland.

By the age of twenty-two, Jeerzy Kosinski had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Lodz. He became an associate professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In order to immigrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him. In the United States Kosinski worked odd jobs to get by, eventually graduating from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965.

Kosinski’s first novel was the controversial “The Painted Bird”, published in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. The story originally introduced as being autobiographical was the story of a World War II boy wandering around Eastern Europe. Assumed by reviewers to be a memoir of a Jewish survivor to the Holocaust, the book received enthusiastic revews. However, within twenty years it was discovered to be fictional. The book was banned in Poland from its publication until the fall of the communist government in 1989. When it was finally printed in Poland, thousands of Warsaw residents waited as long as eight hours for an autographed copy.

Kosinski’s 1970 novel, “Being There” was one of his most significant works. It was a satirical view of the absurd reality of America’s media culture. It is the story of Chance the gardener, a man of few distinctive qualities who emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes the heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon and a presidential policy advisor. His simple and straight forward responses to popular concerns are praised as visionary despite the fact that no one actually understands what he is really saying. “Being There” was made into a movie in 1979 and starred Peter Sellers as the gardener Chance and Shirley MacLaine as Eve Rand, the wife of the business tycoon who advises the President..

Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses toward the end of his life, and he was under attack from journalists who accused him of plagiarism. By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat, as well as severe physical and nervous exhaustion. He committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by ingesting a lethal amount of alcohol and drugs, and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, suffocating to death. His suicide note read: “I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity.”

Jeff Hein

Jeff Hein, “Facing the Mob”, 2006, Oil on Canvas, 121.9 x 152.4 cm, Private Collection

Jeff Hein was born in New Winsdor, New York in 1974. He began studying drawing at Ricks College in 1992 under Gerald Griffin. In 1997, after a four year sabbatical to serve a mission and battle cancer, he resumed his studies in painting and drawing at Salt Lake Community College under Rick Graham and Rob Adamson. From 1998-2002 Hein attended the University of Utah where he studied fine art.

Hein began his full time painting career in 2002. He founded in 2007 the Hein Academy of Art in Salt Lake City, where he trains apprentices in the naturalist tradition of painting.  Hein took a 2.5 year sabbatical (2008-2010) to devote to personal study and the exploration of naturalist painting techniques.

Source: k250966

Enrico Baj

Enrico Baj, “Al Fuoco, Al Fuoco (Fire! Fire!)”, 1963–64, Oil Paint and Meccano on Furnishing Fabric, Tate Museum

Enrico Baj had painted many humorously satirical pictures of what are sometimes known as ‘decorated people’, a favourite theme being high-ranking army officers bedecked with sashes and medals who are gesticulating some command. There are about half-a-dozen other pictures of the period between 1963-64 with very similar figures : single figures as well as a row of figures. Enrico Baj pointed out in an October 1974 letter that in this painting, as in many others of the same period, he used spare pieces of English ‘Meccano’ erector sets. During this same period he built thirteen sculptures using Meccano pieces.

This picture has a label of the 1964 Venice Biennale on the back with the title ‘Mani in Alto’ (Hands Up); but it does not appear among the works by Baj listed in the Biennale catalogue. The reason for this was that it was added at the last moment after some other works by Baj were censured by the Italian curators of the Biennale for being irreverent towards the Italian authorities and army. Enrico Baj stated that the title was changed when the painting was modified in 1964; the two dates 1963 (which is inscribed on the stretcher) and 1964 can therefore be used together.