Tag: art history

Henry Scott Tuke

Henry Scott Tuke, “Sunbathers”, Oil on Canvas, Date Unknown

In 1874 Tuke moved to London, where at the age of 16, he enrolled in the Slade School of Art. It was in Falmouth that the young Tuke had been introduced to the pleasures of nude sea bathing, a habit he continued into old age. After graduating he travelled to Italy in 1880, and from 1881 to 1883 he lived in Paris, where he studied with the French history painter Jean-Paul Laurens and met the American painter John Singer Sargent (who was also a painter of male nudes, although this was little known in his lifetime).

During the 1880s Tuke also met Oscar Wilde and other prominent poets and writers such as John Addington Symonds, most of whom were homosexual (then usually called Uranian) and who celebrated the adolescent male. He wrote a “sonnet to youth” which was published anonymously in The Artist, and also contributed an essay to The Studio.

After his death, Tuke’s reputation faded, and he was largely forgotten until the 1970s, when he was rediscovered by the first generation of openly gay artists and art collectors. He has since become something of a cult figure in gay cultural circles, with lavish editions of his paintings published and his works fetching high prices at auctions.

For a more complete biography: https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2021/01/03/henry-scott-tuke/

Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Albert Taylor (Age 21) and Henry Scott Tuke (Age 25), Cornwall, England”, 1883, Vintage Print

Joseph Christian Leyendecker

Paintings by Joseph Christian Leyendecker

Born in  March of 1874 in Montabaur, a collective-municipality of the German Empire, Joseph Christiana Leyendecker was a German-American illustrator, best known for his book and advertising illustrations. In 1862, the family immigrated to Chicago, Illinois, where Leyendecker’s uncle, Adam Ortseifen, was vice-president of the McAvoy Brewing Company, one of Chicago’s largest breweries before Prohibition. At the age of sixteen, J. C. Leyendecker joined the engraving house of J. Manz & Company as an apprentice.  

Leyendecker later advanced to the level of full-time staff artist at Manz & Company and completed his first commercial commission there, sixty Bible illustrations for an edition published by Manz. He enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute,  where he began formal training in drawing and anatomy under the Dutch-American artist John Vanderpoel.  The first in-print acknowledgement of Leyendecker’s artwork was in the April-September 1895 issue of the “Inland Printer” which described his work for Manz and featured a sketch and two book cover illustrations done for publisher E. A. Weeks. 

In 1896, J. C, Leyendecker and his younger brother Francis Xavier, also an illustrator, traveled to Paris where they both enrolled at the Académie Julian under the tutelage of painters Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Paul Laurens, and the etcher and painter Benjamin Constant, who was best known for his portraits and Oriental subjects. While studying the Neo-classical painting style of the academy, both brothers also became familiar with the popular style of illustrated advertisements executed by such artists as Jules Cherêt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Alphonso Mucha, a prominent member of the French Art Nouveau movement. 

Upon return to the United States in 1897, the Leyendecker brothers settled in Chicago’s Hyde Park area and opened a studio in the Fine Arts Building on South Michigan Street. Joseph Leyendecker received his first commission for a Saturday Evening Post cover on May 20th of 1897, which began a forty-four year association with the magazine. During his career, he created three-hundred twenty-two cover paintings for the Saturday Evening Post; he also did work for Collier’s magazine where he produced forty-eight cover illustrations.

In 1900, the brothers moved to New York City, which had established itself as the commercial advertising capital of the nation, and set up shop in the Bryant Park Studios. It was here in New York City that the two brothers would each establish a successful career as an illustrator. In 1903 at the age of twenty-nine, J. C. Leyendecker met Charles Beach, a young man from Ontario, Canada, who was looking for work as a model. Beach became the main inspiration for the Arrow Collar Man, a model for Leyendecker’s other commissions, and, later, his business manager. He was also Leyendecker’s life partner for the majority of their lives. 

J. C. Leyendecker helped define the modern magazine cover as a unique art form. Conveying a wide range of human emotions, his paintings were done in his hallmark style of crisp, wide and controlled brushstrokes accented by bold highlights. Leyendecker’s greatest fame, however, came from his menswear commissions. In 1905, he convinced the advertising director of Cluett, Peabody & Company, a clothing manufacturer, to utilize a single male image to represent all of their products. The result was not only the first major branding initiative in advertising but also the first real advertising campaign ever launched. The campaign of Leyendecker’s handsome, stylishly dressed man, the Arrow Collars and Shirts Man, was so successful that the Cluett company’s market share grew to ninety-six per cent. 

This Arrow Collars and Shirts Man resonated with the public and became the established image of the ideal, fashionable American male, an icon that helped mold the idea of a glamorous lifestyle and the Roaring Twenties. Leyendecker followed this success with illustrations of chiseled-faced men wearing suits from The House of Kuppenheimer, socks from the Interwoven Stocking Company, and underwear from the Cooper Underwear company. Starting in 1912, Leyendecker began a successful series of twenty commissioned advertisements for the cereal company Kellogg’s, which featured  children and adolescents enjoying bowls of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. 

Both having achieved success in New York City, the two Leyendecker brothers decided to relocate in 1914 to New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City. A number of illustrators and other artists had already relocated to this community, including Norman Rockwell, Frederic Remington, and Orson Lowell. The Leyendeckers built a fourteen room mansion with two studio workspaces; upon the residence’s completion, they were joined by their sister, Mary Augusta, and Charles Beach. This estate, which became the site of numerous large galas hosted by Leyendecker and Beach, would be the residence for their final years together. 

During the First World War, J. C. Leyendecker created posters in support of the nation’s war effort; these were used to urge young men to enlist, promote the purchase of war bonds, and urge the general public to conserve resources necessary for the military. After years of tension in the New Rochelle residence, both Frank and Mary Augusta Leyendecker moved out in 1923; Frank Leyendecker died of an overdose in the following year. 

Although affected greatly by his brother’s death, Leyendecker’s commercial success continued to increase throughout the 1920s. However, by the end of the 1930s, the demand for Leyendecker’s  style of imagery had waned; the use of illustration in advertisements had begun to be overshadowed by the growing use of photographic imagery. By 1945, editorial changes at the Saturday Evening Post caused the end of Leyendecker’s long relationship with the magazine. Leyendecker found his finances failing; he was able to keep himself solvent through calendar commissions and covers for William Randolph Hearst’s magazine, The American Weekly. 

J. C. Leyendecker outlived many of his friends. He died of an acute coronary occlusion, at the age of seventy-seven, on July 25th of 1951 at his New Rochelle estate. Only five individuals attended his funeral; Norman Rockwell and three of Leyendecker’s favorite male models acted as pallbearers. Leyendecker is buried, alongside his parents and brother Frank, at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City. What was left of his estate, including a number of original canvases, was divided between Charles Beach, his forty-nine year partner, and his sister Mary Augusta. 

Charles Allwood Beach died of a heart attack on June 21st of 1954 at New Rochelle. The register for St. Paul’s Church, New Rochelle, indicates interment at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York. Beach is noted as being interned in January of 1975 at the Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Niche L-0001; however, this section is not open to the public

 

Ron Francis

Eight Paintings by Ron Francis

As Ron Francis, an Australian born painter, developed his unique, artistic perspective he discovered a distinct mathematical relationship between his viewpoint and the subject matter depicted in his work. So complex was Francis’ “system” of perspective and its relation to geometrics that he actually developed a piece of CAD (computer-aided design) software to help him manage linear perspective.

After being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2005 (a battle Francis won), the now 61-year-old artist is still at work painting and creating images (which according to Francis are mostly inspired by “dreams or visions”) that invoke a distinct sense of contemplation with a strong tinge of anxiety.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee, “The Goldfish”, Oil and Watercolor on Paper, Mounted on Cardboard, 1925, 69.2 x 49.6 cm, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany

Paul Klee was one of the greatest colorists in the story of painting, and a skilled deployer of line. His gravest pictures may have an undercurrent of humor, and his powers of formal invention seem infinite. After making an early choice whether to pursue painting or music as a career, he became one of the most poetic and inventive of modern artists.

He taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau and then at the Düsseldorf Academy. Until his expulsion from Düsseldorf by the Nazis in 1933, Klee painted and drew on a very small scale, yet the small size of his pictures does not affect their internal greatness.

In 1977, a man, Hans joachim Bohlmann, threw acid at this work while it was on view at Germany’s Hamburg Kunsthalle Museum. Though damaged, the work was able to be restored.

Zach Doughtery

Photography by Zach Doughtery

Portland digital artist Zack Dougherty spends hundreds of hours on art that lasts half a second long and loops infinitely. Under the alias Hateplow, his growing body of work has attracted an international audience.

All of Hateplow’s compositions are digital and connected through elements of surrealism. Most of his time is dedicated to making the compositions look real: perfecting lighting of the floating orbs, syncing faint reflections in stone statues, having his own image peering back at the viewer.

His blog site is http://hateplow.tumblr.com

Boris Olshanskiy

Artwork of Boris Olshanskiy

Boris Olshanskiy is a lesser-known painter from the turn of the 21st century who drew fantastic scenes from Slavic mythology. He has produce only several hundred works during his career as a painter.

Born on February 25, 1956 in the city of Tambov, Olshanskiy attended the Penza Art College and the Moscow State Institute of Painting of V.I. Surikov. Following his graduation, Olshanskiy began to work in graphics and illustration in Moscow, his talents as an artist were soon noticed and in 1989, he was inducted as a member of the Union of Artists of Russia.

During the beginning of the Perestroika, Olshanskiy began to take an interest in painting and soon applied his interest of the ancient Slavs and their mythology to his work. In 1993, Olshanskiy organized his first personal exhibition, displaying over 300 works, in his time, he would take part in many more exhibitions both locally and abroad.

In recent times, Olshanskiy and his works have faded into obscurity; his most recent painting being from 2006. The artist himself is very rarely heard of nowadays. Despite this, Olshanskiy’s works have shaped the way many view Slavic myths, possibly as much as artists such as Ivan Bilibin or Viktor Korolkov.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe ( November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York. The homoeroticism of this work fuelled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.

“Robert took areas of dark human consent and made them into art. He worked without apology, investing the homosexual with grandeur, masculinity, and enviable nobility. Without affectation, he created a presence that was wholly male without sacrificing feminine grace. He was not looking to make a political statement or an announcement of his evolving sexual persuasion. He was presenting something new, something not seen or explored as he saw and explored it. Robert sought to elevate aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism. As Cocteau said of a Genet poem, “His obscenity is never obscene.” — Patti Smith, Just Kids

Stanislav Szukalski

Artwork of Stanislav Szukalski

Stanisłav Szukalski  was a Polish-born painter and sculptor who became a part of the Chicago Renaissance. He also developed the pseudoscientific-historical theory of Zermatism, positing that all human culture was derived from post-deluge Easter Island and that mankind was locked in an eternal struggle with the Sons of Yeti (“Yetinsyny”), the offspring of Yeti and humans.

In 1934 the government of Poland declared Stanislav Szukalski the country’s ‘Greatest Living Artist.’ It built the Szukalski National Museum in Warsaw to hold his massive sculptures and dramatic, mythological paintings.

When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, they destroyed the museum and all of Szukalski’s sculptures and paintings. He fled to the United States, where no one recognized him as a celebrated hero. He lived in a small apartment in Glendale, California and made a meager income drawing maps for the aerospace industry.

Szukalski would have remained in total obscurity if he hadn’t been discovered by a few popular underground cartoonists: Robert Williams, Rick Griffin, and Jim Woodring – who recognized Szukalski’s immense artistic talent, and befriended him. In 1971, Glenn Bray, a publisher who had previously specialized in the work of Mad Magazine artist Basil Wolverton, befriended him and later published one book of Szukalski’s art, Inner Portraits (1980), and another of his art and philosophy, A Trough Full of Pearls / Behold! The Protong (1982).

Howard David Johnson

Howard David Johnson, “ The Archangel Gabriel and His Trumpet: Oil on Canvas

“ I’ve often thought that some of the most fantastic creatures and visions in all of the literature of mankind were found in the sacred texts of active religions. Sensitive subject matter to say the least. Few artists in history have even dared to attempt to paint these symbolic visions because of the controversies surrounding them… While I’ve been studying legends, myths, and traditions of the ancient Orient for new illustration projects I’ve also been studying William Blake, Moreau, Rochegrosse, Delville, and the Symbolic artistic tradition. In my paintings, I have endeavored to realize decadent mythology and sacred religious texts in my photo-realistic paintings with the same style of vision and reverence they showed in their works .”

–Howard David Johnson

Paul Politis

Paul Politis, “Dead of Night” Series

A series of conceptual black and white and colour photographs of dead bodies in various locations, taken at night. This series was initially inspired by crime scene photographs taken by Weegee in the 1940’s.

Paul Politis is a self-taught photographer from Montreal, Quebec, and currently is  living in Ottawa. He has been making photographs since 1988, first in the traditional chemical darkroom, and since 2005, digitally.

Please credit photographer when re-blogging. Thanks.

Roberto Ferri

Roberto Ferri, “Struggle IV”, Oil on Canvas, 2013

Roberto Ferri is an Italian artist and painter from Taranto, Italy. He graduated in 1996 from the Liceo Artistico Lisippo Taranto, a local art school in Taranto. Ferri moved to Rome in 1999, to do research on ancient painting, particularly those works at the end of the 16th century. He graduated with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts, Rome, in 2006.

His work is deeply inspired by the Baroque painters, particularly Caravagggio, and other masters of Romanticism, the Academy style, and Symbolism. Ferri’s work is represented in private collections and was featured in the Italian pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennale.

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko, “Hierarchical Birds”, 1944, Oil on Canvas, 100.7 x 80.5 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

During the 1940s Rothko’s imagery became increasingly symbolic. In the social climate of anxiety that dominated the late 1930s and the years of World War II, images from everyday life – however unnaturalistic – began to appear somewhat outmoded. If art were to express the tragedy of the human condition, Rothko felt, new subjects and a new idiom had to be found. He said, “It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes….But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it.”

In a 1943 letter to the New York Times, written with Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman, Rothko said, “It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints, as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.”

Alfred Seiland

Photographs by Alfred Seiland

Alfred Seiland’s photographs are a long-term and geographically far-reaching exploration of ancient sites and their appearance today. All the photographs are taken with an analogue, large-format camera, showing an extraordinary aesthetic sensibility and a distinctive compositional approach. Although the Austrian photographer’s images may appear staged, the photographs are the result of the artist’s careful and refined search for the perfect place and moment at which to take his photograph.

His photographs cast an objective eye on the human landscape with the resultant effect of realistic images, methodically corrected and perfected, that form a pictoral narrative and “a mood and space that’s seems to exist only in and for that picture.”

Top Image: “Odessa, Delaware”, 1983

Bottom Image: “Auf der Paßhöhe, Grimselpaß, Schweiz”, 1994

Yuuki Yugo

Wolf Guy

Wolf Guy is a Japanese manga series of two volumes published in 1970 by Bunkasha. Originally written by Kazumasa Hirai and illustrated by Hisashi Sakaguchi (坂口尚), the series has been readapted with a more violent and mature setting in 2007 by Yoshiaki Tabata and Yuuki Yugo. This new adaptation, also known as Wolf Guy: Ōkami no Monshō, has been released as twelve volumes by Akita Shoten.

The main protagonist of the story is Akira Inugami, a Japanese-American exchange student. He is constantly bullied and abused by gang members (whom in the stories, he usually ends up killing or maiming). His parents were killed by hunters when he was young, mainly because of their werewolf lineage, and was raised by a pack of wolves he had befriended. He can transform into a werewolf in his own will. He is quite powerful during full moons and is weak only during the days of new moons.