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

Nicolas Monjo

The Paintings of Nicolas Monjo

Born at the Nouvelle-Aquitaine department of Lot-et-Garonne in 1975, Nicolas Monjo is a French self-taught contemporary painter. The central element of his work is the tenuous condition of humanity in a world that is both complex and often oppressive. To illustrate this fragility, Monjo presents the human figure enclosed, often crushed with others, inside the restrictive edges of the canvas.

Nicolas Monjo began painting at the age of twenty and, through study and technique, has developed his own unique style. His images are inspired by the complexities and sometimes tumultuous nature of human relationships, the struggles to overcome circumstances, and the power dynamics of a surrounding society.

Monjo’s vivid imagery features a tensive contrast between its harsh subject matter and the artistry of each painting’s composition. In an extremely personal way, he presents the fragility of the human condition that is often crushed by the harsh and cold world where the law of the strong prevails. Monjo’s figures are enclosed, both figuratively and literally, within the framework of the canvases they inhabit, a reminder of their inability to extricate themselves from their gloomy daily life.

Nicolas Monjo uses both acrylic and oil paints on his canvases with a preference for the colors gray and blue. Mixtures of oil and acrylic paint on the tablet are used for more marked relief effects. This soft, dark color palette creates a unique atmosphere for his evolving collection of characters. Mixed among these characters are recurring tropes such as rabbit ears, fish, dogs, gaping mouths and sunglasses. Other elements, almost always present in Monjo’s compositions, are the symbol of the heart, guitar, plates, forks and an abandoned glass on the floor. These are all objects that represent Monjo’s personal life.

Nicolas Monjo currently lives and works near the prefecture of Angouleme in the southwestern French department of Charente. His artwork is represented online by Bouillon d’Art at: https://www.bouillondart.com/en/93-monjo-nicolas

Monjo’s work can also be found at the online gallery Artsper located at: https://www.artsper.com/us/contemporary-artists/france/25687/nicolas-monjo

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nicolas Monjo”, Color Print, Artsper Gallery

Bottom Insert Image: Nicolas Monjo, “Le Conte à Rebours”, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 130 x 97 cm, Private Collection

Christopher Cox: “A Key West Companion”

Photographers Unknown, A Key West Companion

I had met Doris on an earlier trip. She approached me in the supermarket and told me to put back the papayas I’d piled into the shopping basket. “Come over and pick them off the ground outside my fence. I’ll be glad to get rid of them. Take some sapodillas too.” Now she appeared behind the wrought-iron fence with a mild hello, released a tabby cat from her arms, and led me down a narrow brick path into the cool dark garden where hundreds of parakeets and canaries fluttered in several mesh-covered gazebos, each chirping in a different key.

Doris is a wiry woman with white hair who must be in her mid-eighties. She was wearing a turquoise artist’s smock with both the sleeves torn off at the shoulders. Her eyes were a similar blue. “I’ve been here I don’t know how long,” she said. “I came from South Carolina after World War II. I was a WAVE.” Since then she has been involved in various jobs and projects around the island, mostly in connection with the tourist trade. At present she’s creating a Key West historical museum in her back yard.

In the center of the garden Doris had built an Indian chickee, a hut made of thatch and berm (local mud) and encircled by a jagged stick fence. “The abode of the southeast Indians,” she announced. “I’m building a miniature in one of my bungalows, with little Indians and itty bitty pigs turning on spits. It’s for my Indian exhibit.”

There are several bungalows around the garden, each of which will house an exhibit based on a different period of Key West history. But the Indian comes first. Doris pointed to the “historically accurate” piles of coral rock that were arranged near the Indian chickee, then to a huge gooseberry tree that shaded the entire garden. “I grew this tree from two seeds I brought back from Katherine Mansfield’s house in the South of France.” she said. “Mouton, Mentone—I don’t remember the name. Don’t ask me any questions; it’s so long ago. All I know is that it’s never produced gooses or berries.” She laughed at her own joke and then stopped for a moment to perk up the purple orchids, vermilion and staghorn fern that grew on the dark trunk of the tree.

Christopher Cox, The Indians in Doris’s Garden, A Seaport Town, A Key West Companion, 1983, St. Martin’s Press, New York

Born at Gadsden, Alabama in August of 1949, Christopher Cox, birth name Howard Raymond Cox Jr., was an author, editor, director and producer. Along with his position as senior editor of Ballantine Books, he is known for his collaboration within The Violet Quill, a group of seven gay male writers whose work established gay writing as a literary movement.

One of four children born to prominent banker Howard Cox and Dorothy Trusler, Christopher Cox received his elementary education at the local Emma Sanson High School. In 1966 at the age of sixteen, Cox was given a summer job in Washington D.C. as a page for Alabama Senator John Sparkman. After his high school graduation, he returned the following summer season to work for Alabama Representatives George Andrews and Armistead Selden. Cox attended the University of Alabama for two years befor moving to New York for a possible career in the theater.

In the fall of 1969, Cox studied acting at director Herbert Berghof and actress Uta Hagen’s HB Studio in New York City. His first role was as understudy for the Mute in a production of “The Fantasticks”. Using Christopher Cox as his professional name, he performed, directed and wrote both plays and lyrics. Cox was the director of the New Play Series and the Writers Workshop at the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Company for which he produced a dozen works between 1974 and 1976. Cox performed during the 1970s in both Off-Broadway and Broadway productions, including Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona”. During the 1980s, he changed his focus to writing, editing and photography.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Christopher Cox was affiliated with the Violet Quill, also known as the Lavender Quill. This group of seven writers are regarded as one of the strongest collective voices of the gay male experience in the post-Stonewall era. Cox, Robert Ferro, Andrew Holleran, Michael Grumley, Felice Picano, Edmund White and George Whitmore met several times between 1975 and 1981 to read aloud and discuss their works in progress. The agenda of the Violet Quill also included working together to promote the recognition, acceptance and publication of gay literature beyond the boundaries of their own community.

As a writer, Cox’s memories of Alabama and its people appeared regularly as central themes in his stories. Significant events in his life, such as the suicide death of his uncle Ray in 1956 and his mother’s death from cancer in 1975, became focal points for his writing. From March of 1975 to 1977, Cox served as secretary to composer Virgil Thompson for whom he arranged and catalogued correspondence and music manuscripts before their transfer to Yale University. This position gave Cox access to Thompson’s circle of people as well as his neighbors in Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel, which included such notables as Dylan Thomas, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller and Robert Mapplethorpe. Cox’s 1978 video piece “Neurotic Moon” is a semi-autobiographic work that describes his role as secretary putting together pieces of a famous composer’s life.

In the 1980s, Christopher Cox worked for publishing firms, most notably E.P. Dutton and Ballantine. He wrote freelance articles and reviews for several papers and magazines, including New York City’s weekly alternative “Soho Weekly News” during its run from 1973 to 1982. Cox published his “A Key West Companion” through St. Martin’s Press in 1983 and, in 1987, his monograph on photographer Dorothea Lange through the fine art photography periodical Aperture.

In the spring of 1986, Cox met his lifetime partner William R. Olander, an art historian, critic, and curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.. Christopher Cox died in New York from AIDS-related complications on September 7, 1990 at the age of forty-one. His death was preceded by the death of William Olander, also from AIDS-related complications, on March 18, 1989 at the age of thirty-five.

Notes: After internships at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Toledo Museum of Art, William “Bill”Olander held the position of curator of modern art at the Allen Memorial Museum at Oberlin College from 1979 to 1984. He became the Allen Museum’s acting director for his last two years. The co-founder of the Visual AIDS art project, Olander was known for his work with ACT UP/ NY (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, New York).

Both Christopher Cox and William Olander’s writings, personal papers and correspondence files are contained in the Yale Collection of American Literature Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The collection overview for this material can be found at: https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/caoSearch/catalog/cty-br_beinecke-coxc#summary

The Aperture Foundation’s “Dorothy Lange: Masters of Photography, No. 5”, which contains Christopher Cox’s essay on Lange and forty-three black and white images by Lange, can be found in its entirety on the (SCRIBD) website at: https://www.scribd.com/document/514781915/Aperture-Masters-of-Photography-Linda-Gordon-Dorothea-Lange-Dorothea-Lange-Aperture-2014

Second insert Image: Christopher Cox, “A Key West Companion”, January 1, 1983, Paperback Edition, St. Martin’s Press, New York City

Third Insert Image: “Dorothea Lange: Masters of Photography, No. 5”, 1987, Essay by Christopher Cox, 43 Black and White Images by Lange, Aperture Foundation, Millerton, New York

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti, “The Artist’s Mother”, 1950, Oil on Canvas, 89.9 x 61 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Born at the city of Borgonovo in October of 1901, Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss draftsman, painter, printmaker and sculptor whose work was particularly influenced by Cubism and Surrealism. Around the age of thirty-five, he left Surrealism to deepen his understanding of figurative compositions. Although known for his figurative sculptures, Giacometti’s figurative paintings were equally as present after 1957.

Dating from the drawings of his youth, Giacometti used his mother Annetta Giacometti, either alone or with other family members, as a model for his numerous works, both paintings and sculpture. Annetta Giacometti, a formidable presence in Giacometti’s life, returned after the war years to the family home in Stampa, Switzerland. This was the place where Alberto would spend the summers and create most of his mother’s portraits beginning from the end of the 1940s. There are at least five portraits of Annetta Giacometti known to have been painted in 1949.

As attested in his writings, Alberto Giacometti gave the most attention when painting a portrait to the the eyes of the model and the volumes of the nose. His 1950 “The Artist’s Mother”, painted in the family home in Stampa, is composed of layers upon layers of linear brushstrokes. Around the edges, the paint is laid on thinly to create a internal frame, a common element that appears in later works. In the center, the figure is painted more heavily in dark and bright lines that bristle with energy.

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“The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” -Alberto Giacometti

Mario Cattaneo

The Photography of Mario Cattaneo

In the period between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the economic resurgence of the 1960s, Italy experienced enormous social and political transformations. Italian photographers responded to this post-war era by creating images that examined the realities of everyday life. These images, although seen as neo-realist or humanist in the tenor of social documentary photography, actually contained a wider range of motivations and styles.

Photojournalism thrived with the rapid growth of illustrated weekly magazines. At the same time, amateur photographic organizations sought to promote photography as a form of art. These photographers produced images of urban street life in the industrial cities of northern Italy. Southern Italy also became a primary source for the camera. While the site of the greatest post-war economic problems, southern Italy was a place of national unity, where local customs persevered amid Italy’s rapid modernization.

Born at Milan on the twenty-eighth of January in 1916, Mario Cattaneo was a significant but little-known Italian photographer who found the world of photographic clubs to be a place for his artistry and a framework for discussion and debate. Within those clubs, Cattaneo studied the technical aspects of photography,the works of established international photographers, and the theoretical and aesthetic concepts of the medium. The influences of French photographers Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson can be seen in Cattaneo’s attention to lighting and photo compositions.

Cattaneo’s first photographs, the series of images known as “La Fera del Sinigaglia”, were taken at Milan’s traditional flea market in the commune of Sinigaglia. The images he captured included portraits, articles for sale, and moments of spontaneous human interactions, often between buyers and sellers. Started in 1950, Cattaneo’s “Alleys” series explored the vibrant, and sometimes violent, everyday life found in Naples’s alleyways and also captured the hidden beauty and human stories found among the city’s narrow passages. A collection of these Naples images was later published in 1992 by Electra under the title “Vicoli”.

After his return to Milan, Mario Cattaneo became interested in the leisure and entertainment of Milanese youth during the economic boom of the post-World War II era. His photographs were taken at amusement parks, dance halls, and Sunday excursions at the Idroscalo, a city park with artificial lake that offered boating and swimming events as well as open-air concerts, bars and nightclubs. The images of Cattaneo’s three series “Luna Park”, “Una Domenica all’Idroscalo (A Sunday at the Idroscalo)” and “Giovanni al Juke Box” present the hope and carefree spirit of the young Milanese generation in newly adopted social activities and imported fashions.

Cattaneo continued working in Milan from 1964 to 1977 during which time he created two more series: the 1964-1965 “Caravaggio” and the 1973-1977 “Pop Festival”. Alongside his social and cultural presentations of Italy, Cattaneo produced travel images shot during his explorations of diverse cultures, among which were several trips to India.

In 1991, the Federazione Italiana Associazioni Fotografiche (FIAF), an Italian photography confederation that supported amateur groups, named Mario Cattaneo “Author of the Year” and dedicated a traveling exhibition to his work. He received awards and recognition in Italy and overseas, including first prize in the competition “Racconto e Reportage Fotografico (Storytelling and Photographic Reportage)” held in Fermo. In 1996, “La Fera del Sinigaglia”, with editing by W. Tucci Caselli, was published by the Fondazione E. Monti.

Mario Cataneo died in 2004 on the last of his many journeys to India. Following a donation from his heirs in 2006, the Mario Cattaneo collection has been owned by the Fondazione Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea in the Italian commune of Cinisello Balsamo. The photographic collection comprises over one hundred-ninety thousand film negatives, slides, prints, and contact sheets. This extensive collection attests to Cattaneo’s work between 1950 and 2004 as well as his ability to capture the beauty inherent in humanity, even within the simplest single shot.

Notes: Images of the Mario Cattaneo Collection of the Fondazione Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea can be found online at: https://www.mufocosearch.org/autori/AUF-10090-0000020?pageCurrent=1#paginationTop

The Italian photographic website The Mammoth Reflex has a short article on the work of Mario Cattaneo with several images at: https://www.themammothreflex.com/grandi-fotografi/2020/07/14/mario-cattaneo-mostra-cielo-aperto-cinisello-balsamo/

Top Insert Image: Mario Cattaneo, “Osteria”, 1970, Gelatin Silver Print, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea

Second Insert Image: Mario Cattaneo, “Giovanni”, Juke box Series, 1960-1962, Gelatin Silver Print, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea

Third Insert Image: Mario Cattaneo, “Napoli”, 1954, Gelatin Silver Print, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea

Bottom Insert Image: Mario Cattaneo, “Napoli”, 1954, Gelatin Silver Print, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea

Gustave Van de Woestijne

The Paintings of Gustave Van de Woestijne

Born at Ghent in August of 1881, Gustave Van de Woestijne was a Belgian expressionist painter whose depictions of humble rural life were shaped by philosophical reflections and avant-garde Western-European trends. While influenced by the Parisian avant-garde, Symbolism and Flemish Expressionism, Van de Woestijne created his own distinctive painterly style.

Gustave Van de Woestijne was the younger brother of writer, poet and art historian Karel Van de Woestijne who, upon the death of their father, oversaw his care. In his youth, Gustave studied at the Ghent Academy for the Fine Arts. Through his brother, he received an intellectual education that, at a young age, opened the door to a world of sculpture, literature and classical music.

In 1900 at the age of nineteen, Van de Woestijne traveled with his brother Karl to the small village of Sint-Martens-Latem on the banks of the River Lys where Karl, who had brought French symbolism to Belgium, founded a colony of loosely affiliated artists from the Ghent Academy. In the company of the First Group of Latem, Van de Woestijne developed artistically and painted biblical and rural life scenes, as well as sensitive portraits of village figures, family members and friends..

Gustave Van de Woestijne, like his brother Karel, organized his life as well as his art around philosophical reflections. He was concerned with existentialist questions that later became magnified with religion. After leaving Sint-Martens-Latem in 1905, he briefly entered the Benedictine Order in Leuven. However after four weeks, Van de Woestijne decided against the monastic life. He was too driven by creative desire to entirely devote his life to the church. Van de Woestijne instead used his painting skills and his palette of subtle earthly colors to portray the Catholic virtues of simplicity, humility and hope.

After leaving Leuven, Van de Woestijne relocated to Etterbeek, a municipality of Brussels and, later, the village of Tiegem in West Flanders. The memories of his stay at the River Lys artist colony still continued to influence both theme and style of his paintings. During the First World War, Van de Woestijne and his family lived in Wales where he spent time in the company of artists Valerius De Saedeleer and George Minna. He painted allegories of the war situation and numerous portraits, including those of his fellow artists. Van de Woestijne also was acquainted with businessman and art collector Jacob de Graaf, who became patron to him and other members of the Latem group.

Gustave Van de Woestijne returned to Belgium in 1913 where he met Brussels art patrons David and Alice van Buuren who purchased their first painting by the artist. Between 1928 and 1931, the couple commissioned seven still lifes from Van de Woestijne for their modernist Brussels house. Eventually, David and Alice van Buuren acquired thirty-two works by the painter, a major part of Van de Woestijne’s oeuvre.

Gustave Van de Woestijne’s 1910 Flemish portrait, “The Farmer”, had displayed the beginning of his movement towards modernism through its refined realism, large areas of color and its symmetrically composed plain background. Various trips to Paris had exposed Van de Woestijne to the artistic avant-garde innovations in the works of Picasso, Modigliani and Rousseau. It was after his return to Belgium that his work became more related to the Modernist movement. Van de Woestijne incorporated those avant-garde developments into his own techniques to create a personal modernist style: a meditative form of symbolism with expressionist and cubist visual elements.

Upon the death of his brother Karel in 1929, Van de Woestijne took over his brother’s position as director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Mechelen and also taught in Antwerp and Brussels. He continued to paint, predominately Christian scenes with a more neutral palette, until his death. Gustave Van de Woestijne died at the age of sixty-five on the twenty-first of April in 1947 at the Belgian city of Uccle. His body is interred in the historic Cemetery of Campo Santo, Sint-Amandsberg, Ghent.

Works by Gustave Van de Woestyne are held in many private collections and public collections that include the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Van Buuren Museum & Gardens, and the Museum of Deinze and the Lys Region.

Notes: Conceptual Fine Arts (CFA) has an article by Brussels-based curator and writer Evelyn Simons entitled “The Quotidian Avant-Garde of Gustave Van de Woestyne” on its website: https://www.conceptualfinearts.com/cfa/2020/08/31/gustave-van-de-woestyne/

The Museum of Fine Arts Ghent has a short article on Gustave Van de Woestijne in connection with its 2020-2021 collection exhibition of his work: https://www.mskgent.be/en/exhibitions/gustave-van-de-woestyne

A biography on Karel Van de Woestijne, considered possibly the most important post-symbolist poet to have written in the Dutch language, can be found on the Poetry International website: https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-8508_Van-de-Woestijne

Top Insert Image: Gustave Van de Woestijne, “Self Portrait”, 1912, Oil on Canvas, 180 x 48 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Gustave Van de Woestijne, “Still Life with a White Jug”, 1922, Gouache on Paper, 76.5 x 55.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium

Third Insert Image: Gustave Van de Woestijne, “The Liquer Drinkers”, 1922, Oil on Canvas, 109.5 x 99 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium

Bottom Insert Image: Gustave Van de Woestijne, “Fugue”, 1925, Oil on Canvas, 80.5 x 80 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium

John Singer Sargent, “Study of Seated Man”

John Singer Sargent, “Study of Seated Man”, 1895, Lithograph in Black on Laid Paper, Image 29.4 x 21.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In October of 1895 in Paris, Galerie Rapp, located on the Champ de Mars, organized one section of a large exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts that marked the hundredth anniversary of the invention of lithography by Aloys Senefelder. The British printer Frederick Goulding, who had developed an improved transfer paper for lithography, was involved in the show. He encouraged John Singer Sargent and other London artists to participate, even offering to supply them with materials and print their work.

Sargent created six lithographs at this time. Of these, he selected “Study of Seated Man” for the Paris exhibition, which moved in November to the Rembrandt Gallery in London. This print demonstrates Sargent’s progressive engagement with tone. To form the strong highlights falling across the sitter’s shoulders and among the drapery folds, he left portions of the paper in reserve, a technique also seen in his brilliant handling of watercolor.

Lithographs of John Singer Sargent’s “Study of Seated Man” are contained in the collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.

Insert Image: James E. Purdy, “John Singer Sargent”, 1903, Sepia Matte Print on Card Mount, 14.1 x 9.9 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Tod Browning, “The Mystic”: Film History Series

Ira H. Morgan, “Actress Aileen Pringle as Zara”, Todd Browning’s 1925 silent “The Mystic”, Costume by Roman Petrovich Tyrtov (aka Erté)

“The Mystic” was a 1925 silent drama film directed by Tod Browning for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The script was co-written by Browning and Waldemar Young, who over the course of his career wrote screenplays for over eighty films. The film was produced by Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg who, two years before, had finished production on a drama film starring Lon Chaney, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. Although Chaney was Browning’s immediate choice for the role of Michael Nash, he was unable to hire Chaney for “The Mystic” due to scheduling issues.

“The Mystic” starred Aileen Pringle, a stage and film actress who had worked previously with Rudolph Valentino in the 1920 “Stolen Moments” and with Conrad Nagel in the 1924 adaptation of Elinor Glyn’s romance novel “Three Weeks”. Her co-star was Conway Tearle, who began his career as a stage actor in London and later on Broadway. Over his thirty-six year career, he appeared in over ninety films and, at one point, was thought to be the highest-paid actor in America.

The cinematography was done by Ira H. Morgan who later successfully transitioned from silent to sound films. He worked extensively over his long career with major studios including Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Morgan’s credits included Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”, George W. Hill’s “Tell It to the Marines”, Sam Katzman’s East Side Kids “Bowery Champs” and the Screen Gems television series “The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin”, among others.

The gowns in “The Mystic”, worn by Aileen Pringle in her role of the gypsy Zara, were created by the well-known Russian-born French artist and designer Roman de Tirtoff, known to the world as Erté. Brought to the United States by Louis B. Mayer, Erté first designed the sets and costumes for the 1925 silent film “Paris”. He later did designs for such MGM silent films as “Ben-Hur”, “The Comedian” and “Dance Madness”, as well as William Randolph Hearst’s 1920 silent drama “The Restless Sex”.

Released in September of 1925, one print of “The Mystic” has survived. It has a running time of seventy minutes and has English inter-titles. It is available as a web file at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Mystic_(1925)_by_Tod_Browning.webm

Bottom Insert Image: Ira H. Morgan, “Aileen Pringle and Conway Tearle”, 1925, Film Still from “The Mystic”, Director Tod Browning, MGM

Anton Carte

The Paintings of Antoine (Anton) Carte

Born at Mons, the provincial capital of Hainaut in December of 1886, Antoine (Anton) Carte was a Belgian painter and lithographer of the Flemish Expressionist movement who initially worked in the Symbolist style of the Sint-Martens-Latem artist colony. Along with painter and engraver Louis Buisseret, he founded the Groupe Nervia which supported new artists in Hainaut and fostered the traditional Gallo-Romance art of the ethnic French-speaking southern region of Belgium.

The son of a woodworker, Anton Carte was an apprentice at the studio of Belgian painter and designer Frantz Depooter for a period of fourteen years. He began his formal training at the Academy of Mons in 1897 and finished his training in 1908 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. It was at the Academy of Mons that Carte met Louis Buisseret, the man who would become his lifelong faithful friend. At the Royal Academy, both men studied under artists of the Symbolist movement: muralist painter Constant Montald, painter and mosaic artist Émile Fabry, and painter Jean Delville, a poet and leading exponent of the Belgian Idealist art movement during the 1890s.

A 1912 scholarship enabled Carte to travel to Paris where he stayed for two years at the studio of set and costume designer Léon Samoylovich Bakst and renowned French organ designer Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. During this period, Carte and Bakst worked for the Ballets Russes founded by Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev. Among other acquaintances in Paris, Carte came in contact with French Symbolist painter and theoretician Maurice Denis and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, a French muralist painter of allegorical and antiquity scenes.

After initially working in the Symbolist style, Anton Carte became a Flemish Expressionist after the First World War. Encouraged by Louis Buisseret, he exhibited a series of illustrations for a work by Belgian poet and playwright Emile Verhaeren at the 1917 Salon de l’Illustration in Brussels. Carte also illustrated editions of Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1895 “Massacre of the Innocents” and Marcel Wolfer’s 1914 “Writings of November”.

Carte exhibited with the Flemish Expressionists at the 1923 Paris Salon d’Automne, an annual multi-disciplinary event. In 1924, he traveled to the United States and, in the following year, had a major retrospective at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute. This show resulted in the sale of all sixty paintings presented at the show; it also ensured Carte’s success with the American public.

Although mostly known for his paintings, Anton Carte designed posters in the 1920s and 1930s which included work for the Aéro Club de Belgique, the 1930 International Exposition at Antwerpen/Anvers, and Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. Carte also created stained-glass windows, most notably the 1927 windows for a newly constructed building at the University of Mons-Hainaut in Wallonia, Belgium. Between 1935 and 1940, he undertook numerous commissions with glassmaker F. P. Colpaert for stained-glass windows at the Church of Saint Philippe de Neri at the Abbey of La Cambre and a stained-glass series, “The Way of the Cross”, for the Notre Dame de la Cambre.

Carte, along with Buisseret and Léon Eeckman, founded the Expressionist art association Groupe Nervia in 1928. This group was committed to an intimate human art tinged with Symbolism and Italian art techniques. Carte began teaching in 1929 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de la Cambre in Brussels; however, as he did not agree with the first director’s ideas, Carte left in 1932 to become Professor of Decorative and Monumental Art at the Brussels Academy.

During the war years, Anton Carte finished the stained-glass windows he had started with F. P. Colpaert but later withdrew to his house in Wauthier Braine to find some calm. After the war, Carte painted frescoes in the chapel and in the Great Hall of Orval, a community within the French commune of Montigny-Lengrain. At the inauguration of his eight large stained-glass windows at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg, Carte entrusted painter Jacques Maes with the completion of his project.

A complete artist throughout his life, Anton Carte produced drawings, engravings, book illustrations, posters, lithographs, banknotes, stamps, fresco designs, sculptures, stained glass windows, theater sets, ceramics and carpets. Tired at the age of sixty-seven, Anton Carte died on the fifteenth of February in 1954 at his home on the Rue de l’Ermitage in Ixelles, Belgium.

Notes: The Anton Carte Foundation has a more extensive biography of Carte’s life as well as an extensive collection of his artwork at their site: https://www.antocarte.art/en

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Anton Carte, L’Art Belge”, June 30 1920, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Anton Carte, “The Carter”, 1925-1930, Oil on Canvas, Anton Carte Foundation, Brussels, Belgium

Third Insert Image: Anton Carte, “Bénédiciié”, 1921, Oil on Canvas, 150 x 178 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Anton Carte, “The Boatman”, circa 1938, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 80 cm, Collection of the Province of Walloon Brabant

Botton Insert Image: Anto Carte, “The Passer (The Effort)”, 1920, Oil on Canvas, 130 x 90 cm, Private Collection

Danny Fitzgerald: Les Demi Dieux

The Photography of Danny Fitzgerald: Les Demi Dieux

Born in the Brooklyn, New York area of Carroll Gardens in 1921, Danny Fitzgerald was an American photographer who produced male nude physique photography between 1958 and 1968. The photographs were produced and marketed by Fitzgerald and his partner, Richard Bennett, under the name “Les Demi Dieux (The Demigods)”.

Born to first-generation Italian-Irish parents, Fitzgerald developed a love for art and film at a very young age. Although he would later travel throughout the world with his camera and his partner, Fitzgerald always considered the working-class Italian-American neighborhood of Carroll Gardens as home and the wellspring for many of his photographs.

Danny Fitzgerald did not seriously considered photography as a possible profession until he was in his thirties. His first series of photographs were of the young bodybuilders at the Abe Goldberg Empire Health and Studio, a second-floor loft gymnasium in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where top bodybuilders of the period would train. Both a physically small and deeply private person, Fitzgerald gained the confidence of these men through asking for assistance with his own workout and sparring as their training partner.

Fitzgerald’s early images were standard compositions with models presented in bikini trunks or posing straps. These photographs, processed by Fitzgerald in his own studio, were initially sold to private collectors. Later marketed under the pseudonym “Les Demi Dieux”, these posed male images were regularly published on the covers and pages of magazines printed by Canadian bodybuilder and entrepreneur Josef Weider. Fitzgerald’s male photos appeared in such popular publications as “Demi Gods”, “The Young Physique”, “Muscles a Go-Go”, and the publisher’s compilation volume “Era” that recognized the best photographers of the 1960s.

Now in his forties during the 1960s, Danny Fitzgerald met bodybuilder Richard Bennett who would become his partner, primary model and collaborator in the photographic process. With Bennett at his side, he returned to Carroll Gardens and began photographing the Italian-American gangs, known as “The South Brooklyn Boys”, as they gathered on the streets. It was at this time that Fitzgerald’s work shifted from standard ‘beefcake photography’ to grittier, realistic documentation of the Brooklyn youth culture.

Influenced by twentieth-century art and film, Fitzgerald began to produce images that were free of the contrivance and overworked poses of standard physique photography. His nudes, presented as portraits set in landscapes or cityscapes, were given a larger context that invited aesthetic discussion. Inspired by the modern artists around him, Fitzgerald employed cinematographic techniques in his images, often placing compositions off-center and dramatizing his subject with the light and shadow contrast technique of chiaroscuro. His disciplined approach towards precise focus, clarity and vivid tonal range displayed Fitzgerald’s meticulous attention to the lighting, lenses, and camera settings.

Danny Fitzgerald’s work was little seen during his lifetime after he broke from the clichés of the beefcake genre. He died in 2000 at the age of seventy-nine without having exhibited his work in a gallery setting. In October of 2013, Berlin’s Bruno Gmünder Verlag published “Brooklynn Boys: Danny Fitzgerald and Les Demi Dieux”, a collection of the documentary work he had shot in Carroll Gardens. On the twelfth of December in 2013, a posthumous public exhibition of Fitzgerald’s images was held at the Steven Kasher Gallery on New York City’s Second Avenue. The opening and book signing was attended by Fitzgerald’s longtime partner Richard Bennett.

Notes: Abraham Goldberg was born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in November of 1924. After his service in the army during World War Two, Goldberg opened his second-floor Manhattan gymnasium, Empire Health and Studio, at 80 Clinton Street in 1950. A fitness trainer and bodybuilder, he appeared on the covers of such magazines as “Your Physique” and “Santé et Force”. Abe Goldberg died in December of 2002 at the age of seventy-eight.

Born in Montreal in November of 1919, Josef (Joe) Weider was a Canadian bodybuilder and co-founder of the International Federation of BodyBuilders (IFBB). He published the first issue of “Your Physique” magazine in 1940 and designed numerous training courses beginning in the 1950s. Weider was the creator of such contests as Mr. Olympia, Ms. Olympia and the Masters Olympia. He founded several major American fitness magazines in the 1980s including “Men’s Fitness”. Josef Weider died in March of 2013 at the age of ninety-three, He was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.

The Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 166 Second Avenue, 3A, New York, New York. (Appointments only). The gallery can be reached through 9179226861 or steve@stevenkasher.com

Top Insert Image: Danny Fitzgerald, Untitled (Demi-Dieux Model), 1960, Gelatin Silver Print on Double Weight Paper 12, 12.5 x 10 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Danny Fitzgerald, “Johnny, New York”, 1963, Gelatin Silver Print, Printed 2013 Steven Kasher Gallery, Edition of 10, 35.6 x 27.9 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Danny Fitzgerald, “Richard Bennett”, circa 1960s, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Danny Fitzgerald, “Swim Hole, New York”, 1964, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Sekino Jun’ichirō

Woodblock prints by Sekino Jun’ichirō

Born in 1914 at the historic Yasukata district of the Aomori Prefecture, Sekino Jun’ichirō (関野凖一郎) was a Japanese woodblock printer and one of the major postwar artists of the Sōsaku Hanga (創作版画 Creative Print) movement. This woodblock printing movement stressed the artist as the sole creator motivated by a desire for self-expression. The artist was responsible for all divisions of the labor, the drawing, carving and printing, as opposed to the traditional collaborative system of ukiyo-e (浮世絵).

The son of a merchant dealing in agricultural products, Sekino Jun’ichirō explored oil painting and printmaking from an early age. He studied intaglio etching and lithography under Kon Junzō and, later, at the Nihon Etching Institute under its founder Nishida Takeo (西田武雄). In 1935, Sekino won a first prize at the government sponsored exhibition in Teiten for his 1935 “Aomori Harbor”. In the following year, he won an etching prize at the juried Annual Imperial Exhibition held in Bunten.

In 1937, Sekino became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyôkai (日本版画協会), an association of Japanese printmakers founded in 1918 to promote printmaking as a modern art form. Sekino moved to Tokyo in 1938 where he studied woodblock printing under Kôshirô Onchi (恩地孝四郎), printmaker, photographer and founder of the Sōsaku Hanga movement. He became an associate of Kôshirô and a founding member of his teacher’s Ichimokukai (一木会 First Thursday Society), an informal study group that supported aspiring print artists.

During the Second World War, Sekino Jun’ichirō worked in an ammunition factory. The war years uniquely challenged Japanese printmakers as access to the Western markets, particularly the United States, was disrupted leaving many struggling financially. Paper and ink became scarce and further limited printmaking, eventually bringing it almost to a standstill by 1945. After the war years, Sekino supported himself and his wife, Katsuko, through illustrating books and creating realistic woodblock print portraits that gradually led to international recognition.

In 1953, Sekino had his first solo exhibition at Tokyo’s Yoseido Gallery which specialized in contemporary modern Japanese prints. In 1958, he received an invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Japan Society that began a series of international travels. Sekino’s work appeared in international exhibitions, print biennials, and such prestigious institutions as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Sekino Jun’ichirō taught printmaking in 1958 at New York’s Pratt Institute. In 1963, American artist and educator Gordon Waverly Gilkey, in his position as first dean of the College of Liberal Arts, hired Sekino to teach a class at Oregon State University. Sekino also taught at the University of Washington and worked in New Mexico’s Tamarind Studio where he studied with printmaker Glen Alps, the developer of the collographic printing process. In 1969, Sekino returned to teaching at Oregon State University.

Sekino launched his “Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido” at the end of 1959. This series, depicting the system of roads linking the city of Edo with the then-capital of Kyoto, was a popular subject for artists, most notable of which was master printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) who began his Ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 1832. Sekino designed and carved all of his woodblocks himself and gave the responsibility of printing the series to skilled artisans Yoneda Minoru, Kobayashi Sokichi and “Living National Treasure” Iwase Koichi. Sekino received Japan’s 1975 Ministry of Education Award for this fourteen-yearlong series. In 1975, Oregon State University exhibited Sekino’s “Fifty-Three Stations” alongside Hiroshige’s 1834 version..

Sekino Jun’ichirō passed away of lung cancer in April of 1988 at the age of seventy-three. His second son Sekino Yowsaku is a Tokyo woodblock printmaker who often incorporates gold leaf into his images. Sekino Junpei, the eldest son, is a retired mathematics professor who is known for his digital art and fractal computer graphics.

The Imperial Household Agency awarded Sekino Jun’ichirō with two Medals of Honor, the Shijuhosho in 1981 and the Kyokujitsu Shojusho in 1987, for his cultural contributions. The Imperial Household frequently purchased his woodblock prints to be used as gifts to foreign dignitaries when members of the Imperial family traveled abroad to promote Japan’s friendly international relations.

Sekino’s woodblock prints are currently in the permanent collections of Ashmolean Museum of Oxford, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the British Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art, the Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and Royal Ontario Museum, among others.

Notes: Japanese names in modern times consist of a family name (surname) followed by the given name, thus, 関野凖一郎 Sekino (family name) Jun’ichirō (given name), a traditional form I use for my articles. Beginning in the Meiji period of Japan during the turn of the twentieth-century, many English-language publications began to place the family name in the last position. Many Japanese people when writing and speaking English have now adopted this Western naming order.

The Fort Wayne Museum of Art has a 2023 article entitled “Treasures from the Vault: Jun’ichrō Sekino” that discusses Sekino’s contribution to Japanese printmaking: https://fwmoa.blog/2022/09/19/treasures-from-the-vault-junichiro-sekino/

For those interested in a deeper study of Japanese printmaking, the JSTOR site has a free journal article by Oliver Statler entitled “Modern Japanese Creative Prints” from the July 1955 “Monumenta Nipponica” at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2382817

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Sekino Jun’ichirō”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print, Windy City Times, January 5 2011, Chicago

Second Insert Image: Sekino Jun’ichirō, “Jun Morning in Kyoto”, 1979, Woodblock Print, 68 of 98 Edition, 85 x 57.8 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Sekino Jun’ichirō, “Yoshid”, Woodblock Print, No. 35 of “Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido”, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Sekino Jun’ichirō, “Falling Leaves”, 1960-1970s, Woodblock Print, 55 of 128 Edition, 46.4 x 69.2 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Sekino Jun’ichirō, “Ki’iroi Ochiba (Yellow Fallen Leaf”, circa 1990, 43 x 60.5 cm, Private Collection

Dario Bellezza: “Crazed, Crazed for Love”

Photographers Unknown, Crazed, Crazed for Love

For Pier Vittorio Tondelli

At night we lose sight of the Tiber.
The wind forces open your honeyed
mouth; I taste firsthand
the languid roses of your springtime.

The quick pace of a police officer
perhaps young and willing, or maybe
elderly who gropes for the stairs
confounds the memories and the sky
goes dark–

Crazed, crazed for love, to love
thresholds oblivious and rabid for trade
where I enter without looking for the gloom
within, muted lover, I shout
to get through the days, arrived
midway through life and sated,
but still unknown to myself
restless, high-wired for sex –
inclined to abandon personal grievance,
to abjure, repudiate the celestial spheres
of nightly idleness or of infected Narcissus.
I’ll trample History
out of dishonor or delight.

Dario Bellezza, Crazed, crazed for love, Snakewoman, Translated in 2025 from the Italian by Peter Covino

Born at Rome in September of 1944, Dario Bellezza was Italy’s first openly gay major prizewinning poet, author and playwright. He is considered to be among the best poets of the second half of the twentieth-century due to the veritable variety of his work from epigrams and brash love-lyrics to unfaltering political chronicles.

Bellezza’s elementary education was at Rome’s classical lyceum from which he graduated in 1962. His education led to writing for several Italian literary and poetry magazines, including the 1967-1968 journal “Carte Segrete (Secret Cards)” dedicated to avant-garde and contemporary literature, art and thought. Bellezza began his rise to prominence in the 1960s through his lifelong collaboration with the magazine “Nuovi Argomenti (New Subjects)”, a literary magazine founded in 1953 by Alberto Moravia.

Through his association with literary critic and writer Enzo Siciliano, Dario Bellezza entered the intellectual world of mid-1960s Rome, at a time when Italy was undergoing convulsive ideological confrontations in its culture and politics. Those writers who primarily influenced his work included Italian poet Sandro Penna, French novelist and playwright Jean Genet, symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud whose entire poetic works would later be translated into Italian by Bellezza, and Elsa Morante, poet, novelist and wife to Alberto Moravia.

Bellezza’s first published prose work was the 1970 “L’innocenza (Innocence)”, a dark partially-autobiographical story of the protagonist Nino, who after recognizing his own homosexuality, chose condemnation rather than acceptance. In 1971, Bellezza’s first volume of poetry “Invettive e Licenze (Invectives and Licenses)” was published by the Milan press Garzanti. Noted for its technical precision, the autobiographically-inspired poems depicted people overwhelmed by bitterness, guilt, scandal, and shame.

Dario Bellezza’s debut poetry volume was praised by poet, film director and playwright Pier Paolo Pasolini, prominent in the Roman intellectual scene and a major figure in European cinema and literature. Bellezza was very grateful for Pasolini’s affection and support for his work. Upset and angry at his friend’s death, Bellezza wrote the 1981 biographical essay “Morte di Pasolini” in response to the November 1975 brutal kidnapping, torture, and murder of Pasolini in the Roman coastal neighborhood of Ostia. This was followed three years later by a second work on Pasolini, “Turbamento (Disturbance)”.

In 1983, Bellezza published “io (me)”, a collection of autobiographical poems that described his everyday life and the desperation of his loves. Seeing himself as a highly educated bourgeois man and homosexual bigot, Bellezza suffered from insomnia that he felt was due to feelings of guilt as well as the many contradictions that struggled within him. The difficulty of a secret and clandestine homosexual life in Rome was a predominant topic in both his poetic and prose work. Bellezza cites the systematic refusal of the self as the only salvation from homosexuality in his 1972 “Lettere da Sodoma (Letters from Sodom)”,

Over his twenty-five year career as a writer, Dario Bellezza published more than twenty books, including eight full-length poetry collections, eight novels, two theater plays, and translations from the French. He received the 1976 Viareggio Prize, Italy’s prestigious literary award, for his 1976 poetry volume “Morte Segreta (Secret Death)”. In 1994, Bellezza received the Montale Prize for his poetic work “L’avversario (The Adversary)” and the Fondi la Postora Prize for his play “Ordalia della Croce (Ordeal of the Cross)”

Known for his candid exploration of homosexuality and its complexities in the modern world, Dario Bellezza, in the midst of writing a book about his struggle with AIDS, died a premature death related to complications from AIDS on the last day of March in 1995. He is interred at Campo Cestio (Cimitero Acattolico), Rome, Lazio, Italy.

Notes: The Poetry Foundation has a May 2025 article on Dario Bellezza written by essayist and poet Daniel Felsenthal, entitled “Drink Me, Lick Me Even” at its online site: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/1679372/drink-me-lick-me-even

The online literary site Asymptote has two poems by Dario Bellezza translated by University of Rhode Island Associate Professor Peter Covino: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/dario-bellezza-what-sex-is-death/

An obituary on Dario Bellezza written by James Kirkup for the online “Independent” news magazine can be located at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-dario-bellezza-1303484.html

There is a collection of Dario Bellezza’s poetry, translated by Italian literature researcher Luca Baldoni, in Volume 1 of the 2006 Italian Poetry Review available as a PDF at Academie.edu: https://www.academia.edu/44358397/Dario_Bellezza_Selection_of_Poems_Translated_into_English

Top Insert Image: Guglielmina Otter, “Dario Bellezza”, circa 1976, Gelatin Silver Print, Interview with Velio Carratoni for Fermenti Magazine

Second Insert Image: Dario Bellezza, “Morte di Pasolini”, January 1, 1981, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore , Milan, Italy

Third Insert Image: Dario Bellezza, “Addio Amori, Addio Cuori”, January 1, 1996, Fermenti Editrice , Rome, Italy

Bottom Insert Image: Guglielmina Otter, “Dario Bellezza”, circa 1976, Gelatin Silver Print, Interview with Velio Carratoni for Fermenti Magazine

Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari

The Photography of Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari

Born in 1899 at the Vilayhet of Aidin (Aydini), an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire, Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari was a Greek photographer whose work helped shape the image of Greece to Western culture. She was the first Greek photographer to export modern images of Greece abroad and thus influenced the future of Greek tourism. Later known by the pseudonym Nelly for her professional society portraiture, Elli Seraidari drew attention to Greece during the country’s turbulent interwar years, a period from 1918 to 1939 that resulted in economic, social, political, and military changes..

At the beginning of the Greco-Turkish War, the Aidini Massacre in the summer of 1919 uprooted Elli Seraidari’s family from their home and forced them to flee to the city of Smyrna. Seraidari relocated in 1920 with her brother to the German city of Dresden where they planned to study the arts. For two years, she studied photography under Franz Fiedler, known for his surrealist-inspired images, and Hugo Erfurth, a portraitist of early twentieth-century celebrities and cultural figures.

After the creation of the Grand National Assembly in the Ottoman Empire led by Mustafa Demal Atatürk, a campaign against the indigenous Greek and Christian populations began. The brutal persecution and destruction led to massacres, forced deportations, executions, and the destruction of cultural and religious monuments. The Great Fire of Smyrna in September of 1922, a deliberate act by the government, forced the city’s population to flee from the Turkish military forces and seek shelter in Greece and elsewhere. Although Seraidari was abroad at the time, she joined the hundred of thousands refugees who were seeking a new life in Greece

In the spring of 1924, Elli Seraidari relocated to Athens where she made the bold decision to establish a photography studio in the high-rent center of the city. Seraidari used her equipment from Dresden to produce specialized portraits as well as dance and nude photography. Her portrait work soon became status symbols for the culturally elite in Greece. Seraidari’s introduction of models and performers into images of the national treasures of the Greek landscape created a new narrative for the growing nation and increased Seraidari’s reputation. Among her most notable works of this early period are the 1925 nude portrait of prima ballerina Mona Paeva and the 1930 mid-air image of Russian dancer Elizaveta Nikolska, both taken at the Parthenon.

Elli Seraidari adopted a naive nationalistic and conservative approach to her work. Her style coincided with Greece’s need to produce an ideal view of the country and its people, both for internal and tourism purposes. Seraidari was appointed as an official photographer for the newly established Greek Ministry of Tourism. She also was commissioned by the Greek Archeological Service to photograph Greek antiquities, both architecture and sculpture. Seraidari’s creative eye imbued the images with a dramatic use of light and dark shadows, sharp horizontal and vertical lines, and camera angles that brought life to the subjects.

Seraidari’s association with Greece’s Fourth of August Regime, under the leadership of General Ioannis Metaxas, made her one of the country’s most prolific photographers. As a refugee in Greece, Seraidari’s view of Greece was idyllic. This matched the propaganda of the Metaxas regime to illustrate the continuity of the Greeks since Antiquity. Now a well-established artist, Seraidari photographed the events and athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Three years later, she was commissioned with the decoration of the Greek pavilion at the New York’s World Fair, for which Seraidari created gigantic collages that expressed the similarities between ancient and modern Greeks.

While in New York, Elli Seraidari decided to remain in the United States, establish her commercial photographic portraiture, and seek new work in the fields of photo reportage and advertising. She continued to maintain her connections with the Greek elite, including shipping tycoons Aristotle Onassis and Stavos Niachos, and soon developed contacts in the White House. As her new work failed to align with any previous Greek stereotype, viewings of her work in the United States went largely unmentioned.

After several excursions to Greece beginning in 1949, Seraidari returned to Greece in March of 1966 where she settled with her husband at Nea Smyrni, a municipality in South Athens, and ceased her photographic work. In 1985, Seraidari donated her photo archives and cameras to Athen’s Beanaki Museum. The Greek government and the Hellenic Center of Photography awarded her in 1987 with an honorary diploma and medal. In 1993, Seraidari received the Order of the Phoenix, an award for those in Greece who have excelled in the arts and sciences. This award was followed in 1996 by the Athens Academy’s Arts and Letters Award. Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari died in Nea Smyrni on the eighth day of August in 1998 at the age of ninety-seven.

Notes: The “Daily Art” has an article on Elli Seraidari’s work entitled “The Queen of Neoclassical Photography: Nelly” at its March 2024 edition: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/greek-photographer-nelly/

Projects at Harvard has an article on the opposing photographic styles of two artists, British photographer Francis Firth and Elli Seraidari, both of whom shot images of the Acropolis and Parthenon: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/sites/projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/whoseculture/files/nelly_frith_photography_dpenizzotto_oct_7_21.pdf

The “Greece Is” newsletter has a July 2023 article on Elli Seraidari’s work entitled “Nelly’s: Setting the Image of Greece in the Mind of the World” which coincided with a major exhibition of her work at the Pireos 138 Benaki Museum: https://www.greece-is.com/nellys-setting-the-image-of-greece-in-the-mind-of-the-world/

The Benaki Museum has a lecture on Elli Seraidari’s life and her photography on YouTube under the title “Nelly’s: Reflections on the Life and Work of the Greek Photographer Elli Seraidari-Sougioultzoglou”.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari”, circa 1920s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Elli Sougloultzoglou-Seraidari, “Temple de la Victoire Aptere, Athens”, 1925, Gelatin Silver Print, Banaki Museum Photographic Archives

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari”, Gelatin Silver Print, Impactalk Online Magazine

Bottom Insert Image: Elli Sougloultzoglou-Seraidari, “Demetrius Karambatis on the Acropolis”, 1925, Gelatin Silver Print, Banaki Museum Photographic Archives

Hervé Guibert

The Photography of Hervé Guibert

Born at Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine on the fourteenth of December in 1955, Hervé Guibert was a French author and photographer. The author of two-dozen published works, he wrote with aggressive candor, detachment, and passion through a mixture of diary writing, memoir, and fiction. Both his writings and photography were closely linked to his private life. The subjects of Guibert’s writings often became his friends; those whom he loved were often portrayed as celebrities, alternately idolized and exposed.

Guibert’s photographic oeuvre contains interior scenes and landscapes as well as portraits of family, friends and lovers. He worked in black and white with tones drawn to soft grays. Photographs of Guibert’s immediate surroundings, his bookcase or desk, were created with the same intensity as photographs of nudes in his bed. His work is both restrained and subtle, created more for his person or close friends rather than public exposure. Although most of his work remains elusive, never having been exhibited or published, those images that have appeared are cool, confident and emotionally warm.

Hervé Guibert was born into a conservative middle-class family of a veterinary inspector and his wife, a former teacher. He relocated to Paris at the age of seventeen with the hope of becoming an actor or scriptwriter. After his rejection from a Paris film school, Guibert entered the literary world and, by the age of twenty, was writing dating advice for “20 Ans (Twenty Years)”, a glossy women’s magazine. In 1977, he published his autobiographical novel, “La Mort Propagande (Death Propaganda)”.

In 1978, Guibert was hired as a photography critic for France’s evening newspaper “Le Monde”. He successfully established himself as a photographer with a photographic literary volume, “Suzanne and Louise”, containing intimate portraits of his great-aunts. In 1981, Hervé Guibert published his “Image Fantôme (Ghost Image)”, an insightful collection of mini-essays on various photographic forms such as family album portraits, photo-booth film strips, and pornographic Polaroids. In this work, Guibert presented photography as tactile, fetishistic and linked to frustrated desires.

In 1982, Hervé Guibert completed his “Les Aventures Singulières (The Singular Adventures)”. This collection of short stories, published through Éditions de Minuit in Paris, centered on a singular character’s life over a period of three years. He shared the Best Screenplay César Award in 1984 for a collaborative work with opera and theater director Patrice Chéreau on the 1983 film “L’Homme Blessé (The Wounded Man)”.

Guibert was granted in 1987 a two year residency scholarship at Villa Medicis, the site of the French Academy in Rome, where he studied with his friend, the openly gay writer and journalist Mathieu Lindon. In January of 1988, Guibert received a positive diagnosis for AIDS and began to record in his writings what would be the remainder of his life. He was the long-time friend of both Christine and her partner, film director Thierry Jouno, considered the man in Guibert’s life. Guibert married Christine to ensure that his royalty income would pass to her and her two children with Jouno.

In 1989, Hervé Guibert published his highly erotic novella ““Fou de Vincent (Crazy for Vincent)”, a dramatization of his earlier intermittent relationship with the impulsive and unpredictable teenager Vincent Marmousez. He revealed his HIV status in his 1990 real-life based novel “À l’Ami qui ne M’a Pas Sauvé la Vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life)”. Following the release of this novel, Guibert became the focus of media attention with interviews and several talk show appearances.

Guibert’s last work, “Cytomégalovirus” was a description of his autumn 1991 hospitalization and the increasing blindness he suffered from his illness. In the second week of December in 1991, Guibert attempted suicide by taking digitalin, a heart medication toxic in large doses. Two weeks later, he died at the age of thirty-six in Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, on the twenty-seventh of December in 1991.

Notes: An excellent article on Hervé Guibert’s 1981 essay volume “Ghost Image” can be found on British photographer Felix Pilgrim’s site: https://www.felixpilgrim.com/blog-1/herve-guiberts-ghost-image

The contemporary Vienna gallery Felix Gaudlitz, in collaboration with Attilia Fattori Franchini, organized a 2020 exhibition of Hervé Guibert’s photographic work entitled “…of lovers, time, and death”. The gallery’s article with several of Guibert’s photographs can be found at: https://felixgaudlitz.com/exhibitions/herve-guibert-of-lovers-time-and-death/

Information written by Christine (Guibert) on Hervé Guibert’s partner Thierry Joune and the impact he had on Guibert’s writings can be found at: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/281395860/thierry-jouno

A more extensive biographical article on Hervé Guibert, with additional links, can be found in this blog’s November 2024 archive: https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2024/11/18/hevre-guibert-he-who-wished-to-be-master-of-the-truth/

Top Insert Image: Hervé Guibert, “Self Portrait”, 1985, Gelatin Silver Print, 23.7 x 30.2 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Hans Georg Berger, “Hervé Guibert and Poet Eugène Savitzkaya, New Year’s Eve, Rio nell’Elba, Italy”, 1984, Gelatin Silver Print, Semiotext(e)

Third Insert Image: Hervé Guibert, “Christine”, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print, 23.8 x 30.5 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Hans Georg Berger, “Hervé Guibert and Thierry Juono, Hotel Gellért, Gesellschaft”, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print