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.

Lucy Glendinning

Lucy Glendinning, “Feather Child 4″, Date Unknown, Feathers on Form

Lucy Glendinning is a sculptor and installation artist, who works in a contemporary British sculpture tradition. Her different aesthetic expressions are brought together under one central entry point: the human body as a semiotic medium. For Glendinning, art is the primary tool for investigating psychological and philosophical themes. Her work is thus permeated by a conceptual content, superior to the value of aesthetics.

Glendinning seduces the observing eye by emphasing subtle expressions and presenting stunning craftsmanship. Her way of cleverly combining paradoxical qualities are revealed in the twisted combinations of tenderness and brutality, empathety and ignorance, stillness and movement.

The suite “Feather Child” series originates from Glendinning’s fascination with visions of a future society. The feathered children are embodied questions, where the artist is asking us if we, in a world where our genetics could be freely manipulated, will be able to resist altering our physical abilities. Will necessity or vanity be the ruling power? The fragility of the feathers is simultaneously mirroring the perhaps most classic tale of human hubris: the fate of Icarus in Greek mythology.

Calendar: November 28

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

Responsive to Touch

November 28, 1866 was the birthdate of American architect Henry Bacon.

Born in Watseka, Illinois, Henry Bacon studied briefly at the University of Illinois in 1884 but left to be employed at the office of McKim, Mead and White, one of the best-known architectural firms at that time. Bacon’s work was in the late Greek Revival and Beaux-Arts forms associated with the firm. He worked on the 1889 Paris World Expo, the Boston Public Library, the Harvard Club of New York, and New York’s Pennsylvania Station.

In 1889, Henry Bacon won a scholarship for architectural students, enabling him to travel in Europe, learning and drawing details of Roman and Greek architecture. Upon his return to the United States, he rejoined McKim’s firm, working on projects such as the Rhode island State House and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.

In 1897, Bacon formed a partnership, called the Brite and Bacon Architects, with James Brite, a younger architect from the McKim firm. In the same year, they were selected to build three private residences including the La Fetra Mansion  in Summit, New Jersey. The La Fetra Mansion was designed and built by Bacon, and his design was published in the September 1901 issue of “Architecture” the pre-eminent architectural professional journal of its time.

The La Fetra Mansion fully exhibits Bacon’s preference for Beaux-Arts Neo-Greek and Roman architecture styles. His simple and elegant lines, and his skill in dimensions and proportions, gave rise to a stately elegance, peaceful tranquility, and a sense of divine protection.

In 1897, Henry Bacon was also approached by a group which was organized with the intent to raise public and private funds to build a monument in Washington, D.C. to memorialize President Abraham Lincoln. Bacon began his conceptual, artistic, and architectural design for the Lincoln Memorial that year. He continued in the effort even though the funding for the building of the project did not materialize until years later. The Memorial opened in May of 1922.

The Brite and Bacon Partnership dissolved in 1902, partly resulting from Brite’s disagreement over Bacon’s passion and the unpaid time he spent on the design of the Lincoln Memorial. After that, Bacon practiced under his own name with significant success, building a large number of famous public buildings and monuments. In May of 1923 President Warren G Harding presented Bacon with the American Institute of Architects’s Gold Medal, making him the sixth recipient of that honor. Henry Bacon died in February of 1924 and is buried in North Carolina.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Henry Bacon”, 1910,, Vintage Portrait Photo, The Royal Institute of British Architects, London

Second Insert Image: Henry Bacon, “Competition Proposal for a Monument to Abraham Lincoln”, 1911-1915, Record Group 42, National Archives, Washington DC

Bottom Insert Image: George F. Landegger, “B. C. Scranton Library, Madison, Connecticut”, Architect Henry Bacon, 1900

E.M. Forster: “Man is the Measure”

Photographer Unknown, Man is the Measure

“I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated by the Machine. Then I said to myself, “Man is the measure”, and I went, and after many visits I found an opening.”
― E.M. Forster

Reblogged with thanks to https://southafricangayboy.tumblr.com

Nahum B. Zenil

 

Nahum B. Zenil, “The Escape”, Date Unknown, Mixed Media on Canvas

Mexican artist Hahum B Zenil taught classes on many different subjects in Mexico City for twenty years before deciding to become a full-time artist. He had a solo exhibiton in 1980 at the Casa de Arte CREA in Mexico City. Zenil was selected to be part of a group exhibition of Mexican art in Stockholm and London in 1984. He continues to work and support artists who explore their sexualities through their art.

Much of Zenil’s works use mixed media on paper or oil on canvas. He preferred to paint on canvas until the materials compromised his health, changing to collages on paoer. Zenil uses his image to relieve pressures he felt as a child growing up homosexual in a small town and to comment on contemporary Mexican culture.

Within Zenil’s mixed media pieces he uses mainly himself as the subject. He pictures himself in his images with many religious figures such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Within his images are many reworked traditional Mexican forms like the retablo and ex-voto styles.

Calendar: November 27

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of November

The Bare White Wall

November 27, 1920 marks the release of Douglas Fairbanks’s “The Mark of Zorro”.

“The Mark of Zorro” was a 1920 silent adventure romance film, starring Douglas Fairbanks and Noah Beery Senior’, based on Johnston McCulley’s 1919 “The Curse of Capistrano” which introduced the character of Zorro. The story was adapted into a screenplay by Fairbanks, under the name of Elton Thomas, and Eugene Miller. “The Mark of Zorro” was the first film released through United Artists, formed by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Fairbanks.

Douglas Fairbanks played Don Diego Vega, the effete son of a wealthy ranch owner, who has the secret identity of a masked Robin Hood- like rogue, known as Zorro, or The Fox. He is the champion of the people who appears out of nowhere to protect and right wrongs. He has a love interest, Lolita played by Marguerite De La Motte, and is pursued by the authorities, including Sergeant Pedro Gonzales played by Noah Beery Senior.

“The Mark of Zorro” is a landmark in the career of Douglas Fairbanks and in the development of the action adventure film. This was Fairbanks’s thirtieth motion picture; and he used it to transition from comedies to costume adventure films, which is how most people remember him. The audiences responded with enthusiasm to Fairbanks’s new persona, which allowed him to flaunt his considerable athleticism to its fullest advantage. Fairbanks’s stunts have lost none of their impact; no later cinematic superhero has ever been half so convincing as his Zorro leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and over the heads of his enemies.

This film helped popularize one of Americas’s most prominent creations of fiction; the enduring character of the superhero. It established the pattern for future caped crusaders with dual identities. “The Mark of Zorro” was remade twice: in 1940 starring Tyrone Power and in 1974 starring Frank Langella. The United States Library of Congress selected it in 2015 for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In DC Comics, it is established that “The Mark of Zorro” was the film that young Bruce Wayne saw just before the death of his parents outside the movie theater. Zorro is often portrayed as Bruce Wayne’s childhood hero and an influence upon his Batman persona. Bill Finger, co-creator with Bob Kane of the character Batman, was inspired by the Zorro played by Fairbanks, leading to similarities in costumes, the secret caves, and the unexpected secret identities.