Ádám Mányoki

Ádám Mányoki, “Self Portrait”, circa 1711, Oil on Canvas, 87 x 61.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Born at the village of Szokolya in 1673, Ádám Mányoki was an Hungarian portraitist, one of the most prominent figures of Hungarian Baroque art. His work is known for its refined style and accomplished depiction of human emotion.

Born into the family of a rural Protestant preacher, Ádám Mányoki’s early life was one of hardship as the family struggled financially. Recognizing the family’s situation and Mányoki’s artistic talent, a German staff officer named Dölfer took the responsibility for Mányoki’s upbringing and education in Hamburg and Lüneburg. Exposed to the classical ideas of beauty and proportion, Mányoki developed his skills under court painter Andreas Scheits in Hamburg and painter Nicolas de Largillière of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. Both of these artists were acclaimed for their innovation within the Baroque tradition.

Mányoki’s formal education ended with a journey to Amsterdam where the Age of Enlightenment was flourishing. The Dutch Republic had a vibrant art scene with new ideas, literary salons, coffeehouses, and experiments with new techniques in the arts. Mányoki’s exposure to this atmosphere solidified his commitment to the art of portraiture as a means to capture the subtleties of human psychology. In 1703, he decided to relocate to Berlin where he secured patronage from King Frederick William I and established himself as a prominent member of the Prussian cultural elite. Mányoki painted several portraits of royal family members that were celebrated for their precision and sense of dignity.

After establishing his reputation in Germany, Ádám Mányoki traveled extensively in Europe seekings new opportunities. He traveled to both Prague and Vienna where he received commissions from Emperor Charles VI, ruler of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, and Empress Maria Theresa, who ascended to the throne after Charles VI’s death. Mányoki’s travels expanded his knowledge of both European history and the diverse approaches to painting. Between 1724 and 1731, he remained in Hungary where he created portraits of the Hungarian nobility and members of the Podmanitzky family, an influential lineage that played a key role throughout Hungary’s history.

After leaving Hungary, Mányoki resided in Dresden and Leipzig. He received royal patronage from Augustus III, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and continued to paint works that were in keeping with the style of that era. Due to unresolved salary disputes, Mányoki resigned his position as court painter in 1753, an act which marked the end of his career. Ádám Mányoki died peacefully in Dresden, at the age of eighty-four, in August of 1757.

Notes: Ádám Mányoki painted his 1711 “Self Portrait” while he was residing in Berlin. Influences from his studies of seventeenth-century Dutch and Germany painting can be seen in its composition. Mányoki used a technique of self-portraiture that had been popular since Rembrandt; a soft velvet hat with an upturned rim that casts a warm, brown shadow over the upper half of the face. The choice of colors and some of the portrait’s formal details can be traced to the work of the French portraitist to the Prussian court, Antoine Pesne. In the portrait, the posture of the figure and the shirt’s loose front opening may have been inspired by Mányoki seeing German Baroque artist Philip Kilian’s engraving of landscape painter Johann Heinrich Roos’s self-portrait.

Top Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Portrait of János Podmaniczky”, 1724, Oil on Canvas, 91 x 76 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Second Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Porträt einer Hofdame König August de Starken (Portrait of a Lady-in-Waiting to King Augustus III, the Strong)”, circa 1715, Oil on Canvas, 64 x 62 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Portrait of Prince Ference Rákózci II”, 1712, Oil on Canvas, 75.5 x 67.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Aage Storstein

The Paintings of Aage Storstein

Born at the historic city of Stavanger in July of 1900, Aage Storstein was a Norwegian painter, draftsman and graphic artist who focused his studies on historical art as well as his own contemporary style. Although particularly interested in early Renaissance art, Storstein found inspiration in the work and unique style of Picasso.

Although he lived the majority of his life in Norway, Aage Storstein traveled to Paris to study during the 1920s. He studied at Académie Ranson, the private art school founded by painter Paul Ranson in 1908; the Académie de la Grande Chaumière which was free from the strict Academic rules of painting; and the Académie Colarossi, a school founded as an alternative to the government-sanctioned, more conservative École des Beaux Arts. In 1926, Storstein studied under Norwegian painters Henrik Sørenson and Per Lasson Krohg, both of whom had been students of Henri Matisse.

In Paris, Storstein was greatly influenced by the modernist paintings of that period and began his own distinctive style of Cubism. Although best know for his figurative compositions, Storstein’s landscapes were always central to his art. His landscapes, a blend of nature with human structure, were painted with analytical precision, simplified forms, and soft colors.

Aage Storstein’s first exhibition was held at the 1924 Høstutstillingen (Autumn Exhibition) in Oslo, Norway. the first of twelve exhibitions at this venue in his lifetime. In 1937, his work was exhibited at the International Exhibition in Paris, a significant event in which forty-four countries participated. Storstein won the 1938 competition for the design of the West Gallery of the Oslo City Hall. For this site, he created a series of Cubist murals that depicted Norwegian life and the country’s history and mythology.

Beginning in 1946, he taught at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts where he later became head professor. Among Storstein’s students were such artists as modernist abstractionist Gunnar S. Gundersen, painter Halvdan Ljøsne, and painter/photographer Rolf Aamot, known for his electronic tonal images and film work.

In 1961, Aage Storstein was given a retrospective exhibition of his work at Norway’s largest gallery, Kunstnernes Hus, that contained works drawn from both public and private collections. Aage Storstein died in Norway in May of 1983 at the age of eighty-two. His work is in many private collections as well as the collections of the Oslo National Gallery and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Top Insert Image: Aage Storstein, “Self Portrait”, 1931, Oil Cardboard and Paper on Panel, 21 x 17 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Aage Storstein, “Human Rights”, 1949, Mural Fresco, Detail, Oslo City Hall

Bottom Insert Image: Aage Storstein, “Mannshode (Man’s Head)”, Date Unknown, Oil on Plate, 30.5 x 23.5 cm, Private Collection

Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin

Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin, “Tractor Drivers”, 1965-1980, Oil on Board, 95.3 x 132.1 cm, Private Collection

Born at Kirilovka, Samara Region in January of 1915, Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin was a Russian painter known for his figurative work and scenes of Russian rural life. After being orphaned during the Russian Civil War, he was placed in the care of a military educational orphanage for boys that trained them for military service.

After leaving the orphanage, Borodin entered Saratov Art and Industry High School and graduated in 1936 with a teacher’s diploma in painting and drawing. He also briefly studied under Russian Post-Impressionist painter Igor Grabar noted for his distinctive style of painting that bordered on Pointillism.

During World War II, Borodin was wounded during his service with an armored division of the Red Army. After the war, he returned to Saratov where he taught at his alma mater until the 1960s. Borodin relocated to Stalingrad, now Volgograd, where he was given a teaching position.

A member of the Russian Union of Artists since 1939, Aleksei Borodin participated in local, regional, Republican and Union-sponsored exhibitions from the early 1950s through the 1980s. Honored for his work, he was given a solo retrospective in 1986 at the Volgograd Art Museum, which now houses his most famous painting, the 1964 “Volgograd Farmers”.

Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin died in Volgograd at the age of eighty-nine in 2004. His paintings are in numerous private collections around the world. The majority of his oeuvre, however, is in the Saratov Art Museum, Volgograd Art Museum, and the Museum of Defense in Volgograd.

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Wilfried Sätty

The Collages of Wilfried Sätty

Born at Bremen in April of 1939, Wilfried Sätty, birth name Wilfried Podriech, was a German graphic artist who became known for his assemblages, black and white collage art, and lithographs. After the end of World War II, Sätty’s early life took place within the surreal landscape of Bremen’s heavily-bombed ruins.

In the mid-1950s, Wilfried Sätty entered into a three-year apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer. After his training, he worked as an engineer in the construction of Brasilia, a modern, planned city development in Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro as the nation’s capital. Sätty relocated in 1961 to San Francisco, California where he settled in North Beach’s artistic bohemian community and worked as a draftsman for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Inspired by the creativity of the city’s psychedelic sub-culture, Sätty began in 1966 to create pictorial collages; some of these were sold as poster prints.

After establishing a studio on San Francisco’s Powell Strret, Sätty created the first of his assemblage installations, “The North Beach U-Boat”, a warren of rooms containing mirrors, dolls, oriental carpets, and other discarded material found in the trash bins of wealthy residents. During the 1970s, he created animations, colored artwork, lithographic prints, and hundreds of black and white collages. These collages were well-received and were used as illustrations in both establishment periodicals and counter-culture publications.

Poster artists accepted Wilfried Sätty as a peer due to his designs for rock concert advertisements. However, his work was rooted in the more somber and utopian German Surrealism, an art expression that he accented with bits of the bizarre and grotesque. Generally excluded from gallery exhibitions, Sätty turned to publishing his work. Using printing presses to multiply and overprint his collages, he published two volumes of collages; the first of which was “The Cosmic Bicycle”, a collection of seventy-nine collages published in 1971 through “Rolling Stone” magazine’s imprint Straight Arrow Books. Sätty’s second volume from Straight Arrow Books was the 1973 “Time Zone”, a collection of collages in the form of a wordless novel akin to the collage books of Max Ernst.

Sätty created illustrations for the 1976 “The Annotated Dracula” which contained an introduction, notes and bibliography by Romanian-American author and poet Leonard Wolf. He also created eighty black and white illustrations for Crown Publishing Group’s 1976 “The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe”, a collection of Poe’s horror and literary short stories. Sätty is, however, perhaps best known for his commissioned work for Terence McKenna’s anthology book “The Archaic Revival”, published in May of 1992 by Harper Collins. This collection of essays, interviews and narrative adventures is illustrated through Sätty’s black and white collages depicting themes of ancient cultures seen through modern technology, optical art, and sacred religious architecture.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Wilfred Sätty’s work drew inspiration from the dramatic and often unruly events in the history of San Francisco; these collages cover the period from the 1848 Gold Rush to the 1890s. Sätty died in January of 1982, at the age of forty-two, from an accidental fall from a ladder at his Powell Street home. His final work, “Visions of Frisco: An Imaginative Depiction of San Francisco during the Gold Rush & the Barbary Coast Era”, was published posthumously in 2007 by art historian Walter Medeiros.

Notes: The Wilfried Sätty website is located at: https://satty.art/#top

The online “FoundSF”, a San Francisco digital history archive, has an article on Wilfried Sätty and his “North Beach U-Boat” project: https://www.foundsf.org/Satty_and_the_%22North_Beach_U-Boat%22

“Melt”, an archive of esoteric and contemporary culture, has an article on Wilfried Sätty that includes a biography as well as several images of his artwork: https://visualmelt.com/Wilfried-Satty

San Francisco artist and educator Ryan Medeiros has an article on Wilfried Sätty entitled “Wilfried Sätty; The Psychedelic Alchemist of Collage” on his website: https://ryanmedeiros.substack.com/p/wilfried-satty-the-psychedelic-alchemist

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wilfried Sätty”, circa 1960-1970s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Listen, Sweet Dreams”, 1967, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 59 cm, Orbit Graphic Arts, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Stone Garden”, circa 1960s, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 58 cm, Printed at East Totem West, California, Private Collection

Happy Holidays to All 2025 !

Konstantin Gorbatov, “A Winter Landscape”, 1896-1945, Pencil and Gouache on Paper Laid Down on Board, 36.1 x 48.2 cm, Private Collection

I would like to wish a Happy Holiday and a Great New Year to all my site’s visitors and subscribers, as well as a heart-felt thank-you to those whose donations supported this site’s cost and research. Thank you for all your comments, suggestions and needed article corrections. If you have not already subscribed to this site, please do so. Have a great holiday season and a year of good health, new friendships and exciting adventures! Chas (Ultrawolves)

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Born at the Volga River town of Stavropol (now Tolyatti) in May of 1876, Konstantin Ivanovich Gorbatov was a Russian Post-Impressionist painter known for his vibrant landscapes. Interested in art at an early age, he sketched the churches, houses and river landscapes of his hometown. In the 1890s, Gorbatov trained with the local artists in Samara and later relocated to Riga in 1896.

While studying civil engineering in Riga, Gorbatov continued his art training with evening classes. In 1904, he relocated to St. Petersburg and initially enrolled at the Baron Stieglitz School for Technical Draftsmanship before transferring to the Imperial Academy of Arts where Gorbatov studied under landscape painters Nikolay Dubovskoy and Alexander Kiselev. He began exhibiting his work in 1908 and was acknowledged for his distinctive style, a fusion of realism and the emerging impressionist style.

Critics praised Konstantin Gorbatov’s celebration of everyday Russian life and the harmony found in every detail of his work. The influence of the French Impressionists can be seen in his loose brushwork and plein-air light effects. Gorbatov drew on the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) realist tradition while embracing modern impressionism. Thus, his landscapes appealed to those who loved the post-impressionist Russian art and those with a sentimental connections to old Russian locales.

Gorbatov left Russian in 1922, unwilling to adapt to the new Soviet regime, and sought refuge in Italy, eventually settling in Venice. He frequently traveled around Italy and painted local scenes, architecture and seascapes as well as Russian landscapes from memory. Gorbatov moved to Berlin in 1926 where there was a thriving community of Russian émigré artists.During the late 1920s, he began selling and exhibiting his work internationally.

The rise of the Nazi regime in the 1930s led to a decline in interest for Konstantin Gorbatov’s work as it did not align with the austere cultural ideology of Nazi art policies. Still a Soviet citizen, he was forbidden to leave German and soon fell into poverty. Despite the hardship of his life, Gorbatov continued to paint for himself.

After enduring the war years in besieged Berlin, Gorbatov died in May of 1945, shortly after the Allied victory in Europe. His final act, one of generosity to his homeland, was the bequest that all his unsold artwork be given to the Academy of Arts in Leningrad. Many of Gorbatov’s paintings are also housed in the collection of the Moscow Regional Art Museum.

Robert Duncan: “It Was the Sound of Fire on the Hearth”

Photographers Unknown, Food for Fire, Food for Thought

      good wood
      that all fiery youth bust forth from winter,
         go to sleep in the poem.
      Who will remember thy green flame,
         thy dream’s amber?

Language obeyd flares tongues in obscure matter.

      We trace faces in clouds: they drift apart.
      Palaces of air. The sun dying down
         sets them on fire.

      Descry shadows on the flood from its dazzling mood,
      or at its shore read runes upon the sand
         from sea-spume.

This is what I wanted for the last poem.
A loosening of conventions and return to open form.

      Leonardo saw figures that were stains upon a wall
      Let the apparitions containd in the ground
         play as they will.

You have carried a branch of tomorrow into the room.
Its frangrance had awakend me. No. .

      It was the sound of a fire on the hearth
      Leapd up where you bankd it
      . . .sparks of delight. Now I return the thought

to the red glow, that might-be-magical blood,
palaces of heat in the fire’s mouth,

If you look you will see the salamander–

to the very elements that attend us,
fairies of the fire, the radiant crawling. .

That was a long time ago.
No. They were never really there,

      though once I saw–did I stare
      into the hear of desire burning
      and see a radiant man? like those
      fancy cities from fire into fire falling.

We are close enough to childhood, so easily purged
of whatever we thought we were to be.

Flamey threads of firstness go out from your touch,

flickers of unlikely heat
at the edge of our belief bud forth.

Robert Duncan, Food for Fire, Food for Thought, October 1959, Poetry, Volume 95, Number 1

Born at Oakland, California in January of 1919, Robert Edward Duncan was an American poet and a follower of Hilda Doolittle, a modernist poet who, with Ezra Pound, co-founded the Imagist group of poets. Duncan featured prominently in the histories of pre-Stonewall gay culture, bohemian communities of the Beat Generation, and cultural movements of the 1960s.

Born the tenth child of Edward Howard Duncan and Marguerite Pearl Wesley, Robert Duncan was adopted after the death of his mother by Edwin and Minnehaha Symmes. The prominent architect and his wife were a Theosophist family who embraced the spiritual teachings of Western esotericism as founded by Russian-American mystic and writer Helena Blavatsky. Robert Duncan grew up in a stable environment with new parents interested in both the occult and social community projects.

Encouraged by an English high school teacher, Duncan chose poetry as a vocation while still in his teens. After the death of Edwin Symmes in 1936, he began his studies at the University of California, Berkeley. While in his sophomore year, Duncan met graduate student Neo Fahs and entered into his first recorded homosexual relationship that lasted until 1940. While living in New York City with Fahs, he met many literary figures including playwright Arthur Miller and French-born essayist and writer Anaïs Nin.

During 1938, Robert Duncan briefly attended North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, an experimental educational project that became known for its artists and post-modernist poets. When he was drafted for military service in 1941, Duncan declared his homosexuality and was discharged. He became a prominent figure in the history of pre-Stonewall gay culture with his 1944 essay “The Homosexual in Society” published in editor and publisher Dwight Macdonald’s “Politics”, an outspoken magazine with articles by such notables as George Orwell, Lionel Trilling, and Mary McCarthy.

Duncan relocated to San Francisco in 1945 where he became friends with poets Helen Adam and Kenneth Rexroth as well as painter Lyn Brockway. He returned to U.C. Berkeley where he studied Medieval and Renaissance literature, eventually becoming a shamanistic figure in the artistic and poetry circles of San Francisco. Duncan’s first book, “Heavenly City Earthly City”, a collection of verse that reflected his admiration for the metaphysical work of British poet George Barker, was published by writer and physicist Bernard Porter’s newly founded Ben Porter Books in 1947.

In 1950, Robert Duncan met painter and collagist Jess Collins and began a relationship that would last thirty-seven years until Duncan’s death. They took marriage vows and settled in a historic Victorian home in San Francisco’s Mission District. Duncan began to publish his work regularly in the early 1950s and taught at Black Mountain College during 1956. His artistic and critical success occurred in the 1960s with the publishing of three volumes of poetic work: “Opening the Field” in 1960, the 1964 “Roots and Branches”, and “Bending the Bow” in 1968.

After the publication of his “Bending the Bow”, Duncan vowed not to publish another major collection for fifteen years. In 1984, his next major work “Ground Work I: Before the War” won the National Poetry Award. The concluding volume of Duncan’s poems, “Ground Work II: In the Dark”, taken as a whole was proposed by him in 1968 and later published in 1987.

Robert Duncan’s poetry is one of process not conclusion. It is considered Modernist for his inclination towards the impersonal, mythic and canonical styles; however, it is also seen as Romantic due to its organic, lyric and forward-wandering journey. Beginning in the 1960s, Duncan’s work was influenced by both “projective verse”, poetry that is shaped by the rhythms of the poet’s breath, and “composition by field”, the use of the page as a field of language beyond traditional margins and spacing. His work includes short lyrical poems and recurring sequences of prose poems, both of which draw inspiration from the poetic work of Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and particularly that of modernist Charles John Olson and the Black Mountain School of poetry.

One of the most influential of the postwar American poets, Robert Duncan died in San Francisco in 1988 after a long battle with kidney disease. He was survived by his partner Jess Collins who died in January of 2004 at the age of eighty. Duncan’s papers are housed at the State University of New York-Buffalo and the Special Collections and Archives of Kent State University.

“There is a natural mystery in poetry. We do not understand all that we render up to understanding. . . I study what I write as I study out any mystery. I work at language as a spring of water works at the rock, to find a course, and so, blindly. In this I am not a maker of things, but, if maker, a maker of a way. For the way is itself.”—Robert Duncan, Notebook published in Donald Allen’s “The New American Poetry: 1945-1960”, First Edition, 1960, Grove Press, New York

Notes: The Archives of American Art has an online copy available for public viewing of Robert Duncan and Jess Collins’s scrapbook for Patricia Jordan at: https://www.aaa.si.edu/uv/index.html?manifest=https://www.aaa.si.edu/manifest/edanmdm:AAADCD_item_11139&c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&config=uv-config.json&locales=en-GB:English%20(GB)

Second Insert Image: Original Cover for Robert Duncan’s “Roots and Branches”, 1964, New Directions Publishing, New York

Third Insert Image: Jess Collins, Original Collage Illustration for Robert Duncan’s “The Opening of the Field”, 1960, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Robert Duncan, “Bending the Bow”, 1968, 1st Edition, Publisher New Directions, New York

Bottom Insert Image: Jonathan Williams, “Robert Duncan”, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Film History: Alan Ladd

Director Frank Tuttle, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Cinematography John Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Born at Hot Springs, Arkansas in September of 1913, Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film producer who found success with portrayals in film noir, war movies and Westerns in the 1940s and early 1950s.

The only child born to freelance accountant Alan Ladd and English-born Ina Raleigh, Alan Walbridge Ladd was four years old at his father’s death of a heart attack. He and his mother moved to Oklahoma City where she married house painter Jim Beavers. The family relocated to California and eventually settled in the San Fernando Valley where Beavers was given a position at the silent film studio FBO Pictures (Film Booking Offices of America).

Ladd enrolled at North Hollywood High School where, despite his small stature, he became a swimming and diving champion in his teen years. In his senior year, he also participated in the high-school’s theatrical productions, one of which included his role as the comic Ko-Ko in “The Mikado”. After graduating in February of 1934, Ladd worked in various jobs including gas station attendant, lifeguard and hot dog vendor. His first employment in the film industry was a two-year position as a grip at the Warner Brothers studios.

After appearing in several stage productions for the Ben Bard Theater in Hollywood, Alan Ladd appeared in an uncredited role in director David Butler’s 1936 musical football-comedy “Pigskin Parade”. Although able to get short-term work at MGM and RKO, he was signed later that year by radio station KFWB as its sole radio actor, a position he held for three years. Ladd’s work as multiple characters was noticed by actress and talent agent Sue Carol who began to promote him for films and radio. Ladd’s first role through Carol was a credited role in director Frank Lloyd’s 1939 historical drama “Rulers of the Sea” with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Margaret Lockwood.

Over the next few years, Ladd had several small roles in films, among these were the 1940 “Green Hornet” serial, the 1941 comedy horror “The Black Cat”, and an uncredited role as a newspaper reporter in “Citizen Kane”. He gained some recognition for his featured role as a Royal Air Force pilot in the 1942 RKO Radio Pictures war film “Joan of Paris”, a critical success that featured the U.S. screen debuts of Paul Henried and Michèle Morgan. Ladd was given a contract with Paramount Pictures and, after a successful audition, the role of Raven, a paid killer with a conscience in director Frank Tuttle’s 1942 crime film “This Gun for Hire”. Although he had only received fourth billing, Ladd was made a star due to critical praise and fan reaction.

Paramount recognized that Alan Ladd was a potential star and immediately signed him for the adaptation of detective-novel writer Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key” released in October of 1942. This was Ladd’s second pairing with Veronica Lake, who had co-starred with him in “This Gun for Hire”. He followed “The Glass Key” with the 1942 all-star musical “Star Spangled Rhythm” and two films released in 1943, “Lucky Jordan” with Helen Walker and “China” with Loretta Young.

Although classified as unfit for military service due to stomach issues, Ladd enlisted in January of 1943, briefly serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit. He attained the rank of corporal but was given a honorable medical discharge at the end of October due to a stomach disorder complicated by influenza. When Ladd returned to Paramount, he was given the 1944 drama film “And Now Tomorrow”, a melodrama that co-starred Loretta Young. He next acted in the leading role for John Farrow’s historical adventure film “Two Years before the Mast”, which became one of the most popular films in the United States after its belated release in 1946.

In 1945, Paramount Pictures bought American-British detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler’s first original film screenplay “The Blue Dahlia” as a vehicle for Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix. Shot quickly by director George Marshall, the film ranked among the most popular films at the British box office in 1946. Chandler was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; Ladd was noted for his role as a tough guy in what became known as the film noir genre.

Ladd appeared in several films of mixed critical and commercial reception in 1949 and 1950. These include the 1949 “The Great Gatsby”, “Chicago Deadline”, “Appointment with Danger”, and two Westerns, the 1950 “Branded” and the 1951 “Red Mountain”. These dynamic action-packed roles were followed by Ladd’s most memorable performance as the drifter Shane, an honest character troubled by conflicting emotions. The role of Shane became the highpoint of Ladd’s film career. Directed by George Steven, the 1953 Western “Shane” won an Academy Award for its Technicolor cinematography and became a critical as well as commercial success for Paramount Pictures.

Alan Ladd entered independent film making in 1954 through the founding of Jaguar Productions, a Hollywood production company that released films through Warner Brothers. His first film, the 1954 Western “Drum Beat” was successful and was followed by the 1955 “Hell on Frisco Bay” with Edward G. Robinson, and the 1957 Western “The Big Land” in which he acted opposite Virginia Mayo. In the following year, Ladd acted with his eleven-year old son David and co-star Olivia de Havilland in the 1958 Technicolor Western “The Proud Rebel”, a Michael Curtiz film produced by Samuel Goldwyn Jr.

Ladd continued his acting with films for United Artist, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox Studios. He also starred in directors Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young’s 1961 “Duel of Champions”, an epic Roman adventure film shot in Italy. In 1963, Ladd accepted his last film role, the former gunslinger turned actor Nevada Smith, for director Edward Dmytryk’s drama “The Carpetbaggers”. This film adaptation of Harold Robbins’s novel was released to financial success in April of 1964, three months after Ladd’s death.

Alan Ladd was recuperating after knee injuries at his Palm Springs house in January of 1964. He had been suffering badly from insomnia and found solace in sedatives and an increasing dependence on alcohol. The butler saw Ladd on his bed in the morning of the twenty-ninth of January; upon his return in the afternoon, the butler found Ladd dead on the bed. The death was officially ruled accidental. Alan Ladd died at the age of fifty due to cerebral edema caused by acute overdose of alcohol and a mixture of tranquilizers. Ladd was interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale California.

Notes: The CMG Worldwide website has a page on Alan Ladd which includes a biography and a complete filmography: http://www.cmgww.com/stars/ladd/

The Hollywood’s Golden Age website has an extensive biography on Alan Ladd at: http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/actors/alan_ladd.html

Writer, critic and performer Trav S.D. has an excellent 2020 article on his WordPress site “Travalanche” entitled “The Short Life of Alan Ladd” at: https://travsd.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/the-short-life-of-alan-ladd/

An extensive article entitled “The Dynamic Duos Blogathon: Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake” can be found on the “ShadowsandSatin” WordPress site: https://shadowsandsatin.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/the-dynamic-duos-blogathon-alan-ladd-and-veronica-lake/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Publicity Photo, Paramount Pictures

Second Insert Image: Film Poster, “Captain Carey, U.S.A>”, 1950, Director Mitchell Leisen, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd”, Paramount Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: Film Poster, “the Blue Dahlia”, 1946, Director George Marshall, Cinematography Lionel Lindon, Paramount Pictures, 76 x 102 cm, Private Collection

Fifth Insert Image: Eugene R Richee, “Alan Ladd”, 1941, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Film Poster, “Calcutta”, 1947, Director John Farrow, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Frank Brangwyn

The Artwork of Sir Frank William Brangwyn

Born at Bruges in May of 1867, Sir Frank William Brangwyn was a Welsh artist, painter, illustrator, watercolorist, printmaker and designer. A prolific artist, he created more than twelve-thousand works including ceramics, stained glass panels and windows, glass tableware, furniture, and both interior and exterior architectural designs.

One of four children born to ecclesiastical architect William Curtis Brangwyn and Eleanor Griffiths, Frank Brangwyn received his primary education at Westminster City School. However, he often played truant, spending time at his father’s workshop and sketching at the South Kensington Museum. Brangwyn later took an apprenticeship with progressive architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, a major influence in the Arts and Craft Movement. With a recommendation from Mackmurdo, he was able to enter the workshops of designer William Morris, one of the most significant cultural figures in Victorian England.

After one of his paintings sold at the 1884 Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy, Brangwyn joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and began painting seascapes. Securing a berth on a freighter to Istanbul, he spent 1890 and most of 1891 at sea, visiting Spain, Morocco, South Africa and Zanzibar. Brangwyn created many paintings during these voyages. His 1890 “Funeral at Sea”, a work done with a largely gray palette, was awarded a medal at the 1891 Paris Salon. Brangwyn, while traveling with Scottish orientalist painter Arthur Melville, became particularly influenced by the bright light and colors of the southern countries. He altered his palette towards lighter colors and produced many paintings and drawings in Spain, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey.

In 1895, German-French art dealer Samuel Siegfried Bing commissioned Frank Brangwyn to decorate the exterior of his Parisian art gallery, the Galerie L’Art Nouveau. Pleased with the work, Bing encouraged him to broaden the scope of his art. Brangwyn began creating tapestry and carpet designs, murals, posters and stained-glass designs for Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 1896, he created a series of illustrations for a six-volume reprint of British orientalist Edward William Lane’s translation of “One Thousand and One Nights”. After collaborating with Japanese artist Urushibara Mokuchu on a 1917 series of woodblock prints, Brangwyn met a fellow collector of Asian art, industrial magnate Kojiro Matsukata, who later became his patron.

Although not an official war artist during the First World War, Brangwyn produced more than eighty poster designs during the conflict. The majority of these designs were donated to charities including the Red Cross, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and the L’Orphelinat des Armées, a charity that supported French orphanages. Brangwyn also produced six lithographs for the Ministry of Information’s 1917 “Britain’s Efforts and Ideals” portfolio to raise money for the war effort. As the chairman of the English Committee for Diksmuide, a Belgian city torn apart by the war, he donated a series of woodcuts to aid in its reconstruction.

Frank Brangwyn became widely known for his mural work and received numerous commissions from both England and the United States. Originally commissioned to paint the altar recess of Saint Aidan’s Church in Leeds, he decided to work in glass mosaic due to the pollution in the air. This work, completed in 1916, covers the entire altar recess with scenes from the life of St. Aidan. Included among Brangwyn’s other mural commissions were the Great Hall of the Worshipful Company of Skinners for the Royal Exchange in London, the Missouri State Capitol Building, the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg, and a mural created specifically for exhibition at the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Brangwyn, in collaboration with muralists Diego Rivera and Josep Maria Sert, decorated the concourse of the RCA Building in New York City.

The most notable of Brangwyn’s mural commissions, due to both its size and its history, was the one requested by Edward Cecil Guinness, First Earl of Iveagh, in 1926. Brangwyn was to paint a pair of large canvases for the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords at Westminster. These canvases were to honor those peers and their family members who died in the First World War. Finished after the death of Edward Guinness, the life-size battle scenes were found by the House of Lords to be too grim and, thus, they refused the work. In 1928, the Lords offered a second commission, a series of sixteen large works which became known as the British Empire Panels. This series, completed in 1933, was viewed by the Lords who, considering them too colorful and lively for the proposed location, again refused the work.The sixteen canvas murals were later purchased in the following year by the Swansea City Council who installed them in the city’s Brangwyn Hall.

Frank Brangwyn became increasingly pessimistic after the House of Lords twice refused his work. During the 1930s, he began to dispose of his possessions, donating many of his and other artworks to museums in Britain and Europe, including the British Museum and the William Morris Gallery. In 1936, Brangwyn presented over four hundred works to the Arents House Museum in Bruges, Belgium. The two 1926 life-size battle scenes were included with the group of gifts he donated to the National Museum Wales between 1929 and 1935.

In 1944, Brangwyn, now recovered from his depression, secured Pre-Raphaelite illustrator Frederic Shields’s designs for architect Herbert Horne’s Chapel of the Ascension in London. This was an important achievement as the chapel was completely destroyed in 1940 during the bombing of London. One of Brangwyn’s last works was a 1950 series of illustrations for his friend Herbet Julyan’s book “Sixty Years of Yachts” published by London’s Hutchinson & Company. Frank William Brangwyn lived in his final years as a recluse in East Sussex until his death in June of 1956. His body was interred at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green.

Among Sir Frank William Brangwyn’s many awards and honors were the 1902 Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; the Gold Medal of Venice and the Grand Prix of Milan, both in 1906; the 1911 Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Italy; the 1919 Commander and Cross of the Order of Leopold I of Belgium; and the 1932 Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts. Brangwyn was awarded the title of Knight Bachelor, Great Britain in 1941.

Notes: The definitive Frank Brangwyn website is located at: https://frankbrangwyn.org

Sir Frank William Brangwyn was elected a full Royal Academician of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1910. The Royal Academy of Arts has a biography and a collection of his works at its website: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/frank-brangwyn-ra

An extensive biographical article on Frank Brangwyn can be found at the Chris Beetles Gallery website: https://www.chrisbeetles.com/artists/brangwyn-sir-frank-ra-hrsa-rsw-rws-prba-re-hrms-roi-1867-1956.html

A lecture on Frank Brangwyn’s British Empire Panels, written by University of Bristol’s Art History lecturer Dr. Sehra Jumabhoy, can be found at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery site: https://www.glynnvivian.co.uk/brangwyns-british-empire-panels/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Frank Brangwyn”, circa 1900, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “Study of Artichokes”, Date Unknown, Gouache and Pencil on Paper, 121 x 81 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “The Tarpit”, Date Unknown, Intaglio Etching on Paper, 65.4 x 73.3 cm, Museum Wales

Fourth Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “Bricklayers, Study for Rebuilding Belgium”, 1915, Black and Red Chalk on Buff Paper, 69 x 47 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “Makeing Sailors, The Gun”, circa 1917, “The Great War, Britain’s Efforts and Ideals” Series, Lithograph on Paper, 47.1 x 37.1 cm, Tate Gallery, London

Talon Abraxas

The Artwork of Talon Abraxas

Born in South London, England in 1980, Talon Abraxas is a symbolist artist, writer and occultist whose work consists of both traditional and digital images. Symbolism in painting was a fantastic, often mystic, style that emerged as a reaction to the naturalism of realist and impressionist trends. Symbolist painters believed that art should reflect an emotion or idea rather than represent the natural world in an objective, quasi-scientific manner. This style of painting emphasized the world of dreams and the religious traditions of human transformation; it placed the appearance of literature, music and the arts over their functions.

A self-taught artist, Talon Abraxas regards an artist as a spontaneously developed initiate (Greek: μύστης) whose work conveys spirituality and religious mysteries to the world. The inspiration for his work is drawn from past mystic artists and writers, including English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare, Belgian symbolist painter and author Jean Delville, Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, and Polish surrealist painter and sculptor Zdislaw Beksiński.

The Talon Abraxas Facebook site contains many images of Talon Abraxas’s work as well as other contemporary artists: https://www.facebook.com/p/Talon-Abraxas-100050477380184/

Notes: Archons are the supernatural builders of the physical universe, each one related to one of the seven classical planets visible to the naked eye: the Sun, Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, ordered according to their brightness. Abraxas is the term for the “Great Archon” in Gnostic Christianity. The word is found in such Gnostic texts as the “Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit” and the “Apocalypse of Adam”. Saint Epiphanius of Salamis, the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Salamis, Cyprus at the end of the fourth-century, designated Abraxas (Biblical Greek: ἀβραξάς) to be “the power above all, and First Principle” and “the cause and first archetype” of all things.

Archon (Greek: ἄρχων) is the Greek word that means “ruler”. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem αρχ-, meaning “to rule, to be first”. Throughout Greek history, the term Archon referred to the chief magistrates of various Greek cities. In the Byzantine empire, the term was used to denote a powerful noble or magnate, both domestic and foreign. Today, in Orthodox Christianity, archon is a honorific title given to someone who has served and promoted the Orthodox Church faith and tradition, a sworn duty of the archon. As it is a significant religious position, the faith and dedication of a candidate for the role are reviewed extensively during consideration.

Top Insert Image: Talon Abraxas, “Phoibos (Phoebus) Apollon”, Date Unknown, Digital Art

Bottom Insert Image: Talon Abraxas, “New Jerusalem”, Date Unknown, Digital Art

Illustrations for Edmund Weiss’s “Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt “

Illustrations for Edmund Weiss’s “Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (Stellar Atlas)“, 1888-1892, Verlag von J.F. Schreiber, Stuttgart

Born at Freiwaldau, now Jeseník, a town in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic in August of 1837, Edmund Weiss was a professor and astronomer who became the director of the Vienna Observatory in 1878, a post he held until his retirement in 1910.

Born to hydrotherapy pioneer Josef Weiss and his wife, Edmund Weiss was the twin brother of noted botanist Adolf Gustav Weiss, Professor of Botany at Prague. Edmund Weiss spent his early years in Richmond, England where his father was the director of the hydrotherapy center at Stansteadbury in Hertfordshire. After his fathers death in 1847, Josef Weiss returned to his native land where he studied at the Gymnasium in Troppau, now Opava, from 1847 to 1855. He continued his education at the Vienna University with studies in mathematics, astronomy and physics.

On the completion of his studies, Weiss was appointed an assistant at the Vienna Observatory in 1858. While employed at the observatory, he continued his studies and was awarded in 1860 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. As an assistant, Weiss was a diligent and skilled observer; he was noted for his accuracy in the measurement of a meridian arc during the period of 1864 to 1867. Although offered positions by astronomer Otto Wilhelm von Struve at the Pulkovo Observatory in Petrograd and chemist Adolf von Baeyer at Berlin’s Geodetic Institute, Weiss remained in Vienna where he received the title of honorary professor in 1869 and, in 1875, a full professorship.

In 1872, Edmund Weiss visited England and North America in order to study the leading observatories and new developments in optical works. The knowledge he gained was utilized at the building of a new observatory in the Vienna district of Währing as well as the purchase of its new instruments, among which were the 1882 twenty-seven inch equatorial by Dublin’s Grubb Telescope Company and an eleven three-quarter inch equatorial by Alvan Clark & Sons of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. The construction of the Währing observatory was overseen by its director Karl Ludwig Littrow who died before the observatory’s completion. Weiss was appointed its new Director in 1878 and retained that post until 1910 when he retired with the title Emeritus Director.

The detailed observations at the Währing Observatory were related to the planets, comets, occultations (the concealment of celestial bodies by another), variable stars and meteors. From these studies, Weiss published a large number of papers among which were those that examined the connection between comets and meteors, the meteor swarm of Halley’s Comet, the magnitude of minor planets, the nebulae in the Pleiades, and a method of obtaining True Anomaly and the radius vector of great orbital eccentricity. He published a new edition of astronomer Joseph Johann von Littrow’s popular “Die Wunder des Himmels (The Wonders of Heaven)” and, in 1890, a revised edition of Wilhelm Albrecht Oeltzen’s 1857 astronomical catalogue “Argelander’s Southern Zones”. Weiss also published a pictorial atlas of astronomy in German, the 1888-1892 “Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (Stellar Atlas)”.

Edmund Weiss made multiple journeys to observe astronomical phenomena, particularly eclipses. He observed the 1861 eclipse in Greece, that achieved just total before sunset; the 1867 annular (ring) eclipse from Dalmatia, Croatia; the 1868 total eclipse from Eden, Ireland; the total eclipse of 1870 from Tunis, Tunisia; and the 1874 Transit of Venus, the first of two transits in the nineteenth- century, from Jassy, Romania. These eclipse expeditions led to Weiss’s interest in solar physics and his membership with the International Union for Solar Research.

Weiss developed a high reputation in Vienna as a lecturer on astronomy. He was elected a Fellow of the Vienna Academy in 1878 and an Associate of the Society in 1883. Awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal in 1883, Edmund Weiss died at the age of seventy-nine in June of 1917 after a long and painful illness. He was survived by his wife Adelaide Fenzl and seven children. The “Weiss” lunar crater along the southern edge of the Mare Nubium was named after him.

Notes: It should be noted that Edmund Weiss is not the illustrator for the “Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt”. If anyone locates the name of the artist, please make a note in the comment section.

An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly between the Earth and the Sun but does not completely cover the Sun’s disk, leaving the outer edge visible as a bright ring around the Moon.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Professor and Astronomer Edmund Weiss”, 1872, Vintage Photo

Second Insert Image: Edmund Weiss, Title Illustration, “Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt”, 1888-1892, Verlag von J.F. Schreiber, Stuttgart

Bottom Insert Image: Edmund Weiss, “Uppenines at Sunrise”, Illustration for “Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt”, 1888-1892, Verlag von J.F. Schreiber, Stuttgart

Gilbert Lewis

The Portraits of Gilbert Lewis

Born at Hampton, Virginia in September of 1945, Gilbert Braddy Lewis was an American artist and art therapist. Over a span of five decades, he created portraits of friends and acquaintances, a collection of work that included an intimate series that represented the gay male experience in Philadelphia’s LBGTQ community.

Gilbert Lewis began his art training at the early age of seven and pursued the arts throughout his teenage years. After relocating to Philadelphia at the age of eighteen, he began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under such noted painters as Walter Stuempfig, Franklin Watkins, Hobson Pittman, and printmaker and muralist Morris Blackburn. Lewis was committed to his training and became particularly focused on the careful observation and life drawing taught in the curriculum of Thomas Eakins. After completing his certificate program in 1967, Lewis was awarded the eminent Cresson Traveling Scholarship, a two-year scholarship which enabled him to travel to Italy and study the Sienese and Florentine Renaissance artists.

Upon his return to the United States, Lewis enrolled at the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1974. Lewis received his Masters Creative Arts Therapy degree at Philadelphia’s Hahnemann University in 1978. He obtained a position as art therapist at the Manchester House Nursing Center in Medea, Pennsylvania where he worked from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The animated qualities in Lewis’s portraits of the seniors with whom he worked is evidence of the warm relationships he established with the residents.

Fascinated by youth and aging, Gilbert Lewis’s work focused on the beginning and the end of adulthood. While working at Manchester House during the day, he was creating gouache, watercolor, charcoal and graphite portraits of young men in the city at night. These portraits express Lewis’s attentiveness to convey the wide eyed awkwardness of those young men who sought both guidance and trust in their artistic relationship with him. Each sitter was encouraged to dress and pose themselves in a way that they would feel most comfortable. Frequent conversations were normal between artist and sitter; many of his models would bring their own music choices to the studio.

Lewis painted models every night from Monday to Friday. His models, often tall and slender, were usually portrayed directly looking at the viewer with a slightly awkward vulnerability. Using a soft color palette, Lewis would sometimes paint his figures against solidly-colored backgrounds. Not overly concerned with realism, Lewis was drawn towards the ethnographic approach to the detail and the sense of longing found in American frontier painter George Catlin’s depictions of the indigenous peoples on the Great Plains of the 1830s.

Gilbert Lewis taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art’s certificate and continuing education programs. He also supported himself throughout his entire career by working at Philadelphia’s art supply stores, including Blick Art Materials, South Street Art Supply, and Pearl Art and Craft Supply. Gilbert Lewis died at the age of seventy-eight on the seventh of December in 2023 at the Belvedere nursing home in Chester, Pennsylvania, from complications caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

Gilbert Lewis’s first solo exhibition was at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art’s Peale House Gallery in 1981. He had numerous solo exhibitions in Philadelphia, among which were the Rosenfeld and Noel Butcher galleries. His largest exhibition, “Becoming Men: Portrait Paintings by Gilbert Lewis”, was presented in 2004 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York. Lewis’s work can be found in the permanent collections at Philadelphia’s Woodmere Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, and the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey.

“One of my motivations in painting has been to celebrate the beginning of adulthood for the young and the final period of life for the old,” Gilbert observes. “What struck me is that both young men and the old are ignored by society. Despite our ostensible focus on youth, young men are in a sort of nether world, no longer teenagers and yet not full adults. They’re in transition with no established identify and no real place in society.” —Gilbert Lewis

Notes: The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art has a short article written by Christian Bain entitled “Becoming Men: Portrait Paintings by Gilbert Lewis” in which Lewis discusses his work process and motivations for painting: https://leslielohman.org/exhibitions/becoming-men-portrait-paintings-by-gilbert-lewis

The WilliamWay LBGT Community Center in Philadelphia has a collection of paintings by Gilbert Lewis on its site located at: https://www.waygay.org/gilbert-lewis-1

Anthony Rullo was a portrait model who posed at least sixty times for Gilbert Lewis between 1986 and 1996. Rullo’s memories of Lewis and his mentorship are contained in a Visual Arts article by Peter Crimmins for Philadelphia’s WHYY newsletter: https://whyy.org/articles/gilbert-lewis-remembered-as-artist-mentor-to-phillys-gay-80s/

Second Insert Image: Gilbert Lewis, “Nude- Composition in Red and Green”, January 1985, Gouache on Board, 111.8 x 76.2 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Gilbert Lewis, “Seated Man with Shell”, circa 2020, Pastel on Paper, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Gilbert Lewis, Untitled (Young Man Standing with Legs Spread), 1987, Gouache on Paper, 76.2 x 55.9 cm, Private Collection

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama, Untitled, circa 1970, Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas, 60 x 50.4 cm, Private Collection

Born at Matsumato, Nagano in March of 1929, Yayoi Kusama (草間彌生) is a Japanese contemporary artist whose work is based in conceptual art expressed primarily through sculpture and installations. She is actively engaged in painting, performance art, video art, fashion, and writing both poetry and fiction.

Kusama received training for a year at the Kyoto City University of Arts in the traditional Japanese painting style known as nihonga ( 日本画 ), an art form that typically uses mineral pigments and occasionally ink with other organic pigments on paper or silk. She was active in the New York City avant-garde scene throughout the 1960s, organizing “happenings” and experimenting with her series of “Mirror/Infinity” installations.

In 1969, Yayoi Kusama founded Kusama Enterprises, a commercial outlet selling clothing, bags, and even cars. These products feature her singular aesthetic, characterized by her liberal use of polka dots and dense, repeating patterns to create a sense of infinity. In 1973, Kusama returned to Japan. Two years later, seeking treatment for her obsessive-compulsive neurosis, she entered a facility where she lives and works to this day.

Kusama continues to produce paintings and sculpture, and, in the 1980s, added poetry and fiction to her range of creative pursuits. She exhibited at the Japanese pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennale. Kusama’s dazzling mirrored pavilion room was filled with small pumpkin sculptures. Eventually, she produced a huge, yellow pumpkin sculpture with an optical pattern of black spots, for her a representation of an alter-ego or self-portrait.

In 2017, a fifty-year retrospective of Kusama’s work opened at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. That same year the Yayoi Kusama Museum was inaugurated in Tokyo. Other major retrospectives of her work have been held at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art in 1998, the Whitney Museum in 2012, and London’s Tate Modern in 2012.

“The machinery of the sky that confounds us on earth with endless transformations of clouds in the light of dawn does not compare to the extraordinary tenacity of human beings, the way of human life, the presentiment of approaching death, the existence of love, the brilliant coruscations of light and the dark scars of our lives, to say nothing of the incomprehensible form of the cosmos and the overwhelming mysteries of space, time, distance.”

—Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama

Johnny Francis Wolf

The Artwork of Johnny Francis Wolf

Born at the Woodhaven neighborhood of Queens, New York in May of 1958, Johnny Francis Wolf is a digital artist, actor, musician, poet and writer.

Wolf began his acting career with studies under actress Suzanne Esper at the Esper Studio, a New York City drama school that is dedicated to the acting technique of American actor and teacher Sanford Meisner. The Meisner technique is designed to create believable behavior by utilizing three basic components: independent activity, repetition exercise, and emotional preparation to stay connected with scenic partners. Wolf also studied acting at the Weist-Barron School, the nation’s oldest school for on-camera acting, and, later, with actor and drama teacher Lloyd Williamson at New York City’s Actors Movement Studio.

After appearing in many student and Indie short films on the east coast of the United States, Johnny Francis Wolf appeared in the co-starring role of Gabe Snow in screenwriter and director Jamie Nash’s 2007 indie horror-comedy “Two Front Teeth”. After the film’s production, Wolf relocated to Los Angeles to continue his pursuit of an acting career. Trained early in graphic design, he worked briefly as a textile designer for the Kidswear clothing company before deciding to focus on his abilities as writer and artist.

As a writer, Wolf has written several volumes of narrative stories in both poetry and prose. An imaginative and creative storyteller, his work covers a wide range of emotion as his tales examine passengers on a subway, a young gay couple, a child fascinated by an unknown face, and other countless human interactions that occur during daily life. Wolf’s writings, issued through Wild Ink Publishing, include the 2023 two-volume series entitled “Men Unlike Others”, “Unapologetic” published in 2013, the 2024 poetry collection “Uncommon”, and his most recent work, the 2025 “Unbreakable”.

As an artist, Johnny Francis Wolf is a digital artist whose images combine photography with Photoshop, Illustrator and AI graphics.. Although the majority of his work is figurative, he also creates still lifes and multi-layered images that are abstractions and variations on patterns. Wolf’s digital work utilizes two basic effects, ink washes and watercolors, to create both strong and sensual images. Broad areas of light colors are particularly prominent in his three Erte series, a group of figurative images that closely resemble watercolors; while other series by Wolf are executed in a more dark palette of painted blue and brown shades.

Notes: Johnny Francis Wolf’s art can be found on his website: https://johnny-francis-wolf.pixels.com

Johnny Francis Wolf’s published works can be found at the Wild Ink Publishing website, which also has the 2006 “Two Front Teeth” film in its entirety: https://wild-ink-publishing.com/johnny-francis-wolf/

An interview between Danish epic-fantasy series author Rune S. Nielsen and Johnny Francis Wolf can be found at Rune S. Nielsen’s website: https://runesnielsen.com/author/author-interviews/2023/11/1/author-interview-johnny-francis-wolf

Top Insert Image; Photographer Unknown, “Johnny Francis Wolf”, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Johnny Francis Wolf, “Italy 1 Marco”, Digital Art, Giclée Print, 52.1 x 91.4 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Johnny Francis Wolf, “Erté Mirror 5”, Digital Art, Giclée Print, 52.1 x 91.4 cm

Theda Bara: Film History Series

Orval Hixon, “Theda Bara”, 1921, Publicity Photo

Born at Cincinnati, Ohio in July of 1885, Theda Bara, née Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film and stage actress who, known for her femme fatale roles, became one of the more popular actresses of the silent era. One of the early stars of the newly founded Fox Studios, Bara became its biggest star and one of cinema’s early sex symbols.

One of three children born to prosperous Jewish tailor Bernard Goodman and Swiss-born Pauline Louise Françoise de Coppett, Theda Bara moved with her family in 1890 to Avondale, a suburb of Cincinnati with a large Jewish community. Upon graduating high school, Bare dyed her blonde hair black and began to pursue her teenage dream of a career in theater. After two years at the University of Cincinnati, she started acting in local theater productions in 1905.

Bara relocated to New York City and made her Broadway debut in playwright Ferenc Molnár’s 1908 “The Devil”, acting under the name Theodosia de Coppett. The play opened in August of 1908 at the Garden Theatre and finished its run at the New Victory Theatre in June of 1909. Beginning in 1911, Bara became part of a theatrical touring company for three years. She sought work at various casting offices after her return to New York City in 1914 and was chosen for a role in director Frank Powell’s 1914 silent film “The Stain” for Pathé Exchange. Acting under the name Theodosia Goodman, Bara played the role of a gangster’s female companion.

Having become known for her ability to take direction, Theda Bara was given her first lead role as the predatory woman (“vampire”) in Powell’s next film, the 1915 “A Fool There Was”, for the newly formed Fox Studios. This role was a major breakthrough for Bara as she was nearing thirty-years old, at a time when lead roles were always given to younger women. To increase the allure of star and movie, Fox Studios gave its lead actress the name Theda Bara (an anagram for Arab Death) for the film’s press releases. She was described as the Egyptian daughter of an artist and Arabian princess, and was endowed with mystical powers.

Bara, now contracted with Fox Studios, was living with her parents in New York City and traveling to Fort Lee, New Jersey where Fox Studios’s film industry was based. Her second film role with the studio was the character Celia Friedlander in director Herbert Brenon’s 1915 silent film “Kreutzer Sonata” based on a play of the same name written by Jacob Gordon. Bara, now a rising star, made six more films in 1915, the last of which was the lead role in director Raoul Walsh’s “Carmen”. The next year was even busier; theater audiences attended eight new Theda Bara films, all of which made substantial profit for Fox Studios.

In 1917, Theda Bara traveled with Fox Studios to California where, finding the climate more hospitable for filmmaking, it had built new West Coast production facilities in Hollywood. She starred in director J. Gordon Edwards’s 1917 silent historical drama “Cleopatra”. With its huge sets, over two thousand horses and fifteen thousand extras, the film, although costly to produce, became a mega-hit for Bara and the studio. Soon after, Bara appeared in the lead role of Lisza Tapenka for Edwards’s 1917 silent drama “The Rose of Blood”. In 1918, Bara received the opportunity to be both screenwriter and lead actor for director Edwards’s silent romance film “The Soul of Buddha”.

Bara appeared in seven films in 1919, the last of which was the role of social-climbing stenographer Olga Dolan in Edmund Lawrence’s silent drama “Lure of Ambition”. At the end of 1919, Bara’s contract with Fox Studios terminated and her film career faded from the phenomenon it had once been. Seeking a return to the theater, she appeared on Broadway as Ruth Gordon in George V. Hobart and John Willard’s 1920 four-act play “The Blue Flame” at the Shubert Theatre. Reviewers criticized the play and its plot as well as Bara’s acting. Her recognition as a film star, however, drew large crowds and the play was a commercial success, breaking attendance records at some venues during its forty-eight show run..

In 1921, Theda Bara married British-born film director Charles Brabin and retired from acting. She made a brief comeback in what would be her last film, directors Stan Laurel and Richard Wallace’s 1926 short silent comedy “Madame Mystery” for the Hal Roach Studio. After finishing the film, Bara, now forty-one, permanently retired from film acting. Although she continued though the 1930s to try stage acting, there was little success. In 1936, Bara did a radio broadcast version of the “The Thin Man”, alongside William Powell and Myrna Loy for the Lux Radio Theatre.

After a lengthy stay at California Lutheran Hospital, Theda Bara died of abdominal cancer in April of 1955 at the age of sixty-nine at Los Angeles, California. Her body was cremated and inurned, under the name Theda Bara Brabin, in the Great Mausoleum at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California.

Notes: A 1937 fire at the Fox Studio nitrate-film storage vaults in New Jersey destroyed most of the studio’s silent films produced before 1932. Theda Bara made forty-three silent films between 1914 and 1926. Of these, complete prints of only six still exist. Two films are partially lost and thirty-five are completely lost. Those nitrate films that were housed in Bara’s own personal archive were discovered in 1940 to have disintegrated when she took some reels out to show a friend.

The Golden Globes website has a short article written by actress Meher Tatna entitled “Forgotten Hollywood: Theda Bara, Queen of the Vamps” at: https://goldenglobes.com/articles/gotten-hollywood-theda-bara-queen-vamps/

The Readex Report has an excellent article by Vanda Krefft, Biography Fellow at the City University of New York, on William Fox, the founder of Twentieth Century Fox, that discusses Theda Bara’s early relationship with Fox Studios: https://www.readex.com/readex-report/issues/volume-5-issue-1/searching-forgotten-movie-mogul-william-fox-founder-twentieth

Once Upon A Screen, a classic film and tv blog, has an article on William Fox which discusses Theda Bara’s time with Fox Studios: https://aurorasginjoint.com/2015/06/26/the-mightiest-of-all-william-fox-sets-up-shop-in-fort-lee-a-hundred-years-ago/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Theda Bara as Carmen”, 1915, “Carmen”, Written and Directed by Raoul Walsh, Cinematography Georges Benoit and George Schneiderman, Fox Studio

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unkown, “Theda Bara as Salome”, 1918, Film Publicity Photo, Director J. Gordon Edwards, Cinematography John W. Boyle, Fox Film Corporation

Third Insert Image: Underwood & Underwood Studios, “Theda Bara”, 1918, “The She-Devil”, Publicity Photo, Director J. Gordon Edwards, Cinematography John W. Boyle and Harry Gerstad, Fox Film Corporation

Bottom Insert Image: Jack Freulich, “Theda Bara as Rosa”, 1915, “Sin”, Director Herbert Brenon, Cinematography Phil Rosen, Fox Film Corporation

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell

The Paintings of Francis Cadell

Born at Edinburgh in April of 1885, Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell was a Scottish painter and watercolorist known for his portraits, central Edinburgh house interiors, and landscapes painted at Iona, Scotland’s west-coastal island. He was one of four Scottish Colourists, painters whose Post-Impressionist work had a formative influence on contemporary Scottish art and culture.

The son of wealthy surgeon Dr. Francis Cadell and Mary Hamilton Boileau, Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell was raised on Edinburgh’s prestigious Moray Estate and privately tutored at the Edinburgh Academy. At the age of sixteen, he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris where he became acquainted with the city’s early-Fauvist painters, most notably Henri Matisse. Between 1902 and 1905, Cadell alternated his residency between Paris and Edinburgh as he undertook a professional career.

In 1907, Cadell studied at Munich’s Akademie der Bildender Künste, one of the oldest art academies in Germany, before returning to Scotland in 1908. Between the deaths of his mother and his terminally ill father, he had his first solo exhibition at Edinburgh’s Doig, Wilson and Wheatley’s Gallery in 1908 where he sold thirty paintings. With an inheritance from his father’s death, Cadell secured a studio on George Street in central Edinburgh in 1909. It was at this time that he met painter Samual John Peploe, who became his life-long friend and a fellow Scottish Colourist.

With financing from old schoolfriend and now patron Patrick Ford, Francis Cadell undertook a painting excursion to Venice in 1910. This inspiring experience gave him more confidence in his use of bright colors and loosened his approach to painting. The work from this trip, however, sold poorly which resulted in the undermining of Cadell’s trust in gallery dealers. From 1911 to 1927, he sold his work only privately, with Glasgow art dealer Alexander Reid purchasing many of his works. After the declaration of war in 1914, Cadell passed his medical tests and joined the 9th Battalion of The Royal Scots in 1915 with whom he served on the French frontlines. Wounded twice, Cadell was discharged in 1919 and was awarded the General Service and Victory medals.

After his discharge from military service, Cadell spent much of his adult life in Scotland, painting in Edinburgh during the spring and autumn, on Iona during the summer, and usually resting indoors during the winter. He closely collaborated with his friend Samuel Peploe, often painting together on Iona, and developed an interest in the Art Deco movement. Cadell began to paint still lifes and figure studies, tightly-cropped compositions usually presented at an angle, and increasingly brilliantly colored interior scenes.

From the early to mid-1920s, Francis Cadell restrained the use of perspective and shadow in his still lifes. These post-war images were characterized by their vivid, acidic colors and strict composition. Using flat areas of color and disregarding shadows, Cadell stylized the forms to such an extent that it could be seen as a two-dimensional pattern within a strictly limited framework. He later developed a style in which black remained the dominant color and was increasingly used to outline features.

Cadell served from 1923 to 1936 as a Council member of the influential Edinburgh architecture, conservation and planning organization, the Cockburn Association also known as the Edinburgh Civic Trust. He died from cancer at the age of fifty-four in December of 1937 and was interred with his family in Dean Cemetery, a historically important Victorian cemetery west of Edinburgh’s city center. Cadell’s paintings and watercolors are housed in many private collections and are on public display in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

Notes: ART UK has a 2020 article by modern art curator and auction house specialist Alice Strang, entitled “The Making of a Scottish Colourist: Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell”, on its site: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-making-of-a-scottish-colourist-francis-campbell-boileau-cadell

The Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell Organization has a biography and a large collection of the artist’s works on its site: https://francis-campbell-boileau-cadell.org

Top Insert Image: Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Black Chalk on Paper, 56 x 38.5 cm, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Second Insert Image: Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, “Self Portrait”, circa 1914, Oil on Canvas, 113.1 x 86.8 cm, National Galleries of Scotland

Bottom Insert Image: Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, “Life Study”, Date Unknown, Conte on Paper, 34.3 x 29.2 cm, Private Collection