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 11

A Year: Day to Day Men: 11th of June

The Sun King

June 11, 1936 was the opening day of the International Surrealist Exhibition.

The International Surrealist Exhibition was held from June 11 to July 4, 1936, at the New Burlington Galleries in London’s Mayfair, England. The exhibition was marked both by the high quality of the exhibits and by the fact that Andre Breton, Salvador Dali and many another European Surrealists came over for the occasion. The opening day stopped the traffic on Piccadilly due to the swell of the crowds and, over the weeks that followed, it forced the British arts establishment to reappraise what art actually was as well as what an exhibition could be.

Surrealism’s main flag bearer in Britain was Roland Penrose, a wealthy young artist. A meeting on the Rue de Tournon took place between him and a precocious young poet called David Gascoyne, who had become passionate about surrealism, and had just completed a book about it. The two men got talking about how extraordinary it was that, while Paris was undergoing a seismic art revolution, a few hundred miles away in London no one knew anything about it. They decided to change all that, with a show to jump-start the British imagination.

In the end, some 392 paintings and sculptures were assembled at the New Burlington Galleries. True to the surrealist notion of “objective hazard” (a random but ultimately fortuitous happening), the show was beset by problems which, added to the planned surprises, made it a veritable festival of the best that surrealism had to offer. First, there was the business of transporting the art: two days before the opening, a consignment was seized by Customs and two pieces – one by Wilhelm Freddie showing the naked bodies of dead soldiers, another by the Argentinian Leonor Fini showing young men dancing naked in the twilight – were turned back on grounds of decency. The hanging of the show happened just hours before the opening, only to be rearranged once again at the last minute.

The painter Sheila Legge showed up dressed in a long, white satin gown, her face obscured by roses and holding an artificial leg wearing a silk stocking. The poet Dylan Thomas offered the guests teacups full of boiled string. Andre Breton gave the opening speech dressed entirely in green. Salvador Dali gave his lecture wearing a diving suit with helmet. During the lecture, it became apparent that he was slowly suffocating inside his helmet; it had to be pried off to save him. He continued the lecture with a slide show, with the slides presented upside down.

Calendar: June 10

A Year: Day to Day Men: 10th of June

A Scattering of Suds

June 10, 1971 marks the passing of the English actor, Michael Rennie.

A meeting with a Gaumont-British Studios casting director led to Michael Rennie’s first acting job, a  stand-in for Robert Young in the 1936 film “Secret Agent” directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  He put his film career on hold for a few years to get some acting experience on the stage, working mostly in repertory theater in Yorkshire. Rennie eventually became a lead actor with the York Repertory Company.

Rennie played minor roles in films during this period including “Conquest of the Air” in 1937, “Bank Holiday” in 1938 and the 1939 “This Man in Paris”. After the outbreak of war in September of 1939, he began to receive offers for larger film roles, in particular Leslie Howard’s 1941 anti-Nazi thriller “Pimpernel Smith” which became one of the most valuable films of British war propaganda.

With the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Rennie was given his first film break, when cast alongside Margaret Lockwood, who was at the peak of her popularity, in the 1945 musical “I’ll Be Your Sweetheart”, for Gainsborough Studios. Rennie was billed below Lockwood and star Vic Oliver and given an “introducing” credit; but his character was the actual protagonist of the film. Although the movie was not a large hit, Rennie received excellent notices for his perfomance.

After moving to Hollywood in 1950, Rennie was signed to a 20th Century Films contract by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. In 1951, Robert Wise became the director of the first post-war, large budget science fiction film “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, Originally cast with Claude Rains in the lead, Rennie received top billing when Rains turned down the role. The film was a serious, high-minded exploration of mid-20th century suspicion and paranoia, combined with a philosophical overview of humanity’s coming place in the larger universe. Rennie’s portrayal of the spaceman Klaatu is arguably his most popular role and a classic in the science fiction genre.

After the film’s release, Rennie worked as a supporting actor for eight years until his return to England in 1959. At that time, he took the lead role of Harry Lime in the 1959 television series “The Third Man”. Throughout his career, Rennie made numerous guest appearances on television, particularly on American programs. He completed what amounted to guest roles in two films, “The Power” and “The Devil’s Brigade”, both filmed in 1968, before moving to Switzerland in the latter part of that year. Rennie’s final seven feature films were filmed in Britain, Italy, Spain and, in the case of the film “Surabaya Conspiracy”, the Philippines.

Michael Rennie journeyed to his mother’s home in Harrogate, Yorkshire, following the death of his brother. It was there that he died suddenly in June of 1971 of an aortic aneurysm almost two months before his 62nd birthday. After his cremation, Rennie’s ashes were interred in Harlow Hill Cemetery, Harrogate, England.

Ronald Brooks Kitaj

Ronald Brooks Kitaj, “Novella in Terre Verte”, 1992, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 60 Inches

Ronald Brooks Kitaj was an American artist who spent much of his life in England. He became a merchant seaman with a Norwegian freighter when he was seventeen. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Cooper Union in New York City. After serving in the US Army for two years, he moved to England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford and then the Royal College of Art in London.

Kitaj had a significant impact on British pop art, with his figurative paintings featuring areas of bright color, economic use of line and overlapping planes which resemble collages. His more complex compositions built on his line work using a montage practice, which he called ‘agitational usage’. Kitaj often depicted disorienting landscapes and impossible 3D constructions, with exaggerated and pliable human forms. He often assumed a detached outsider point of view, in conflict with dominant historical narratives.

Calendar: June 9

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 9th of June

Visualizing the Source of the Sea

On June 9, 1909. twenty-two year old Alice Huyler Ramsey leaves home to drive across the United States coast to coast.

Alice Taylor Huyler was the daughter of John Huyler, a lumber dealer, and Ada Mumford Farr. She attended Vassar College from 1903-1905. In 1906 she married congressman John Ramsey of Hackensack, New Jersey and settled in that town. They had two children; John Jr. born in 1907 and Alice born in 1910.

After receiving a new Maxwell runabout as a gift from her husband in 1908, Alice Ramsey became an avid driver and entered the 1908 American Automobile Association’s endurance race, being one of only two women to participate. During that event, Carl Kelsey, who was a publicity man for the Maxwell-Briscoe company, proposed that Alice Ramsey attempt a  transcontinental journey with the company’s backing. It was to be a publicity stunt with the company providing a new 1909 Maxwell touring car for the journey and all parts and assistance as needed. This journey was part of a marketing strategy to encourage women to drive cars.

On June 9th, Alice Ramsey, twenty-two years old and now a mother of one, began the journey from Hell Gate in Manhattan, New York to San Francisco in a green Maxwell 30. She was accompanied by 16-year old Hermine Jahns and two older sisters-in-laws, none of whom could drive. They used maps from the AAA for guidance in their journey. Only 152 miles of the 3,600 mile trip were paved. The women mostly navigated by following telephone poles, using the poles with the most wires as the guide to where they hoped would be a town.

Over the course of the journey, Alice Ramsey cleaned spark plugs, repaired a broken brake pedal, changed eleven flat tires, and slept with the others in the car when stuck in the mud, a common occurrence. The journey took 59 days to drive coast to coast across the United States at that time in history. They arrived in San Francisco amid great crowds on August 7, 1909, about three weeks later than originally planned.

Alice Huyler Ramsey was named the “Woman Motorist of the Century” by the American Automobile Association in 1960. In her later years, she lived in California, where in 1961 she wrote and published her book “Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron”, the tale of her transcontinental adventure. Always an enthusiastic driver, Ramsey drove across country more than thirty times between 1909 and 1975, by which time she was 79 years old. She became, on October 17, 2000, the first woman inducted into the Automobile Hall of Fame.

“Good driving has nothing to do with sex. It’s all above the collar.”- Alice Huyler Ramsey, Ms. Magazine, February 1975

Arnald Amar, “Salvacci Denducci Pace”

Armand Amar, “Salvacci Denducci Pace” from the Album “Bab’Aziz”

Armand Amar is a French composer who grew up in Morocco. He plays congas, the tabla and the zarb. His works are focused particularly on Eastern music. He is the author of several ballets and soundtrack films such as “The Trail”, “Days of Glory”, “Earth from Above”, and “Home’. In 1994 he founded the label Long Distance with his partners Alain Weber and Peter Gabriel.