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.

Irina Nakhova

Irina Nakhova, “Pilot”, 2015, Installation at the 2015 Venice Biennale

“Pilot” is one part of a three-part installation “The Green Pavilion” presented by Russian artist Irina Nakhova at the Venice Biennale in 2015. It is a giant head of a helmeted pilot whose features subtly changed activated by sensors in the room to the movements of the viewers.

“When you walk into the first room, all the sizes are different, and who greets you there is the pilot. The pilot is your navigator through time. So when you are here, there is dark. The skies are closed, but you are in the cockpit of the flight. When you come closer to the pilot, his eyes open, he looks at you and he also looks at the sky, and you can see that the sky are opening [via a skylight]. Then you really see what’s going on, but it’s also like in a dream because there is no verbal communication.” -Irina Nakhova

An installation artist and academically trained painter, Nakhova combines painting, sculpture, and new media into interactive installations and environments that engage viewers as co-creators of conceptual mindscapes. A part of a new generation of Russian non-comformist artists now known as the Moscow Conceptual School, Nakhova received international recognition as a young artist for her first ‘total installation’ entitled “Rooms (1983-1987)”. She was chosen as the first female artist to represent Russia at its pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Irina Nakhova

Irina Nakhova, “Primary Colors 2″, 2003, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 116 x 183 centimeters, Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York

Irina Nakhova currently lives and works in Moscow and New Jersey. She graduated from the Graphic Design Department of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute in 1978. Nakhova was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR from 1986 to1989 and is considered one of the founding members of the Moscow Conceptualist movement. She is known for her “total installations” in which her art controls the space in a room.

Calendar: October 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of October

The Art and the Man

October 21, 1925 was the birthdate of Cuban singer Ursula Hilaria Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso.

Celia Cruz was born in the diverse, working-class neighborhood of Santos Suárez in Havana, Cuba. While growing up in Cuba’s 1930s musical climate, Cruz listened to many musicians who influenced her adult career; Fernando Collazo, Pablo Quevedo and Arsenio Rodriguez among others. As a child, despite her father’s objections, she learned Santeria songs from a neighbor who practiced Santeria; she also studied Yoruba songs and made various recordings of this religious genre.

From 1947, Celia Cruz studied music theory, voice, and piano at Havana’s National Conservatory of Music. She began singing on Havana’s radio station Radio Garcia-Serra, winning first place on the station’s “Hora del Te” show for her tango song “Nostalgias”. Cruz’s big break came in 1950 when the Cuban band Sonora Matancera decided to give her a chance. She won the support of the band’s leader. Rogelio Martinez and recorded hit songs including “Yembe Laroco’ and “Caramelo”.

Celia Cruz toured with the band for fifteen years. During that time, she also appeared in cameo roles in Mexican films: the 1950 “Rincon Criollo”, “Una Gallega en la Habana”, and “Amorcito” released in 1961. After Fidel Castro assumed control of Cuba in 1959, the band left Cuba to perform in Mexico. Refused permission to return to Cuba by Castro, Celia Cruz and her husband, Cuban musician Pedro Knight, became United States citizens. In 1965, Cruz left the Sonora Matancera band, and with fellow musician Tito Puente, joined the Vaya Records label. Soon after that, she was headlining a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall.

In 1969, Celia Cruz won a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance. Celia Cruz’s 1974 album “Celia y Johnny”, a collaboration with musician Johnny Pacheco, was very successful, particularly the song “Quimbara” which became one of her signature songs. Touring with the ensemble group “Fania All-Stars”, she sang in England, France, the DR Congo and in Latin America.

With a voice described as operatic, Celia Cruz moved through high and low pitches with an ease that belied her age, and her style improvising rhymed lyrics added a distinctive flavor to salsa. Her flamboyant costume, which included: various colored wigs, tight sequined dresses, and very high heels, became so famous that one of them was acquired by the Smithsonian institution.

Through a formidable work ethic, Cruz rose to the very top in her genre; a genre that was traditionally male dominated. Celia Cruz died at her home on July 16, 2003 at the age of 77. After her death, her body was taken to Miami’s Freedom Tower, where more than two hundred-thousand fans paid their respects. Her last album, “Regalo del Alma”, won a posthumous award at the 2004 Premios Lo Nuestro for best salsa release of the year.

Laurent Durieux

Laurent Durieux, “Rear Window”, Date Unknown, Silk Screen

Laurent Durieux is a Brussels illustrator and graphic artist who has spent two decades as a designer and a teacher. His retro-futuristic movie posters have caught the world’s attention after the 2013 release of his “Jaws” poster. He considers illustrator Jean Girard, who drew the “Moebius’ and “L’Incal” comic books, and Belgian illustrator Luc Van Malderen as his mentors.

In 2011, Laurent Furieux was named one of the world’s Best Illustrations by the international advertising magazine Lurzer’s Archive. That same year, his short animated film “Hellville” was screened at several world film festivals.

John Watson

John Watson, “Justice Society”, Illustration for DC Comics

John Watson studied Fine Art at the Cheltenham and Glousester College. He is one of the few remaining comic book artists who specializes in painting in oils. Watson has done a number of noatable cover runs for both Marvel and DC Comics. He most recently painted all the covers of the Marvel “Apes” series and also covers for Marvel’s “Triple-A Baseball”.

Giovanni Gasparro

Giovanni Gasparro, La Visione di San Giovanni a Patmos”, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 325 x 180 cm.

Giovanni Gasparro was born in Bari in southern Italy in 1983. He graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 2007, as a pupil of the painter Giuseppe Modica, with a thesis in art history on the Roman stay of Van Dyck. Gasparro’s first solo exhibition in Paris was in 2009.

In 2011, the Arcidiocesis of L’Aquila commissioned him to paint nineteen works of art between the altar and the altarpiece for the Basilica of San Giuseppe Artigiano, which was damaged by the earthquake of 2009. This collection of works constitutes the largest painting cycle of sacred art made in recent years.

In 2012 Gasparro made the “Anomalia with the Largillière’s Hat” for the Costa Fascinosa, Europe’s largest cruise ship, in the Costa Crociere fleet. In 2013 he won the Bioethics Art Competition of UNESCO’s Bioethics and Human Rights Chair with his work “Casti Connubii”, inspired by Pope Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical. The following year, with “Quum Memoranda”, a portrait of Pope Pius VII, Gasparro won the Pio Alferano Prize.

Reblogged with many thanks to https://milkyger.tumblr.com

Source: artfreyparis

Calendar: October 20

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of October

Working in the Heat

October 20, 1854 was the birthdate of poet Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud.

Arthur Rimbaud was born in the provincial town of Charleville, France, to a father who was a military officer and a mother lacking in a sense of humor, who Rimbaud nicknamed “Mouth of Darkness”. Rimbaud was a writer from a young age; at the age of nine, he wrote a seven hundred word essay objecting to his having to learn Latin in school. In 1865, he and his brother were sent to the Collège de Charleville where he became a highly successful student able to absorb great quantities of knowledge. In 1869 Rimbaud won eight first prizes in the French academic competitions, and in 1870 won seven first prizes.

Arthur Rimbaud’s first poem to appear in print was “Les Étrennes des Orphelins” (“The Orphans’ New Year’s Gifts”), published in the January 2, 1870 issue of “La Revue Pour Tous”. At the age of fifteen Rimbaud was salready howing  maturity as a poet. His poem “Ophelie” would be included in many anthologies and is regarded as one of Rimbaud’s three or four best poems. From late October in 1870, Arthur Rimbaud’s behavior at the age of sixteen became rebellious, drinking, stealing, and writing scatological poems. His friend Charles Auguste Bretagne advised him to write to the eminent Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine.

Arthur Rimbaud sent Verlaine two letters with poems, including his hypnotic and shocking “Le Dormeur du Val”. Verlaine was intrigued and sent Rimbaud a one-way ticket to Paris. Rimbaud arrived in late September of 1871 and resided briefly with Verlaine and his pregnant wife at their home. Verlaine and Rimbaud led a wild, vagabond-style life, a short and torrid affair filled with absinthe, opium and hashish. The Paris literary circle were scandalized by Rimbaud, who still writing poetry, was considered an archetypical enfant terrible. Their stormy relationship brought them to London in September of 1872, where Verlaine abandoned Rimbaud to return to his wire.

Arthur Rimbaud eventually returned to Charleville and completed his prose work “Une Saison en Enfer”, A Season in Hell, widely regarded as a pioneer work of modern Symbolist writing. He returned to London in 1874 with the French Symbolist poet Germain Nouveau, whose work was mostly published after his death. They lived together for three months while Nouveau finished his work “Illuminations”. By March of 1875, Rimbaud had given up his writing in favor of a working and traveling life.

In February of 1891, in Aden, Rimbaud developed what he thought was arthritis in his right knee. Failing to respond to treatment, he returned to France. On arrival in Marseille,, he was admitted to the Hôspital de la Conception where, a week later on the 27th of May, his right leg was amputated. The post-operative diagnosis was bone cancer. After a short stay at the family farm in Roche, he attempted to return to Africa, but his health deteriorated. He was re-admitted to the same hospital and received last rites from a priest before dying on November 10, 1891 at the age of thirty-seven.

The Stream

Photographer Unknown, (The Stream)

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories