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.

Bi Jianye

 

Born in 1985, Bi Jianye is an emerging artist originally from Dandong city in the Liaoning province of China.  He now lives and works in Shenyang. Jianye has been showing with Platform China,  one of Beijing’s most important contemporary art galleries, since graduating in 2008 from the Department of Oil Painting at the LuXun Academy of
 Fine Arts in Shenyang.

Bi Jianye’s recent paintings feature scenes from nature, but with a difference, as they reveal an out-of-place still life motif, or box, carefully placed into the composition. The box may be a comment that refers to the artist as a lonely and isolated figure in society, or perhaps refers to humanity’s forceful intervention with nature and the environment.

Bi Jianye uses thick paint that reveal carefully painted surfaces, using a muted palette of browns and creams to create quiet and assured compositions made by an artist confident in his art.

Mikael Joansson, “Ezra Miller”

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Mikael Joansson, “Ezra Miller”, from Interview Magazine November 2017

Mikael Jansson is a leading fashion photographer/director currently living in London and working worldwide. During the mid-nineties he gained notoriety creating epic features for some of the leading avant-garde publications of the era. He is renowned for his technical prowess and emotionally charged images, spanning across all genres.

Among his influences he credits legendary master photographer Richard Avedon who he worked with in the late eighties. Mikael Jansson’s spirit of adventure and travel has taken him to spectacular locations around the world on assignment for publications such as W Magazine, Vogue, Vogue Paris and Vogue Nippon. He regularly contributes to Interview Magazine, shooting celebrity cover features as well as influential actors, musicians and designers.

Fabiola Forns Art: A Stunning Bird

Fabiola Forns, “Wedding Bells (Great Egret in Mating Display)”, 2012, Color Print

Fabiola Forns Art is a husband and wife team of photographers who share a passion for nature photography.  Fabs teaches photography at Miami-Dade College and Alfred has a successful dental practice. They are both award winning photographers, with Nature’s Best and NANPA selecting their work. Since joining the Photographic Society of America, the team has became Mentors for new members.

Images from Fabiola Forns Art can be found at the FineArtAmerica site located at this link: for nature photography

Joseph Campbell, “Forms and Conceptions . . .”

Photographers Unknown, Forms and Conceptions

“The function of ritual and myth is to make possible, and then to facilitate, the jump—by analogy. Forms and conceptions that the mind and its senses can comprehend are presented and arranged in such a way as to suggest a truth or openness beyond. And then, the conditions for meditation having been provided, the individual is left alone. Myth is but the penultimate; the ultimate is openness—that void, or being, beyond the categories —into which the mind must plunge alone and be dissolved. Therefore, God and the gods are only convenient means—themselves of the nature of the world of names and forms, though eloquent of, and ultimately conducive to, the ineffable. They are mere symbols to move and awaken the mind, and to call it past themselves.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

David Agenjo

Paintings by David Agenjo

Born in Madrid, Spain, David Agenjo is a painter who lives and works in London. In the context of contemporary figurative painting, he is best known for his compelling colour palette where personal colour arrangements and interpretations take his subjects beyond realism. Throughout Agenjo’s career, he has evolved his practice from an intimate exploration of the human form, to a broader contextualisation of figures and, most recently, to still life paintings.

David Agenjo studied painting and printmaking at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid from 2000 to 2006, combining his artistic practice with his profession as a graphic designer before moving to Dublin in 2007 as an independent artist. Three years later he moved to London, establishing his studio in an artist community, where he still lives and works. Agenjo has worked with galleries in major cities such as Dublin, London and New York and his paintings and private commissions have been auctioned and sold to collectors worldwide. He has been awarded artist residencies in Shenzhen, China (2013) and Mumbai (2015). David Agenjo’s site: https://davidagenjo.com.

Erik de Jong

 

Erik de Jong, “Owl (Eule)”, Date Unknown, Oil on Panel

Born in 1958, Erik de Jong finished his studies at the Minerva Academie in Groningen, Netherlands. In 1984 he decided to move to Amsterdam. De Jong had his first solo exhibition in Galerie Mokum. which has been a critical site for the exhibition of Dutch Realist painting.

De Jong has a preference for the theme of the human set in a landscape or in an interior. The people that he depicts are mostly men that are lost in thought or that are stilled in motion. In de Jong’s paintings, a distance is created between the spectator and the imaged figures in his paintings. This provides a moment of rest; but still there is a feeling of tension. The question arises as to whether there has already been an action performed or does that action still have to come.

Reality has always been the starting point of Erik de Jong’s paintings; but the border between reality and what is suggested is very thin. This is something that can be clearly seen in most of his recent paintings. Usually there are several hidden layers in the work of De Jong, requiring that the viewer look beyond the archetype images he has learned.

Calendar: December 31

Year: Day to Day Men: December 31

Half-Filled Tub

On December 31st of 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a nine-thousand year lease on an abandoned property and became a prominent figure within the Dublin brewery scene. 

In September of1755, Arthur Guinness purchased his first brewery, a three-story building located on the confluence of the River Liffey in Leixlip, County Kildare. The river provided power and water for brewing; the hops were brought from Dublin along the Dublin-Galway road. The origin of the yeast used by Guinness is unknown, but is speculated to have come from Kildare. In September of 1756, Guinness leased several more properties to extend his business. 

Leaving his Leixlip brewery in the care of his brother Richard, Guinness moved to Dublin, an area of affordable property due to a recent number of economic upsets and bank collapses. He was particularly interested in acquiring a brewery at St. James Gate that had sat abandoned for nine years. A large site of four acres, 1.6 hectares, it contained a gristmill, two malt houses, a brewhouse and stables. The property’s location near St. James Gate would be served by a terminus of the newly built Grand Canal. 

The current owner of the Dublin property was the Rainsford family. It was originally owned by Sir Mark Rainsford, the Lord Mayor of Dublin and a manufacturer of beer and fine ales. The business was passed on to his son, also named Mark, who leased the business in 1715 to a Captain Paul Espinasse. In 1750, the Rainsford family resumed ownership of the business and the site. On the thirty-first of December in 1759, Arthur Guinness leased the site from Sir Mark Rainsford’s grandson, Mark Rainsford III. Under the agreement, Guinness made a £100 down-payment and agreed to pay an additional £45 annually for nine-thousand years.  

The terms of the lease involving the water usage became a major problem between Arthur Guinness and the Dublin Corporation, the city’s administrator. By 1773, the Corporation claimed his brewery was using more water than that specified by his lease, a claim disputed by Guinness. However in April of 1775, the Corporation discovered that Guinness had made alterations to the pipe system that allowed him to draw more water than he was allowed. Both sides eventually settled the matter in court in 1785; Guinness agreed to lease water from the City of Dublin for an annual charge of £10.

While popular in Dublin, Guinness did not immediately achieve dominance among the regional brewers; his sales were far below those of such brewers as Taylor, Phepoe and Thwaites. Dublin brewers were not as successful as English brewers whose imported porter was the dominant drink in the city. In 1778, Guinness added porter to his ale-heavy brewery and, by 1783, it dominated his business. By 1796, porter production at the St. James Gate Brewery was five times the ale output; ale brewing at the site ended on the 22nd of April in  1799, 

Although he limited his brewery to dark beer, Arthur Guinness experimented with different forms of porter. His concept of a West India Porter, with greater hops and alcohol content, later became the basis for Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. In 1777, the British House of Commons formally changed the tax code regarding domestic Irish porter; this allowed the creation of a market for the importation of Irish porter into England, which led to  beer exportation as a staple of the Irish economy. 

Calendar: December 30

A Year: Day to Day Men: December 30

Scrawls on the Wall

On December 30th in 1809, the city of Boston passed a law which made the wearing of masks at balls illegal. 

The anit-masquerade opinion was already established in England before masked balls spread overseas to the colonies. Opponents in eighteenth-century England crusaded against gatherings that were tarnishing the country’s morals. The epistolary novelist Samuel Richardson, author of the 1740 “Virtue Rewarded”, asserted that public masquerades presented frightening possibilities of disguise, role-playing and sexual freedom for women.  

As masquerade balls became popular in the colonies, several cities began to ban masks. In 1808, a year before Boston’s law, Philadelphia made masquerades and masked balls illegal. The city supported the law by asserting dances were common meeting places for those interested in sex commerce, and masked balls created a sense of anonymity for those participants. 

In 1848, Boston extended its masked ball law by adding the following section: 

“Any person who shall get up and set on foot, or cause to be published, or otherwise aid in getting up and promoting any masked ball, or other public assembly, at which the company wears masks, or other disguises, and to which admission is obtained upon payment of money, or the delivery of any valuable thing, or by any ticket or voucher obtained for money, or any valuable thing, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars; and for repetition of the offense, by imprisonment in the common jail or house of correction, not exceeding one year.”

On the first of April in 1963, Boston’s anti-masquerade law was repealed. It should be noted that Boston, with its Puritan roots, had a history that emphasized proper behavior and refraining from frivolity. In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which contained Boston, enacted a law called “Penalty for Keeping Christmas”. The idea was that such festivals, superstitiously kept in other countries, were a great dishonor of God and offense of others. People who were found celebrating Christmas by failing to work, feasting, or any other way, had to pay five shillings for every offense, about fifty dollars today. This law was in effect for twenty-two years.

Calendar: December 29

Year: Day to Day Men: December 29

Pin-Striped Shirt

December 29th of 1721 marks the birth date of Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, the Marquise de Pompadour. She became a prominent member of the French court and the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751. 

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was born in Paris to François Poisson and his wife Madeleine de La Motte; although it is suspected that he was not her biological father. After a scandal of unpaid debts forced François Poisson to flee France in 1725, Charles Le Normant de Tournehem, one of the men suspected of being Jeanne’s father, became her legal guardian. She attended an Ursuline convent in Poissy from 1726 to 1730 where she received quality education. Tournehem then arranged for private education at home where she was taught the arts including painting and theater. 

At the age of nineteen, Jeanne Poisson married Charles Guillaume Le Normant d’Étiolles, Tounehem’s nephew and his sole heir. This inheritance include the estate at Étiolles, a wedding gift from Tournehem, that was situated on the edge of the King’s hunting grounds. As a married woman, Jeanne Poisson frequented the celebrated salons in Paris and met such notables as writer Voltaire, historian Charles de Montesquieu, and author Bernard de Fontenelle. 

Due to her involvement with the Parisian salons, King Louis XV heard Jeanne Poisson’s name mentioned at Court. Wanting to be noticed by the King, Poisson arranged for a meeting during the King’s hunting trip to the forest of Sénart in 1744; the result of which was the King sending a gift of venison to her. With the death of Maria Anne de Mailly, Madame de Châteauroux, the position of King’s mistress became vacant in early December of 1744. In the next year, Jeanne Poisson received a formal royal invitation to attend the February 25th masked ball at the Palace of Versailles, a celebration for the marriage of Dauphin Louis of France to Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain. 

It was at this celebration that King Louis XV declared his affection for Jeanne Poisson. By March of 1745, she was the King’s mistress, installed at Versailles in an apartment directly above the King. The marriage between Poisson and her husband Charles d”Étiolles was officially annulled on the 7th of May. The King purchased the title of Marquisate of Pompadour, along with its estate and coat of arms, and gave them to Poisson thus making her a Marquise of the court. Forging a good relationship with the Queen Maria Leszczyńska, Poisson became favored by the Queen above the King’s other mistresses and quickly mastered the highly mannered etiquette of the court.

As the court favorite, Jeanne Poisson, now the Marquise de Pompadour, effectively assumed the role of prime minister and became responsible for favors and dismissals, as well as advancements for court members. She  welded influence in negotiations towards the Treaty of Versailles and supported Cardinal de Choiseul-Beaupré in his plans for the Pacte de Famille and the suppression of the Jesuits. The Marquise made herself invaluable to the King by becoming the only person he trusted to tell him the truth. She would entertain him with elegant private parties and operas, events sometimes attended by Queen Leszczyńska, as well as hunting trips in his private reserve.

In 1750, Marquise de Pompadour’s ceased sexual relationships with the King partly due to her poor health, three miscarriages, and poor libido. In order to continue her importance in the court as a favorite, she took on the role of “friend of the King” and presented a portrait of herself entitled “Amitie (Friendship)” that was sculpted by Jean Baptiste Pigalle. After the sale of her château, the Marquise de Pompadour took over the Château de Saint-Ouen near Paris. While there, she played a central role in Paris’s art scene by sponsoring sculptors and painters, as well as, constructing the Sèvres porcelain factory which became one of the most famous in Europe. The Marquise de Pompadour lived at Saint-Ouen until her death at the age of forty-two in April of 1764.

Ron Monsma

“Still Life with Green Cup”, Date Unknown, Pastel on Paper

Ron Monsma received his BA in Fine Arts at Indiana University South Bend and has been an instructor of drawing and painting at Indiana University since 1997. His work has been recognized with numerous awards and is represented in many private and corporate collections across the United States. 

Calendar: December 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of December

Wearing White Attire

December 28, 1612 was the date of the first observation of the planet Neptune. Galileo observed and recorded it as a nearby “fixed star”.

Galileo was observing the four large moons of Jupiter — now named for him — in the years 1612 and 1613. Over several nights, he also recorded in his notebook the position of a nearby star that is not in any modern catalogues, University of Melbourne’s physicist David Jamieson explains.

“It has been known for several decades that this unknown star was actually the planet Neptune,” Jamieson said. “Computer simulations show the precision of his observations revealing that Neptune would have looked just like a faint star almost exactly where Galileo observed it.” But unlike stars, planets orbit the sun. So planets move through our sky different than the relatively fixed background of stars.

On the night of Jan. 28, 1613, Galileo wrote in his notebook that the star we now know is the planet Neptune appeared to have moved relative to an actual nearby star. There was also a mysterious unlabeled black dot in his earlier observations of Jan. 6, 1613, which is in the right position to be Neptune.

If the mysterious black dot on Jan. 6 was actually recorded on Jan. 28, Professor Jamieson proposed this would prove that Galileo believed he may have discovered a new planet. “I believe this dot could reveal he went back in his notes to record where he saw Neptune earlier when it was even closer to Jupiter but had not previously attracted his attention because of its unremarkable star-like appearance”.

Calendar: December 27

Year: Day to Day Men; December 27

Moss Green on a Field of Blue

The 27th of December in 1904 marks the theatrical premier of James Matthew Barrie’s play “Peter Pan”, also known as “The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up”. The play was produced by Charles Frohman and opened at the Duke of York’s Theater in London. The lead character of Peter Pan was played by thirty-seven year old Nina Boucicault due to regulations regarding child actors. Gerald du Maurier doubled as Mr. Darling and Captain Hook. 

Peter Pan first appeared in J. M. Barrie’s 1902 novel “The Little White Bird”. This original story focused on the fictional idea that all babies where at one point birds. The inspiration for the iconic scenes of Peter Pan flying can be drawn from that idea. Peter Pan actually appeared as a minor character in a few chapters of “The Little White Bird”. 

The London play was met with positive reviews by both critics and viewers. In 1905, Frohman brought “Peter Pan” to New York where it premiered at Broadway’s Empire Theater. Maude Adams played Peter, a role she reprised in 1912 and 1915 theatrical runs. The Broadway role of Peter Pan was showcased by Marilyn Miller in 1924 and Eva Le Galliennne in 1928.

In 1906, Barrie published a second novel, entitled “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens”, that expanded the character of Peter Pan through a series of adventures. Barrie continued to re-examine the character through multiple revisions of the play and, in 1911, wrote a third novel entitled “Peter and Wendy”. The story line for the novel was inspired by the revisions Barrie had made to the play. 

“Peter Pan” made its first adaption as a musical in 1950 with music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein. The play starred Jean Arthur as Peter Pan and horror icon Boris Karloff as Captain Hook. However, after its initial run, this adaption virtually vanished until 2018 when Bard College did a contemporary take on the show.

The best known “Peter Pan” musical is the 1954 adaption with Mary Martin as Peter Pan and Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook. This play, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, won Tony Awards for the lead actors. Broadway revivals starred Sandy Duncan in 1979 and ex-gymnast Cathy Rigby throughout the 1990s. In 2014, a live NBC telecast of the stage show starred Allison Williams as Peter and Christopher Walken as Captain Hook.