Today I bring you a vibrantly illustrated ‘Get Well Soon’ note – presumably coloured in such a way so as to cheer up its recipient – sent to renowned French poet Jean Cocteau in 1916 during a short period of bad health. The letter was sent to him by his friend, Pablo Picasso; a man who needs no introduction.

Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A translated transcript follows.

My dear Cocteau

I am quite sad that you are ill. I hope that you will be well soon and that I will see you. At Montparnasse next Wednesday’s festivities in honor of the musician I hope to see you. I have good ideas for our theater story – we shall talk about it.

Best wishes

Picasso

via Letters of Note: I am quite sad that you are ill.

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NAME: Pablo Picasso
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: October 25, 1881
DEATH DATE: April 08, 1973
EDUCATION: La Llotja, Royal Academy of San Fernando
PLACE OF BIRTH: Málaga, Spain
PLACE OF DEATH: Mougins, France

Best Known For:  Spanish expatriate Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, and the co-creator of Cubism.

Artist. Born October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain. Picasso’s gargantuan full name, which honors a variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso. Picasso’s mother was Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez and his father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and art teacher. A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the young Pablo Picasso possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes that seemed to mark him out for greatness. He remembered, “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”

Although he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a prodigious talent for drawing from a very young age. According to legend, his first words were “piz, piz,” his childish attempt at lápiz, the Spanish word for pencil. Picasso’s father began teaching him to draw and paint from early childhood, and by the time he was 13 years old his paintings were already better executed than his father’s. He lost all desire to do any schoolwork and instead spent the school days doodling in his notebook. Picasso recalled, “for being a bad student, they would send me to the ‘cells’& I loved it when they sent me there, because I could take a pad of paper and draw nonstop.”

In 1895, when Picasso was fourteen years old, his family moved to Barcelona and he immediately applied to the city’s prestigious School of Fine Arts. Although the school typically only accepted students several years his senior, Picasso’s entrance exam was so extraordinary that the school made an exception and admitted him immediately. Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the strict rules and formalities and began skipping class to roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed.

In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando. However, he again grew frustrated at the school’s singular focus on classical subjects and techniques. He wrote to a friend, “They just go and on& about the same old stuff: Velazquez for painting, Michelangelo for sculpture.” Again he started skipping class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars, prostitutes.

In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats, the four cats. Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive break with the classical methods in which he had been trained and began a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Picasso moved to Paris, the cultural center of European art,  to open his own studio. Art critics and historians typically break Picasso’s adult career into distinct periods and the first of these, which lasted from 1901-1904, is called his Blue Period after the color that dominated nearly all of Picasso’s paintings during these years. Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and anguish using almost exclusively blues and greens. The critic Charles Morice wondered, “Is this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?” Picasso’s most famous paintings from the Blue Period include Blue Nude, La Vieand The Old Guitarist, all three completed in 1903.

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome his depression of the previous years. He was madly in love with a beautiful model named Fernande Olivier and newly prosperous thanks to the generous patronage of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The artistic manifestation of Picasso’s improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors beiges, pinks and reds in what is known as his Rose Period. His most famous paintings from this time include Family at Saltimbanques (1905), Gertrude Stein (1905-1906) and Two Nudes (1906).

In 1907, Picasso produced a painting unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before, a work that would profoundly influence the direction of art in the twentieth century: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a chilling depiction of five beige figures, prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism, an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and Georges Braque.

In Cubist paintings, objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form, highlighting their composite geometric shapes and depicting the object from multiple viewpoints at once to create physics-defying, collage-like effects. At once destructive and creative, Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world. “It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire,” Braque said. The French writer and critic Max Jacob reflected, “It was really the harbinger comet of the new century.” Picasso’s early Cubist paintings, known as his Analytic Cubist works, include Three Women (1907), Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table (1909) and Girl with Mandolin (1910). Picasso’s later Cubist paintings are distinguished as Synthetic Cubism because they go further toward creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny individual fragments.  These include Still Life with Chair Caning (1912), Card Player (1913-1914), and Three Musicians (1921).

The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great change in Picasso’s art. He grew more somber and once again preoccupied with the depiction of reality. Picasso’s works between 1918-1927 are considered his Classical Period,  a brief return to realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. His most interesting and important works from this period include Three Women at the Spring (1921), Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race (1922) and The Pipes of Pan (1923).

Then, from 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement, Surrealism, whose artistic manifestation was an offspring of his own Cubism. Picasso’s greatest surrealist painting, one of the great paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. On April 26, 1937, German bombers supporting Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, carried out a devastating aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica. Outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, Picasso painted Guernica shortly thereafter, a surrealist testament to the horrors of war in black, white and grays, featuring a Minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish and terror. Guernica remains one of the most moving and powerful antiwar paintings in history.

In the aftermath of World War II, Picasso became more overtly political. He joined the Communist Party and was twice honored with the International Lenin Peace Prize, once in 1950 and again in 1961. By this point in his life, Picasso was also an international celebrity, the world’s most famous living artist. However, while paparazzi chronicled his every move, few paid attention to his art during this time. In contrast to the dazzling complexity of Synthetic Cubism, Picasso’s later paintings use simple imagery and crude technique. Upon passing a group of school kids in his old age Picasso remarked, “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.” The epitome of his later work is his Self Portrait Facing Death, drawn with pencil and crayon a year before he passed away. The autobiographical subject, who appears as something between a human and an ape, with a green face and pink hair, is drawn with the crude technique of a child. Yet the expression in his eyes, capturing a lifetime of wisdom, fear and uncertainty, is the unmistakable work of a master at the height of his powers.

Picasso was an incorrigible womanizer who had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes over the course of his long life. However, he had only two wives. He married a ballerina named Olga Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years before parting ways in 1927. He married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, at the age of 69 in 1961. Picasso had four children: Paul, Maya, Claude and Paloma.

He passed away on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91.

Pablo Picasso stands alone as the most celebrated and influential painter of the twentieth century. His technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy distinguish him as a revolutionary artist. Picasso was also endlessly reinventing himself, switching between styles so radically different that his life’s work seems the product of five or six great artists rather than just one. Discussing his penchant for radical shifts in style, Picasso insisted that his career was not an evolution or progression. Rather, the diversity of his work was the result of freshly evaluating for each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effects. “Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should,” Picasso said. “Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.”

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I am gonna #hashtag the #hashtag today.

Over at Waldina, we celebrated Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Isadora Duncan, Shirley Booth, and Pablo Picasso.   While at Wasp & Pear, we celebrated abandoned places (naturally), minimalist movie posters, Pablo Neruda, vintage film footage of Los Angeles, and my re commitment to using the #adn to cross-post my “tweets” to Tumblr and ADN.  While setting all that up, I did notice that I have over 200 posts queued at Wasp & Pear, with the schedule of two a day, I could stop posting and they would automatically load well into November.  Not that I am stopping, but that is kind of a fun fact.  #funfact #waldina #wasp&pear

Interesting how I never mention Facebook…

I feel like my barber may have cut more of my hairs than I had wished on Friday, I feel bald.

This past week, I have been in love with a new app on my phone called Field Trip.  Here are the details:

Field Trip is your guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you. Field Trip runs in the background on your phone. When you get close to something interesting, it pops up a card with details about the location. No click is required. If you have a headset or bluetooth connected, it can even read the info to you.

Field Trip can help you learn about everything from local history to the latest and best places to shop, eat, and have fun. You select the local feeds you like and the information pops up on your phone automatically, as you walk next to those places.

You can set the frequency that it alerts you to history and attractions around you or you can turn it off and only use it when you want to.  I love that on my way to work, it sends me a notice of things I am near.  It is amazing to think that I walk by things every day without knowing their full stories.  I think everyone should try it.  You can share what you are near via your favorite sharing medium and it creates a scrap book of your travels.  I load them to my Tumblr queue.  I should really just start putting them everywhere (except facebook, obviously).  It really is amazing. All the photos and captions above are from Field Trip and my commute to work. #history #civics

In other news, Florida and Texas behaved like Florida and Texas.  It’s hard to be surprised when they stay true to their characters.  It doesn’t make me any less sad/angry/disappointed in them, but I am not surprised.  #biggots #biblethumpers

It seems like I see more and more people texting/talking on their phones while driving lately.  I will start shaming them, publicly.  #selfish #clueless #dumbass #hands-free

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“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” – Pablo Picasso

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Today is Picasso’s 132nd birthday.  He died 40 years ago at the impressive age of 91.  A long life only matched by his long long full name:  Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso.  He was part of that group of friends back in the 20’s that I became madly fascinated with, that lost generation.  Only, he managed to get through it and continue.  Take some time to view his work today (phone-google images-picasso) and remember that life is more vibrant than you think and perspective is different for everyone.  Jump start your weekend and recharge yourself and remember, beauty is everywhere as long as you don’t rush past it.

NAME: Pablo Picasso
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: October 25, 1881
DEATH DATE: April 08, 1973
EDUCATION: La Llotja, Royal Academy of San Fernando
PLACE OF BIRTH: Málaga, Spain
PLACE OF DEATH: Mougins, France

Best Known For:  Spanish expatriate Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, and the co-creator of Cubism.

The Wiki:

Artist. Born October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain. Picasso’s gargantuan full name, which honors a variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso. Picasso’s mother was Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez and his father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and art teacher. A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the young Pablo Picasso possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes that seemed to mark him out for greatness. He remembered, “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”

Although he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a prodigious talent for drawing from a very young age. According to legend, his first words were “piz, piz,” his childish attempt at lápiz, the Spanish word for pencil. Picasso’s father began teaching him to draw and paint from early childhood, and by the time he was 13 years old his paintings were already better executed than his father’s. He lost all desire to do any schoolwork and instead spent the school days doodling in his notebook. Picasso recalled, “for being a bad student, they would send me to the ‘cells’& I loved it when they sent me there, because I could take a pad of paper and draw nonstop.”

In 1895, when Picasso was fourteen years old, his family moved to Barcelona and he immediately applied to the city’s prestigious School of Fine Arts. Although the school typically only accepted students several years his senior, Picasso’s entrance exam was so extraordinary that the school made an exception and admitted him immediately. Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the strict rules and formalities and began skipping class to roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed.

In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando. However, he again grew frustrated at the school’s singular focus on classical subjects and techniques. He wrote to a friend, “They just go and on& about the same old stuff: Velazquez for painting, Michelangelo for sculpture.” Again he started skipping class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars, prostitutes.

In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats, the four cats. Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive break with the classical methods in which he had been trained and began a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Picasso moved to Paris, the cultural center of European art,  to open his own studio. Art critics and historians typically break Picasso’s adult career into distinct periods and the first of these, which lasted from 1901-1904, is called his Blue Period after the color that dominated nearly all of Picasso’s paintings during these years. Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and anguish using almost exclusively blues and greens. The critic Charles Morice wondered, “Is this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?” Picasso’s most famous paintings from the Blue Period include Blue Nude, La Vieand The Old Guitarist, all three completed in 1903.

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome his depression of the previous years. He was madly in love with a beautiful model named Fernande Olivier and newly prosperous thanks to the generous patronage of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The artistic manifestation of Picasso’s improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors beiges, pinks and reds in what is known as his Rose Period. His most famous paintings from this time include Family at Saltimbanques (1905), Gertrude Stein (1905-1906) and Two Nudes (1906).

In 1907, Picasso produced a painting unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before, a work that would profoundly influence the direction of art in the twentieth century: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a chilling depiction of five beige figures, prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism, an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and Georges Braque.

In Cubist paintings, objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form, highlighting their composite geometric shapes and depicting the object from multiple viewpoints at once to create physics-defying, collage-like effects. At once destructive and creative, Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world. “It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire,” Braque said. The French writer and critic Max Jacob reflected, “It was really the harbinger comet of the new century.” Picasso’s early Cubist paintings, known as his Analytic Cubist works, include Three Women (1907), Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table (1909) and Girl with Mandolin (1910). Picasso’s later Cubist paintings are distinguished as Synthetic Cubism because they go further toward creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny individual fragments.  These include Still Life with Chair Caning (1912), Card Player (1913-1914), and Three Musicians (1921).

The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great change in Picasso’s art. He grew more somber and once again preoccupied with the depiction of reality. Picasso’s works between 1918-1927 are considered his Classical Period,  a brief return to realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. His most interesting and important works from this period include Three Women at the Spring (1921), Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race (1922) and The Pipes of Pan (1923).

Then, from 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement, Surrealism, whose artistic manifestation was an offspring of his own Cubism. Picasso’s greatest surrealist painting, one of the great paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. On April 26, 1937, German bombers supporting Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, carried out a devastating aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica. Outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, Picasso painted Guernica shortly thereafter, a surrealist testament to the horrors of war in black, white and grays, featuring a Minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish and terror. Guernica remains one of the most moving and powerful antiwar paintings in history.

In the aftermath of World War II, Picasso became more overtly political. He joined the Communist Party and was twice honored with the International Lenin Peace Prize, once in 1950 and again in 1961. By this point in his life, Picasso was also an international celebrity, the world’s most famous living artist. However, while paparazzi chronicled his every move, few paid attention to his art during this time. In contrast to the dazzling complexity of Synthetic Cubism, Picasso’s later paintings use simple imagery and crude technique. Upon passing a group of school kids in his old age Picasso remarked, “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.” The epitome of his later work is his Self Portrait Facing Death, drawn with pencil and crayon a year before he passed away. The autobiographical subject, who appears as something between a human and an ape, with a green face and pink hair, is drawn with the crude technique of a child. Yet the expression in his eyes, capturing a lifetime of wisdom, fear and uncertainty, is the unmistakable work of a master at the height of his powers.

Picasso was an incorrigible womanizer who had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes over the course of his long life. However, he had only two wives. He married a ballerina named Olga Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years before parting ways in 1927. He married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, at the age of 69 in 1961. Picasso had four children: Paul, Maya, Claude and Paloma.

He passed away on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91.

Pablo Picasso stands alone as the most celebrated and influential painter of the twentieth century. His technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy distinguish him as a revolutionary artist. Picasso was also endlessly reinventing himself, switching between styles so radically different that his life’s work seems the product of five or six great artists rather than just one. Discussing his penchant for radical shifts in style, Picasso insisted that his career was not an evolution or progression. Rather, the diversity of his work was the result of freshly evaluating for each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effects. “Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should,” Picasso said. “Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.”

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This coming week, you need to vote. If you live in Washington State’s 26th Legislative District, please vote for Nathan Schlicher, it is time for Port Orchard to move forward and it simply cannot be done with it’s current representation.

This coming week, you need to decide if it’s going to be porch light on and the doorbell making the dogs bark all night while you hand out candy to kids that are too old to be trick or treating or if it is going to be porch light off and watching TV upstairs in the bedroom.  I have my vote already cast.

This coming week, you should probably get a flu shot.  Your insurance covers it.

I have finally input all the Waldina Style Icon birthdays into a calendar and have created a list of birthdays to celebrate.  I have made it public and you can subscribe to it in Google Calendars:  See Waldina Style Icons calendar in Google Calendar.  You can also just be surprised every day with a new birthday and a couple of fun facts about their the birthday person’s life.

On Waldina this week, I celebrated a lot of birthdays:  Sylvia Plath, Pablo Picasso, Johnny Carson, Joan Fontaine, and Gummo Marx.  I also added Schindler’s List to the Waldina Required Viewing Film Festival.

The Stats:

Total Followers:  221
Total Hits:  96,602
Hits This Week:  299

On Was & Pear this week, I posted illustrations of what some strange and unusual words mean, celebrated Marion Davies, Mary Astor, Norma Shearer, Sylvia Sidney, and Hedy Lamarr.  I posted photos of abandoned places and vintage Seattle landmarks like The Pacific Hotel (I lived across the street from there for five years).  Another huge fascination of mine is Hollywood Mysteries and Scandals, this week I posted the Mario Lanza Story, the Inger Steven Story, and The Vivian Vance Story.

The Stats:

Total Followers:   117
New Followers:  3
Total Posts:  1,123
New Posts:  39

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Today is the 102nd birthday of Jackson Pollock.  Some of his art pushes some people’s definitions of art because they do not see it as a representation of anything they recognize.  Fortunately, the definition of art is not if someone can see a red barn on a grassy hill in it.  His art elicits emotions, questions and wonder; it draws the viewer in, blurs the periphery and creates a pure experience.

NAME: Jackson Pollock
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: January 28, 1912
DEATH DATE: August 11, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cody, Wyoming
PLACE OF DEATH: East Hampton, New York
FULL NAME: Paul Jackson Pollock
AKA: Jackson Pollock

BEST KNOWN FOR: Famous 20th century artist Jackson Pollock revolutionized the world of modern art with his unique abstract painting techniques.

Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming. His father, LeRoy Pollock, was a farmer and a government land surveyor, and his mother, Stella May McClure, was a fierce woman with artistic ambitions. The youngest of five brothers, he was a needy child and was often in search of attention that he did not receive.

During his youth, Pollock’s family moved around the West, to Arizona and throughout California. When Pollock was 8, his father, who was an abusive alcoholic, left the family, and Pollock’s older brother, Charles, became like a father to him. Charles was an artist, and was considered to be the best in the family. He had a significant influence on his younger brother’s future ambitions. While the family was living in Los Angeles, Pollock enrolled in the Manual Arts High School, where he learned to draw but had little success expressing himself. He was eventually expelled for starting fights.

In 1930, at age 18, Pollock moved to New York City to live with his brother, Charles. He soon began studying with Charles’s art teacher, representational regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock spent much of his time with Benton, often babysitting Benton’s young son, and the Bentons eventually became like the family Pollock felt he never had.

When Pollock’s father died suddenly in 1933, he fell into a deep depression. He got drunk one night and started a fight with Charles’s wife, Elizabeth. During the fight, Pollock threatened her with an ax, and then turned around and sliced through one of his brothe’’s paintings, which had been scheduled for an upcoming exhibition. Pollock was forced to leave Charles’s house, and in 1934, his brother Sanford arrived in New York to help take care of him.

During the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt started a program called the Public Works of Art Project, one of many intended to jumpstart the economy. Artists such as Pollock were given $24.86 to do 20 hours of work a week. The program resulted in thousands of works of art by Pollock and contemporaries such as José Clemente Orozco, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

But despite being busy with work, Pollock could not stop drinking. In 1937, he began receiving psychiatric treatment for alcoholism from a Jungian analyst who fueled his interest in symbolism and Native American art. In 1939, Pollock discovered Pablo Picasso‘s show at the Museum of Modern Art. Picasso’s artistic experimentation encouraged Pollock to push the boundaries of his own work.

“Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was.”

In 1942, Pollock met Lee Krasner, a Jewish contemporary artist and an established painter in her own right, at a party. She later visited Pollock at his studio and was impressed with his art. They soon became romantically involved.

Around this time, Peggy Guggenheim began expressing interest in Pollock’s paintings. During a meeting she had with the painter Pete Norman, he saw some of Pollock’s paintings lying on the floor and commented that Pollock’s art was possibly the most original American art he had seen. Guggenheim immediately put Pollock on contract.

Krasner and Pollock married in October 1945, and with the help of a $2,000 loan from Guggenheim, bought a farmhouse in the Springs area of East Hampton, on Long Island. Guggenheim gave Pollock a stipend to work, and Krasner dedicated her time to helping promote and manage his artwork. Pollock was happy to be in the country again, surrounded by nature, which had a major impact on his projects. He was energized by his new surroundings and by his supportive wife. In 1946, he converted the barn to a private studio, where he continued to develop his “drip” technique, the paint literally flowing off of his tools and onto the canvases that he typically placed on the floor.

In 1947, Guggenheim turned Pollock over to Betty Parsons, who was not able to pay him a stipend but would give him money as his artwork sold.

Pollock’s most famous paintings were made during this “drip period” between 1947 and 1950. He became wildly popular after being featured in a four-page spread, on August 8, 1949, in Life magazine. The article asked of Pollock, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” The Life article changed Pollock’s life overnight. Many other artists resented his fame, and some of his friends suddenly became competitors. As his fame grew, some critics began calling Pollock a fraud, causing even him to question his own work. During this time he would often look to Krasner to determine which paintings were good, unable to make the differentiation himself.

In 1949, Pollock’s show at the Betty Parsons Gallery sold out, and he suddenly became the best-paid avant-garde painter in America. But fame was not good for Pollock, who, as a result of it, became dismissive of other artists, even his former teach and mentor, Thomas Hart Benton. Furthermore, acts of self-promotion made him feel like a phony, and he would sometimes give interviews in which his answers were scripted. When Hans Namuth, a documentary photographer, began producing a film of Pollock working, Pollock found it impossible to “perform” for the camera. Instead, he went back to drinking heavily.

Pollock’s 1950 show at the Parsons gallery did not sell, though many of the paintings included, such as his “Number 4, 1950,” are considered masterpieces today. It was during this time that Pollock began to consider symbolic titles misleading, and instead began using numbers and dates for each work he completed. Pollock’s art also became darker in color. He abandoned the “drip” method, and began painting in black and white, which proved unsuccessful. Depressed and haunted, Pollock would frequently meet his friends at the nearby Cedar Bar, drinking until it closed and getting into violent fights.

Concerned for Pollock’s well-being, Krasner called on Pollock’s mother to help. Her presence helped to stabilize Pollock, and he began to paint again. He completed his masterpiece, “The Deep,” during this period.

But as the demand from collectors for Pollock’s art grew, so too did the pressure he felt, and with it his alcoholism.

Overwhelmed with Pollock’s needs, Krasner was also unable to work. Their marriage became troubled, and Pollock’s health was failing. He started dating other women, and by 1956, he had quit painting, and his marriage was in shambles. Krasner reluctantly left for Paris to give Pollock space.

Just after 10 p.m. on August 11, 1956, Pollock, who had been drinking, crashed his car into a tree less than a mile from his home. Ruth Kligman, his girlfriend at the time, was thrown from the car and survived. Another passenger, Edith Metzger, was killed, and Pollock was thrown 50 feet into the air and into a birch tree. He died immediately.

Krasner returned from France to bury Pollock, and subsequently went into a mourning that would last the rest of her life. Retaining her creativity and productivity, Krasner lived and painted for another 20 years. She also managed the sale of Pollock’s paintings, carefully distributing them to museums. Before her death, Krasner set up the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which gives grants to young, promising artists. When Krasner died on June 19, 1984, the estate was worth $20 million.

In December 1956, the year after his death, Pollock was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and then another in 1967. His work has continued to be honored on a large scale, with frequent exhibitions at both the MoMA in New York and the Tate in London. He remains one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

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Today is the 131st birthday of Coco Chanel.  I admire a person that creates their life how they wish it to be.  Determination, focus, drive, and perseverance.

NAME: Coco Chanel
BIRTH DATE: August 19, 1883
DEATH DATE: January 10, 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH: Saumur, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: With her trademark suits and little black dresses, fashion designer Coco Chanel created timeless designs that are still popular today.

Famed fashion designer Coco Chanel was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on August 19, 1883, in Saumur, France. With her trademark suits and little black dresses, Coco Chanel created timeless designs that are still popular today. She herself became a much revered style icon known for her simple yet sophisticated outfits paired with great accessories, such as several strands of pearls. As Chanel once said,“luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.”

Her early years, however, were anything but glamorous. After her mother’s death, Chanel was put in an orphanage by her father who worked as a peddler. She was raised by nuns who taught her how to sew—a skill that would lead to her life’s work. Her nickname came from another occupation entirely. During her brief career as a singer, Chanel performed in clubs in Vichy and Moulins where she was called “Coco.” Some say that the name comes from one of the songs she used to sing, and Chanel herself said that it was a “shortened version of cocotte, the French word for ‘kept woman,” according to an article in The Atlantic.

Around the age of 20, Chanel became involved with Etienne Balsan who offered to help her start a millinery business in Paris. She soon left him for one of his even wealthier friends, Arthur “Boy” Capel. Both men were instrumental in Chanel’s first fashion venture.

Opening her first shop on Paris’s Rue Cambon in 1910, Chanel started out selling hats. She later added stores in Deauville and Biarritz and began making clothes. Her first taste of clothing success came from a dress she fashioned out of an old jersey on a chilly day. In response to the many people who asked about where she got the dress, she offered to make one for them. “My fortune is built on that old jersey that I’d put on because it was cold in Deauville,” she once told author Paul Morand.

In the 1920s, Chanel took her thriving business to new heights. She launched her first perfume, Chanel No. 5, which was the first to feature a designer’s name. Perfume “is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion. . . . that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure,” Chanel once explained.

In 1925, she introduced the now legendary Chanel suit with collarless jacket and well-fitted skirt. Her designs were revolutionary for the time—borrowing elements of men’s wear and emphasizing comfort over the constraints of then-popular fashions. She helped women say good-bye to the days of corsets and other confining garments.

Another 1920s revolutionary design was Chanel’s little black dress. She took a color once associated with mourning and showed just how chic it could be for eveningwear. In addition to fashion, Chanel was a popular figure in the Paris literary and artistic worlds. She designed costumes for the Ballets Russes and for Jean Cocteau’s play Orphée, and counted Cocteau and artist Pablo Picasso among her friends. For a time, Chanel had a relationship with composer Igor Stravinsky.

Another important romance for Chanel began in the 1920s. She met the wealthy duke of Westminster aboard his yacht around 1923, and the two started a decades-long relationship. In response to his marriage proposal, she reportedly said “There have been several Duchesses of Westminster—but there is only one Chanel!”

The international economic depression of the 1930s had a negative impact on her company, but it was the outbreak of World War II that led Chanel to close her business. She fired her workers and shut down her shops. During the German occupation of France, Chanel got involved with a German military officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage. She got special permission to stay in her apartment at the Hotel Ritz. After the war ended, Chanel was interrogated by her relationship with von Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator. Some have wondered whether friend Winston Churchill worked behind the scenes on Chanel’s behalf.

While not officially charged, Chanel suffered in the court of public opinion. Some still viewed her relationship with a Nazi officer as a betrayal of her country. Chanel left Paris, spending some years in Switzerland in a sort of exile. She also lived at her country house in Roquebrune for a time.

At the age of 70, Chanel made a triumphant return to the fashion world. She first received scathing reviews from critics, but her feminine and easy-fitting designs soon won over shoppers around the world.

In 1969, Chanel’s fascinating life story became the basis for the Broadway musical Coco starring Katharine Hepburn as the legendary designer. Alan Jay Lerner wrote the book and lyrics for the show’s song while Andre Prévin composed the music. Cecil Beaton handled the set and costume design for the production. The show received seven Tony Award nominations, and Beaton won for Best Costume Design and René Auberjonois for Best Featured Actor.

Coco Chanel died on January 10, 1971, at her apartment in the Hotel Ritz. She never married, having once said “I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.” Hundreds crowded together at the Church of the Madeleine to bid farewell to the fashion icon. In tribute, many of the mourners wore Chanel suits.

A little more than a decade after her death, designer Karl Lagerfeld took the reins at her company to continue the Chanel legacy. Today her namesake company continues to thrive and is believed to generate hundreds of millions in sales each year.

In addition to the longevity of her designs, Chanel’s life story continues to captivate people’s attention. There have been several biographies of the fashion revolutionary, including Chanel and Her World (2005) written by her friend Edmonde Charles-Roux.

In the recent television biopic, Coco Chanel (2008), Shirley MacLaine starred as the famous designer around the time of her 1954 career resurrection. The actress told WWD that she had long been interested in playing Chanel. “What’s wonderful about her is she’s not a straightforward, easy woman to understand.”

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Today is Picasso’s 133rd birthday.  He died 41 years ago at the impressive age of 91.  A long life only matched by his long long full name:  Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso.  He was part of that group of friends back in the 20’s that I became madly fascinated with, that lost generation.  Only, he managed to get through it and continue.  Take some time to view his work today (phone-google images-picasso) and remember that life is more vibrant than you think and perspective is different for everyone.  Jump start your weekend and recharge yourself and remember, beauty is everywhere as long as you don’t rush past it.

NAME: Pablo Picasso
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: October 25, 1881
DEATH DATE: April 08, 1973
EDUCATION: La Llotja, Royal Academy of San Fernando
PLACE OF BIRTH: Málaga, Spain
PLACE OF DEATH: Mougins, France

Best Known For:  Spanish expatriate Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, and the co-creator of Cubism.

The Wiki:

Artist. Born October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain. Picasso’s gargantuan full name, which honors a variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso. Picasso’s mother was Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez and his father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and art teacher. A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the young Pablo Picasso possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes that seemed to mark him out for greatness. He remembered, “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”

Although he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a prodigious talent for drawing from a very young age. According to legend, his first words were “piz, piz,” his childish attempt at lápiz, the Spanish word for pencil. Picasso’s father began teaching him to draw and paint from early childhood, and by the time he was 13 years old his paintings were already better executed than his father’s. He lost all desire to do any schoolwork and instead spent the school days doodling in his notebook. Picasso recalled, “for being a bad student, they would send me to the ‘cells’& I loved it when they sent me there, because I could take a pad of paper and draw nonstop.”

In 1895, when Picasso was fourteen years old, his family moved to Barcelona and he immediately applied to the city’s prestigious School of Fine Arts. Although the school typically only accepted students several years his senior, Picasso’s entrance exam was so extraordinary that the school made an exception and admitted him immediately. Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the strict rules and formalities and began skipping class to roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed.

In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando. However, he again grew frustrated at the school’s singular focus on classical subjects and techniques. He wrote to a friend, “They just go and on& about the same old stuff: Velazquez for painting, Michelangelo for sculpture.” Again he started skipping class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars, prostitutes.

In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats, the four cats. Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive break with the classical methods in which he had been trained and began a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Picasso moved to Paris, the cultural center of European art,  to open his own studio. Art critics and historians typically break Picasso’s adult career into distinct periods and the first of these, which lasted from 1901-1904, is called his Blue Period after the color that dominated nearly all of Picasso’s paintings during these years. Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and anguish using almost exclusively blues and greens. The critic Charles Morice wondered, “Is this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?” Picasso’s most famous paintings from the Blue Period include Blue Nude, La Vieand The Old Guitarist, all three completed in 1903.

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome his depression of the previous years. He was madly in love with a beautiful model named Fernande Olivier and newly prosperous thanks to the generous patronage of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The artistic manifestation of Picasso’s improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors beiges, pinks and reds in what is known as his Rose Period. His most famous paintings from this time include Family at Saltimbanques (1905), Gertrude Stein (1905-1906) and Two Nudes (1906).

In 1907, Picasso produced a painting unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before, a work that would profoundly influence the direction of art in the twentieth century: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a chilling depiction of five beige figures, prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism, an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and Georges Braque.

In Cubist paintings, objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form, highlighting their composite geometric shapes and depicting the object from multiple viewpoints at once to create physics-defying, collage-like effects. At once destructive and creative, Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world. “It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire,” Braque said. The French writer and critic Max Jacob reflected, “It was really the harbinger comet of the new century.” Picasso’s early Cubist paintings, known as his Analytic Cubist works, include Three Women (1907), Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table (1909) and Girl with Mandolin (1910). Picasso’s later Cubist paintings are distinguished as Synthetic Cubism because they go further toward creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny individual fragments.  These include Still Life with Chair Caning (1912), Card Player (1913-1914), and Three Musicians (1921).

The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great change in Picasso’s art. He grew more somber and once again preoccupied with the depiction of reality. Picasso’s works between 1918-1927 are considered his Classical Period,  a brief return to realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. His most interesting and important works from this period include Three Women at the Spring (1921), Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race (1922) and The Pipes of Pan (1923).

Then, from 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement, Surrealism, whose artistic manifestation was an offspring of his own Cubism. Picasso’s greatest surrealist painting, one of the great paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. On April 26, 1937, German bombers supporting Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, carried out a devastating aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica. Outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, Picasso painted Guernica shortly thereafter, a surrealist testament to the horrors of war in black, white and grays, featuring a Minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish and terror. Guernica remains one of the most moving and powerful antiwar paintings in history.

In the aftermath of World War II, Picasso became more overtly political. He joined the Communist Party and was twice honored with the International Lenin Peace Prize, once in 1950 and again in 1961. By this point in his life, Picasso was also an international celebrity, the world’s most famous living artist. However, while paparazzi chronicled his every move, few paid attention to his art during this time. In contrast to the dazzling complexity of Synthetic Cubism, Picasso’s later paintings use simple imagery and crude technique. Upon passing a group of school kids in his old age Picasso remarked, “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.” The epitome of his later work is his Self Portrait Facing Death, drawn with pencil and crayon a year before he passed away. The autobiographical subject, who appears as something between a human and an ape, with a green face and pink hair, is drawn with the crude technique of a child. Yet the expression in his eyes, capturing a lifetime of wisdom, fear and uncertainty, is the unmistakable work of a master at the height of his powers.

Picasso was an incorrigible womanizer who had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes over the course of his long life. However, he had only two wives. He married a ballerina named Olga Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years before parting ways in 1927. He married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, at the age of 69 in 1961. Picasso had four children: Paul, Maya, Claude and Paloma.

He passed away on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91.

Pablo Picasso stands alone as the most celebrated and influential painter of the twentieth century. His technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy distinguish him as a revolutionary artist. Picasso was also endlessly reinventing himself, switching between styles so radically different that his life’s work seems the product of five or six great artists rather than just one. Discussing his penchant for radical shifts in style, Picasso insisted that his career was not an evolution or progression. Rather, the diversity of his work was the result of freshly evaluating for each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effects. “Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should,” Picasso said. “Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.”

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
The Mystery of Picasso (5-May-1956) · Himself

Wrote plays:
Desire Caught by the Tail (1941)

Selected paintings:
The First Communion (1896)
The Absinthe Drinker (1901)
Garçon à la pipe (1905)
The Family of Saltimbanques (1905)
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)
Guernica (1937)
Dora Maar au Chat (1941)
Massacre in Korea (1951)
Las Menina (1957)

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Today is the 131st birthday of Sara Sherman Wiborg Murphy, one half of the amazing Jazz Age Lost Generation couple.  I think that I first ‘discovered’ Gerald and Sara Murphy when I was reading a collections of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s letters.  He and Sara wrote back and forth quite frequently, especially after Zelda’s first trip to the hospital.  I feel in love them while mourned the slow death of letter writing.  No one will ever publish a collection of text messages between anyone, that form of communication is one of the casualties on the other side of the conveniences of all this connectivity.

Gerald Clery Murphy and Sara Sherman Wiborg were wealthy, expatriate Americans who moved to the French Riviera in the early 20th century and who, with their generous hospitality and flair for parties, created a vibrant social circle, particularly in the 1920s, that included a great number of artists and writers of the Lost Generation. Gerald had a brief but significant career as a painter.

Gerald Clery Murphy (March 25, 1888 – October 17, 1964) born in Boston to the family that owned the Mark Cross Company, sellers of fine leather goods.

Gerald was an esthete from his childhood forward. He was never comfortable in the boardrooms and clubs for which his father was grooming him. He flunked the entrance exams at Yale three times before matriculating, although he performed respectably there. He joined DKE and the Skull and Bones society.[1]:237 He befriended a young freshman named Cole Porter (Yale class of 1913) and brought him into DKE. Murphy also introduced Porter to his friends, propelling him into writing music for Yale musicals.

Sara Sherman Wiborg (November 7, 1883 – October 10, 1975) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, into the wealthy Wiborg family. Her father, manufacturing chemist Frank Bestow Wiborg, was a self-made millionaire by the age of 40, and her mother was a member of the noted Sherman family, daughter of Hoyt Sherman, and niece to Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. Raised in Cincinnati, her family moved to Germany for several years when she was a teenager, so her father could concentrate on the European expansion of his company. Upon returning to the United States, the Wiborgs spent most of their time in New York City and, later, East Hampton, where they were one of the first wealthy families to build a home.

In East Hampton Sara Wiborg and Gerald Murphy met when they were both adolescents. Gerald was five years younger than Sara, and for many years they were more familiar companions than romantically attached; they became engaged in 1915, when Sara was 32 years old. Sara’s parents did not approve of their daughter marrying someone “in trade,” and Gerald’s parents were not much happier with the prospect, seemingly because his father found it difficult to approve anything that Gerald did.

After marrying they lived at 50 West 11th Street in New York City, where they had three children. In 1921 they moved to Paris to escape the strictures of New York and their families’ mutual dissatisfaction with their marriage. In Paris Gerald took up painting, and they began to make the acquaintances for which they became famous. Eventually they moved to the French Riviera, where they became the center of a large circle of artists and writers of later fame, especially Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Archibald MacLeish, John O’Hara, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.

Prior to their arrival on the French Riviera, the region was experiencing a period when the fashionable only wintered there, abandoning the region during the high summer months. However, the activities of the Murphys fueled the same renaissance in arts and letters as did the excitement of Paris, especially among the cafés of Montparnasse. In 1923 the Murphys convinced the Hotel du Cap to stay open for the summer so that they might entertain their friends, sparking a new era for the French Riviera as a summer haven. The Murphys eventually purchased a villa in Cap d’Antibes and named it Villa America; they resided there for many years. When the Murphys arrived on the Riviera, lying on the beach merely to enjoy the sun was not a common activity. Occasionally, someone would go swimming, but the joys of being at the beach just for sun were still unknown at the time. The Murphys, with their long forays and picnics at La Garoupe, introduced sunbathing on the beach as a fashionable activity.

They had three children, Baoth, Patrick, and Honoria. In 1929, Patrick was diagnosed with tuberculosis. They took him to Switzerland, and then returned to the U.S. in 1934, with Gerald in Manhattan, where he ran Mark Cross, serving as president of the company from 1934 to 1956; he never painted again. Sara settled in Saranac Lake, New York to nurse Patrick, and Baoth and Honoria were put in boarding schools. In 1935, Baoth died unexpectedly of meningitis, a complication of the measles, and Patrick succumbed to TB in 1937.  Archibald MacLeish based the main characters in his play J.B. on Gerald and Sara Murphy.

Later they lived at “The Dunes”, once the largest house in East Hampton, built by Sara’s father on 600 acres (2.4 km2). By 1941, the house proved impossible to maintain, sell or even rent, and the Murphys had it demolished, and moved to the renovated dairy barn.

Gerald died October 17, 1964 in East Hampton. Sara died on October 10, 1975 in Arlington, Virginia.

Nicole and Dick Diver of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald are widely recognized as based on the Murphys, based on marked physical similarities, although many of their friends, as well as the Murphys themselves, saw as much or more of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald’s relationship and personalities in the couple than the Murphys. Ernest Hemingway’s couple in Garden of Eden is not explicitly based on this pair, but given the similarities and the setting (Nice), there is clearly some basis for such an assumption. Interestingly, guests of the Murphys would often swim at Eden Roc, an event emulated in The Garden of Eden.

Calvin Tomkins’s biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy Living Well Is the Best Revenge was published in 1971, and Amanda Vaill documented their lives in the 1995 book Everybody Was So Young. Both accounts are balanced and kind, unlike some of their portrayals in the memoirs and fictitious works by their many friends, including Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
In 1982, Honoria Murphy Donnelly, the Murphys’ daughter, with Richard N. Billings, wrote Sara & Gerald: Villa America and After.

On July 12, 2007, a play by Crispin Whittell entitled Villa America, based entirely on the relationships between Sara and Gerald Murphy and their friends had its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival with Jennifer Mudge playing Sara Murphy.

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Today is the 131st birthday of the French artist Maurice Utrillo.  His art is most widely recognized due to the reproductions into post cards of the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris.  The paintings are representations of how we wish we could see Paris now.  The world is a better place because Maurice was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Maurice Utrillo
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: December 26, 1883
DEATH DATE: November 5, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH: Paris, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Le Vésinet, France

Utrillo was the son of the artist Suzanne Valadon (born Marie-Clémentine Valadon), who was then an eighteen-year-old artist’s model. She never revealed who was the father of her child; speculation exists that he was the offspring from a liaison with an equally young amateur painter named Boissy, or with the well established painter, Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, or even with Renoir.

In 1891 a Spanish artist, Miguel Utrillo y Molins, signed a legal document acknowledging paternity, although the question remains as to whether he was in fact the child’s father.

Valadon, who became a model after a fall from a trapeze ended her chosen career as a circus acrobat, found that posing for Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others provided her with an opportunity to study their techniques; in some cases, she also became their mistress. She taught herself to paint, and when Toulouse-Lautrec introduced her to Edgar Degas, he became her mentor. Eventually she became a peer of the artists she had posed for.

Meanwhile, her mother was left to raise the young Maurice, who soon showed a troubling inclination toward truancy and alcoholism. When a mental illness took hold of the 21-year-old Utrillo in 1904, he was encouraged to paint by his mother. He soon showed real artistic talent. With no training beyond what his mother taught him, he drew and painted what he saw in Montmartre. After 1910 his work attracted critical attention, and by 1920 he was internationally acclaimed. In 1928, the French government awarded him the Cross of the Légion d’honneur. Throughout his life, however, he was interned in mental asylums repeatedly.

Today, tourists to the area will find many of his paintings on post cards, one of which is his very popular 1936 painting entitled, Montmartre Street Corner or Lapin Agile.

In middle age Utrillo became fervently religious and in 1935, at the age of fifty-two, he married Lucie Valore and moved to Le Vesinet, just outside of Paris. By that time, he was too ill to work in the open air and painted landscapes viewed from windows, from post cards, and from memory.

Although his life also was plagued by alcoholism, he lived into his seventies. Maurice Utrillo died on 5 November 1955, and was buried in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre.

An apocryphal anecdote told by Diego Rivera concerning Utrillo’s paternity is related in the unpublished memoirs of one of his American collectors, Ruth Bakwin:

“After Maurice was born to Suzanne Valadon, she went to Renoir, for whom she had modeled nine months previously. Renoir looked at the baby and said, ‘He can’t be mine, the color is terrible!’ Next she went to Degas, for whom she had also modeled. He said, ‘He can’t be mine, the form is terrible!’ At a cafe, Valadon saw an artist she knew named Miguel Utrillo, to whom she spilled her woes. The man told her to call the baby Utrillo: ‘I would be glad to put my name to the work of either Renoir or Degas!'”

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Today is the 145th birthday of the French artist Henri Matisse.  If you have been to IKEA, you have seen his artwork.  For good or for bad, his art is recognized and helped to change the path of modern art.  The world is a better place because Henri was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Henri Matisse
OCCUPATION: Painter, Sculptor
BIRTH DATE: December 31, 1869
DEATH DATE: November 3, 1954
EDUCATION: Académie Julian, Paris, École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris
PLACE OF BIRTH: Le Cateau, Picardy, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Nice, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: Henri Matisse was a revolutionary and influential artist of the early 20th century, best known for the expressive color and form of his Fauvist style.

Henri Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, and was raised in the small industrial town of Bohain-en-Vermandois in northern France. His family worked in the grain business. As a young man Matisse worked as a legal clerk and then studied for a law degree in Paris in 1887-89. Returning to a position in a law office in the town of Saint-Quentin, he began taking a drawing class in the mornings before he went to work. When he was 21, Matisse began painting while recuperating from an illness, and his vocation as an artist was confirmed.

In 1891 Matisse moved to Paris for artistic training. He took instruction from famous, older artists at well-known schools such as the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. These schools taught according to the “academic method,” which required working from live models and copying the works of Old Masters, but Matisse was also exposed to the recent Post-Impressionist work of Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh while living in Paris.

Matisse began to show his work in large group exhibitions in Paris in the mid-1890s, including the traditional Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his work received some favorable attention. He traveled to London and to Corsica, and in 1898 he married Amélie Parayre, with whom he would have three children.

By the turn of the 20th century, Matisse had come under the more progressive influence of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who painted in a “Pointillist” style with small dots of color rather than full brushstrokes. He stopped exhibiting at the official Salon and began submitting his art to the more progressive Salon des Indépendants in 1901. In 1904 he had his first one-man exhibition at the gallery of dealer Ambroise Vollard.

Matisse had a major creative breakthrough in the years 1904-05. A visit to Saint-Tropez in southern France inspired him to paint bright, light-dappled canvases such as Luxe, calme et volupté (1904-05), and a summer in the Mediterranean village of Collioure produced his major works Open Window and Woman with a Hat in 1905. He exhibited both paintings in the 1905 Salon d’Automne exhibition in Paris. In a review of the show, a contemporary art critic mentioned the bold, distorted images painted by certain artists he nicknamed “fauves,” or “wild beasts.”

Painting in the style that came to be known as Fauvism, Matisse continued to emphasize the emotional power of sinuous lines, strong brushwork and acid-bright colors in works such as The Joy of Life, a large composition of female nudes in a landscape. Like much of Matisse’s mature work, this scene captured a mood rather than merely trying to depict the world realistically.

In the first decade of the century, Matisse also made sculptures and drawings that were sometimes related to his paintings, always repeating and simplifying his forms to their essence.

After finding his own style, Matisse enjoyed a greater degree of success. He was able to travel to Italy, Germany, Spain and North Africa for inspiration. He bought a large studio in a suburb of Paris and signed a contract with the prestigious art dealers of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. His art was purchased by prominent collectors such as Gertrude Stein in Paris and the Russian businessman Sergei I. Shchukin, who commissioned Matisse’s important pair of paintings Dance I and Music in 1909-10.

In his works of the 1910s and 1920s, Matisse continued to delight and surprise his viewers with his signature elements of saturated colors, flattened pictorial space, limited detail and strong outlines. Some works, like Piano Lesson (1916), explored the structures and geometry of Cubism, the movement pioneered by Matisse’s lifelong rival Pablo Picasso. Yet despite his radical approach to color and form, Matisse’s subjects were often traditional: scenes of his own studio (including The Red Studio of 1911), portraits of friends and family, arrangements of figures in rooms or landscapes.

In 1917 Matisse began spending winters on the Mediterranean, and in 1921 he moved to the city of Nice on the French Riviera. From 1918-30, he most frequently painted female nudes in carefully staged settings within his studio, making use of warm lighting and patterned backgrounds. He also worked extensively in printmaking during these years.

The first scholarly book about Matisse was published in 1920, marking his importance in the history of modern art as it was still taking place.

In his later career, Matisse received several major commissions, such as a mural for the art gallery of collector Dr. Albert Barnes of Pennsylvania, titled Dance II, in 1931-33. He also drew book illustrations for a series of limited-edition poetry collections.

After surgery in 1941, Matisse was often bedridden; however, he continued to work from a bed in his studio. When necessary, he would draw with a pencil or charcoal attached to the end of a long pole that enabled him to reach the paper or canvas. His late work was just as experimental and vibrant as his earlier artistic breakthroughs had been. It included his 1947 book Jazz, which placed his own thoughts on life and art side by side with lively images of colored paper cutouts. This project led him to devising works that were cutouts on their own, most notably several series of expressively shaped human figures cut from bright blue paper and pasted to wall-size background sheets (such as Swimming Pool, 1952).

In one of his final projects, Matisse created an entire program of decorations for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence (1948-51), a town near Nice, designing stained-glass windows, murals, furnishings, and even sacred vestments for the church’s priests.

Matisse died on November 3, 1954, at the age of 84, in Nice. He was buried in nearby Cimiez. He is still regarded as one of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century.

“Henri Matisse.” Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 30 Dec. 2014.

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Today is the 103rd birthday of Jackson Pollock.  Some of his art pushes some people’s definitions of art because they do not see it as a representation of anything they recognize.  Fortunately, the definition of art is not if someone can see a red barn on a grassy hill in it.  His art elicits emotions, questions and wonder; it draws the viewer in, blurs the periphery and creates a pure experience.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Jackson Pollock
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: January 28, 1912
DEATH DATE: August 11, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cody, Wyoming
PLACE OF DEATH: East Hampton, New York
FULL NAME: Paul Jackson Pollock

BEST KNOWN FOR: Famous 20th century artist Jackson Pollock revolutionized the world of modern art with his unique abstract painting techniques.

Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming. His father, LeRoy Pollock, was a farmer and a government land surveyor, and his mother, Stella May McClure, was a fierce woman with artistic ambitions. The youngest of five brothers, he was a needy child and was often in search of attention that he did not receive.

During his youth, Pollock’s family moved around the West, to Arizona and throughout California. When Pollock was 8, his father, who was an abusive alcoholic, left the family, and Pollock’s older brother, Charles, became like a father to him. Charles was an artist, and was considered to be the best in the family. He had a significant influence on his younger brother’s future ambitions. While the family was living in Los Angeles, Pollock enrolled in the Manual Arts High School, where he learned to draw but had little success expressing himself. He was eventually expelled for starting fights.

In 1930, at age 18, Pollock moved to New York City to live with his brother, Charles. He soon began studying with Charles’s art teacher, representational regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock spent much of his time with Benton, often babysitting Benton’s young son, and the Bentons eventually became like the family Pollock felt he never had.

When Pollock’s father died suddenly in 1933, he fell into a deep depression. He got drunk one night and started a fight with Charles’s wife, Elizabeth. During the fight, Pollock threatened her with an ax, and then turned around and sliced through one of his brothe’’s paintings, which had been scheduled for an upcoming exhibition. Pollock was forced to leave Charles’s house, and in 1934, his brother Sanford arrived in New York to help take care of him.

During the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt started a program called the Public Works of Art Project, one of many intended to jumpstart the economy. Artists such as Pollock were given $24.86 to do 20 hours of work a week. The program resulted in thousands of works of art by Pollock and contemporaries such as José Clemente Orozco, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

But despite being busy with work, Pollock could not stop drinking. In 1937, he began receiving psychiatric treatment for alcoholism from a Jungian analyst who fueled his interest in symbolism and Native American art. In 1939, Pollock discovered Pablo Picasso‘s show at the Museum of Modern Art. Picasso’s artistic experimentation encouraged Pollock to push the boundaries of his own work.

“Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was.”

In 1942, Pollock met Lee Krasner, a Jewish contemporary artist and an established painter in her own right, at a party. She later visited Pollock at his studio and was impressed with his art. They soon became romantically involved.

Around this time, Peggy Guggenheim began expressing interest in Pollock’s paintings. During a meeting she had with the painter Pete Norman, he saw some of Pollock’s paintings lying on the floor and commented that Pollock’s art was possibly the most original American art he had seen. Guggenheim immediately put Pollock on contract.

Krasner and Pollock married in October 1945, and with the help of a $2,000 loan from Guggenheim, bought a farmhouse in the Springs area of East Hampton, on Long Island. Guggenheim gave Pollock a stipend to work, and Krasner dedicated her time to helping promote and manage his artwork. Pollock was happy to be in the country again, surrounded by nature, which had a major impact on his projects. He was energized by his new surroundings and by his supportive wife. In 1946, he converted the barn to a private studio, where he continued to develop his “drip” technique, the paint literally flowing off of his tools and onto the canvases that he typically placed on the floor.

In 1947, Guggenheim turned Pollock over to Betty Parsons, who was not able to pay him a stipend but would give him money as his artwork sold.

Pollock’s most famous paintings were made during this “drip period” between 1947 and 1950. He became wildly popular after being featured in a four-page spread, on August 8, 1949, in Life magazine. The article asked of Pollock, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” The Life article changed Pollock’s life overnight. Many other artists resented his fame, and some of his friends suddenly became competitors. As his fame grew, some critics began calling Pollock a fraud, causing even him to question his own work. During this time he would often look to Krasner to determine which paintings were good, unable to make the differentiation himself.

In 1949, Pollock’s show at the Betty Parsons Gallery sold out, and he suddenly became the best-paid avant-garde painter in America. But fame was not good for Pollock, who, as a result of it, became dismissive of other artists, even his former teach and mentor, Thomas Hart Benton. Furthermore, acts of self-promotion made him feel like a phony, and he would sometimes give interviews in which his answers were scripted. When Hans Namuth, a documentary photographer, began producing a film of Pollock working, Pollock found it impossible to “perform” for the camera. Instead, he went back to drinking heavily.

Pollock’s 1950 show at the Parsons gallery did not sell, though many of the paintings included, such as his “Number 4, 1950,” are considered masterpieces today. It was during this time that Pollock began to consider symbolic titles misleading, and instead began using numbers and dates for each work he completed. Pollock’s art also became darker in color. He abandoned the “drip” method, and began painting in black and white, which proved unsuccessful. Depressed and haunted, Pollock would frequently meet his friends at the nearby Cedar Bar, drinking until it closed and getting into violent fights.

Concerned for Pollock’s well-being, Krasner called on Pollock’s mother to help. Her presence helped to stabilize Pollock, and he began to paint again. He completed his masterpiece, “The Deep,” during this period.

But as the demand from collectors for Pollock’s art grew, so too did the pressure he felt, and with it his alcoholism.

Overwhelmed with Pollock’s needs, Krasner was also unable to work. Their marriage became troubled, and Pollock’s health was failing. He started dating other women, and by 1956, he had quit painting, and his marriage was in shambles. Krasner reluctantly left for Paris to give Pollock space.

Just after 10 p.m. on August 11, 1956, Pollock, who had been drinking, crashed his car into a tree less than a mile from his home. Ruth Kligman, his girlfriend at the time, was thrown from the car and survived. Another passenger, Edith Metzger, was killed, and Pollock was thrown 50 feet into the air and into a birch tree. He died immediately.

Krasner returned from France to bury Pollock, and subsequently went into a mourning that would last the rest of her life. Retaining her creativity and productivity, Krasner lived and painted for another 20 years. She also managed the sale of Pollock’s paintings, carefully distributing them to museums. Before her death, Krasner set up the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which gives grants to young, promising artists. When Krasner died on June 19, 1984, the estate was worth $20 million.

In December 1956, the year after his death, Pollock was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and then another in 1967. His work has continued to be honored on a large scale, with frequent exhibitions at both the MoMA in New York and the Tate in London. He remains one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

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First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

It has been a long time since I have had any alcohol, maybe once in the last 10 or so months. That one time was one drink. There is no reason or incident that prompted my teetotalism. I just didn’t and don’t want to drink alcohol.  I am in a constant state of self-diagnosis, asking myself if the choices I make are active or simply route, making certain I am choosing them to keep me headed in the right direction.  It seems that alcohol, for me, just slows the process.

If I had to have a reason or reasons, they would be that I don’t have the time for a hangover and I have seen others spend so much time trying to escape something only to spend even more time trying to recover from that failed escape.

That’s it. I don’t want to drink, so I don’t.

This week on Waldina, I celebrated the birthdays of Joan Miro, Edie Sedgwick, Jayne Mansfield, Dick Sargent, William Holden, Elizabeth Montgomery, Chalres Willson Peale, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Hart Benton, Gloria Jean, Samuel Beckett, Beverly Cleary, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Mary Pickford, James Garner, confessed my obsession with the 80s film My Science Project, completed the Proust Questionnaire, I posted my personal connection to the Holstee Manifesto, and added Born Yesterday to the Required Viewing film list.

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Most Popular Post Last Week: Happy 143rd Birthday Piet Mondrian

This week on Wasp & Pear over on Tumblr, I posted a lot of photographs of things that inspire me. You should just take a look…

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Over on @TheRealSPA part of Twitter, I noticed that my fitbit step-tracking bracelet tweets out my daily steps.

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This week on @TheRealSPA Instagram, I posted photos of most of the people whose birthdays I celebrated on Waldina and a photo of a dog made out of recycled newspapers from work.

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Today is the 111th birthday of the artist Willem de Kooning. He is one of the major influencers of abstract expressionism. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Willem de Kooning
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: April 24, 1904
DEATH DATE: March 19, 1997
EDUCATION: Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques
PLACE OF BIRTH: Rotterdam, Netherlands
PLACE OF DEATH: East Hampton, New York

BEST KNOWN FOR: Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-born American painter who was one of the leading proponents of abstract expressionism.

Born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1904, Willem de Kooning embraced the artistic path at a young age, dropping out of school when he was 12 to begin an apprenticeship in commercial design and decorating. During this period, de Kooning took night classes at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques, and in the midst of his education, at age 16, he landed his first job in the industry, working with the art director of a large department store.

In 1926, de Kooning stowed away on a ship bound for the United States, where he jumped from various jobs in the Northeast until he eventually settled in New York City. While he worked for several years in commercial art and was not able to dedicate himself to his creative pursuits, de Kooning did find a like-minded group of artists in New York who encouraged him to paint for himself.

Around 1928, de Kooning began painting still lifes and figures, but it wasn’t long before he was dabbling in more abstract works, clearly influenced by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. As a young artist, he would have an unbeatable opportunity in 1935, when he became an artist for the federal art project for the WPA (Works Progress Administration), through which he created a number of murals and other works.

In 1936, de Kooning’s work was part of a Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) exhibit titled New Horizons in American Art, an early career highlight, but the following year his job with the WPA came to an abrupt end, when he was forced to resign because he was not an American citizen. Soon after, de Kooning began a series of male figures, including Seated Figure (Classic Male) and Two Men Standing. Also during this period, de Kooning hired an apprentice, Elaine Fried, and she would sit as a female subject for such works as Seated Woman (1940). That would be the artist’s first major painting of a woman, and he would go on to be chiefly known for his decades-long work in depicting women in his paintings. Married in 1943, de Kooning and Fried would have a fiery, alcohol-soaked life together before separating in the late 1950s for nearly 20 years. In the mid-1970s, they would reunite and remain together until her 1989 death.

Artistically, de Kooning kept on with his figure work while branching out into more abstract work as well, a notable example of which is The Wave. The abstract works began to reveal the presence of human forms within them, and his two artistic approaches merged in 1945’s Pink Angels, one of his first significant contributions to abstract expressionism. He he would quickly become a central figure in the movement.

In 1948, de Kooning would have his first solo show, at the Charles Egan Gallery. Also during this period, he joined academia, briefly teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and at the Yale School of Art.

In the 1950s, de Kooning turned his abstract sights to landscape painting, and the series Abstract Urban Landscapes (1955-58), Abstract Parkway Landscapes (1957-61) and Abstract Pastoral Landscapes (1960-66) would help define an era in his artistic life.

In 1961, de Kooning became an American citizen and settled in East Hampton, New York. He continued working through the 1980s, but the onset of Alzheimer’s disease destroyed his memory and impaired his ability to work. After his wife died in 1989, de Kooning’s daughter cared for him until his death in 1997, at age 92.

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NAME: Salvador Dalí
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: May 11, 1904
DEATH DATE: January 23, 1989
EDUCATION: Colegio de Hermanos Maristas and the Instituto, Academia de San Fernando
PLACE OF BIRTH: Figueres, Spain
PLACE OF DEATH: Figueres, Spain
FULL NAME: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech

BEST KNOWN FOR: Spanish artist and Surrealist icon Salvador Dalí is perhaps best known for his painting of melting clocks, The Persistence of Memory.

Salvador Dalí was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Spain, located 16 miles from the French border in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. His father, Salvador Dalí y Cusi, was a middle class lawyer and notary. Salvador’s father had a strict disciplinary approach to raising children—a style of child-rearing which contrasted sharply with that of his mother, Felipa Domenech Ferres. She often indulged young Salvador in his art and early eccentricities.

It has been said that young Salvador was a precocious and intelligent child, prone to fits of anger against his parents and schoolmates. Consequently, Dalí was subjected to furious acts of cruelty by more dominant students or his father. The elder Salvador wouldn’t tolerate his son’s outbursts or eccentricities, and punished him severely. Their relationship deteriorated when Salvador was still young, exacerbated by competition between he and his father for Felipa’s affection.

Dalí had an older brother, born nine months before him, also named Salvador, who died of gastroenteritis. Later in his life, Dalí often related the story that when he was 5 years old, his parents took him to the grave of his older brother and told him he was his brother’s reincarnation. In the metaphysical prose he frequently used, Dalí recalled, “[we] resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections.” He “was probably a first version of myself, but conceived too much in the absolute.”

Salvador, along with his younger sister Ana Maria and his parents, often spent time at their summer home in the coastal village of Cadaques. At an early age, Salvador was producing highly sophisticated drawings, and both of his parents strongly supported his artistic talent. It was here that his parents built him an art studio before he entered art school.

Upon recognizing his immense talent, Salvador Dalí’s parents sent him to drawing school at the Colegio de Hermanos Maristas and the Instituto in Figueres, Spain, in 1916. He was not a serious student, preferring to daydream in class and stand out as the class eccentric, wearing odd clothing and long hair. After that first year at art school, he discovered modern painting in Cadaques while vacationing with his family. There, he also met Ramon Pichot, a local artist who frequently visited Paris. The following year, his father organized an exhibition of Salvador’s charcoal drawings in the family home. By 1919, the young artist had his first public exhibition, at the Municipal Theatre of Figueres.

In 1921, Dalí’s mother, Felipa, died of breast cancer. Dalí was 16 years old at the time, and was devastated by the loss. His father married his deceased wife’s sister, which did not endear the younger Dalí any closer to his father, though he respected his aunt. Father and son would battle over many different issues throughout their lives, until the elder Dalí’s death.

In 1922, Dalí enrolled at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. He stayed at the school’s student residence and soon brought his eccentricity to a new level, growing long hair and sideburns, and dressing in the style of English Aesthetes of the late 19th century. During this time, he was influenced by several different artistic styles, including Metaphysics and Cubism, which earned him attention from his fellow students—though he probably didn’t yet understand the Cubist movement entirely.

In 1923, Dalí was suspended from the academy for criticizing his teachers and allegedly starting a riot among students over the academy’s choice of a professorship. That same year, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Gerona for allegedly supporting the Separatist movement, though Dalí was actually apolitical at the time (and remained so throughout most of his life). He returned to the academy in 1926, but was permanently expelled shortly before his final exams for declaring that no member of the faculty was competent enough to examine him.

While in school, Dalí began exploring many forms of art including classical painters like Raphael, Bronzino and Diego Velázquez (from whom he adopted his signature curled moustache). He also dabbled in avant-garde art movements such as Dada, a post-World War I anti-establishment movement. While Dalí’s apolitical outlook on life prevented him from becoming a strict follower, the Dada philosophy influenced his work throughout his life.

In between 1926 and 1929, Dalí made several trips to Paris, where he met with influential painters and intellectuals such as Pablo Picasso, whom he revered. During this time, Dalí painted a number of works that displayed Picasso’s influence. He also met Joan Miró, the Spanish painter and sculptor who, along with poet Paul Éluard and painter René Magritte, introduced Dalí to Surrealism. By this time, Dalí was working with styles of Impressionism, Futurism and Cubism. Dalí’s paintings became associated with three general themes: 1) man’s universe and sensations, 2) sexual symbolism and 3) ideographic imagery.

All of this experimentation led to Dalí’s first Surrealistic period in 1929. These oil paintings were small collages of his dream images. His work employed a meticulous classical technique, influenced by Renaissance artists, that contradicted the “unreal dream” space that he created with strange hallucinatory characters. Even before this period, Dalí was an avid reader of Sigmund Freud‘s psychoanalytic theories. Dalí’s major contribution to the Surrealist movement was what he called the “paranoiac-critical method,” a mental exercise of accessing the subconscious to enhance artistic creativity. Dalí would use the method to create a reality from his dreams and subconscious thoughts, thus mentally changing reality to what he wanted it to be and not necessarily what it was. For Dalí, it became a way of life.

In 1929, Salvador Dalí expanded his artistic exploration into the world of film-making when he collaborated with Luis Buñuel on two films, Un Chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) and L’Age d’or (The Golden Age, 1930), the former of which is known for its opening scene—a simulated slashing of a human eye by a razor. Dalí’s art appeared several years later in another film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. Dalí’s paintings were used in a dream sequence in the film, and aided the plot by giving clues to solving the secret to character John Ballantine’s psychological problems.

In August 1929, Dalí met Elena Dmitrievna Diakonova (sometimes written as Elena Ivanorna Diakonova), a Russian immigrant 10 years his senior. At the time, she was the wife of Surrealist writer Paul Éluard. A strong mental and physical attraction developed between Dalí and Diakonova, and she soon left Éluard for her new lover. Also known as “Gala,” Diakonova was Dalí’s muse and inspiration, and would eventually become his wife. She helped balance—or one might say counterbalance—the creative forces in Dalí’s life. With his wild expressions and fantasies, he wasn’t capable of dealing with the business side of being an artist. Gala took care of his legal and financial matters, and negotiated contracts with dealers and exhibition promoters. The two were married in a civil ceremony in 1934.

By 1930, Salvador Dalí had become a notorious figure of the Surrealist movement. Marie-Laure de Noailles and Viscount and Viscountess Charles were his first patrons. French aristocrats, both husband and wife invested heavily in avant-garde art in the early 20th century. One of Dalí’s most famous paintings produced at this time—and perhaps the best-known Surrealist work—was The Persistence of Memory (1931). The painting, sometimes called Soft Watches, shows melting pocket watches in a landscape setting. It is said that the painting conveys several ideas within the image, chiefly that time is not rigid and everything is destructible.

By the mid-1930s, Salvador Dalí had become as notorious for his colorful personality as his artwork, and, for some art critics, the former was overshadowing the latter. Often sporting an exaggeratedly long mustache, a cape and a walking stick, Dalí’s public appearances exhibited some unusual behavior. In 1934, art dealer Julian Levy introduced Dalí to America in a New York exhibition that caused quite a lot of controversy. At a ball held in his honor, Dalí, in characteristic flamboyant style, appeared wearing a glass case across his chest which contained a brassiere.

As war approached in Europe, specifically in Spain, Dalí clashed with members of the Surrealist movement. In a “trial” held in 1934, he was expelled from the group. He had refused to take a stance against Spanish militant Francisco Franco (while Surrealist artists like Luis Buñuel, Picasso and Miró had), but it’s unclear whether this directly led to his expulsion. Officially, Dalí was notified that his expulsion was due to repeated “counter-revolutionary activity involving the celebration of fascism under Hitler.” It is also likely that members of the movement were aghast at some of Dalí’s public antics. However, some art historians believe that his expulsion had been driven more by his feud with Surrealist leader André Breton.

Despite his expulsion from the movement, Dalí continued to participate in several international Surrealist exhibitions into the 1940s. At the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936, he delivered a lecture titled “Fantomes paranoiaques athentiques” (“Authentic paranoid ghosts”) while dressed in a wetsuit, carrying a billiard cue and walking a pair of Russian wolfhounds. He later said that his attire was a depiction of “plunging into the depths” of the human mind.

During World War II, Dalí and his wife moved to the United States. They remained there until 1948, when they moved back to his beloved Catalonia. These were important years for Dalí. The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York gave him his own retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed by the publication of his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942). Also during this time, Dalí’s focus moved away from Surrealism and into his classical period. His feud with members of the Surrealist movement continued, but Dalí seemed undaunted. His ever-expanding mind had ventured into new subjects.

Over the next 15 years, Dalí painted a series of 19 large canvases that included scientific, historical or religious themes. He often called this period “Nuclear Mysticism.” During this time, his artwork took on a technical brilliance combining meticulous detail with fantastic and limitless imagination. He would incorporate optical illusions, holography and geometry within his paintings. Much of his work contained images depicting divine geometry, the DNA, the Hyper Cube and religious themes of Chastity.

From 1960 to 1974, Dalí dedicated much of his time to creating the Teatro-Museo Dalí (Dalí Theatre-Museum) in Figueres. The museum’s building had formerly housed the Municipal Theatre of Figueres, where Dalí saw his public exhibition at the age of 14 (the original 19th century structure had been destroyed near the end of the Spanish Civil War). Located across the street from the Teatro-Museo Dalí is the Church of Sant Pere, where Dalí was baptized and received his first communion (his funeral would later be held there as well), and just three blocks away is the house where he was born.

The Teatro-Museo Dalí officially opened in 1974. The new building was formed from the ruins of the old and based on one of Dalí’s designs, and is billed as the world’s largest Surrealist structure, containing a series of spaces that form a single artistic object where each element is an inextricable part of the whole. The site is also known for housing the broadest range of work by the artist, from his earliest artistic experiences to works that he created during the last years of this life. Several works on permanent display were created expressly for the museum.

Also in ’74, Dalí dissolved his business relationship with manager Peter Moore. As a result, all rights to his collection were sold without his permission by other business managers and he lost much of his wealth. Two wealthy American art collectors, A. Reynolds Morse and his wife, Eleanor, who had known Dalí since 1942, set up an organization called “Friends of Dalí” and a foundation to help boost the artist’s finances. The organization also established the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In 1980, Dalí was forced to retire from painting due to a motor disorder that caused permanent trembling and weakness in his hands. No longer able to hold a paint brush, he’d lost the ability to express himself the way he knew best. More tragedy struck in 1982, when Dalí’s beloved wife and friend, Gala, died. The two events sent him into a deep depression. He moved to Pubol, in a castle that he had purchased and remodeled for Gala, possibly to hide from the public or, as some speculate, to die. In 1984, Dalí was severely burned in a fire. Due to his injuries, he was confined to wheelchair. Friends, patrons and fellow artists rescued him from the castle and returned him to Figueres, making him comfortable at the Teatro-Museo.

In November 1988, Salvador Dalí entered a hospital in Figueres with a failing heart. After a brief convalescence, he returned to the Teatro-Museo. On January 23, 1989, in the city of his birth, Dalí died of heart failure at the age of 84. His funeral was held at the Teatro-Museo, where he was buried in a crypt.

Today is the 135th birthday of the fauvist painter André Derain.  The progression of his work through his lifetime is beautiful, I love looking at them chronologically.  He finds his style, perfects it and moves on to another style.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: André Derain
OCCUPATION: Painter, Illustrator
BIRTH DATE: June 10, 1880
DEATH DATE: September 8, 1954
EDUCATION: Académie Carrière, Académie Julian
PLACE OF BIRTH: Chatou, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Garches, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: André Derain was a French painter of the Fauvist school and a book illustrator. He was friends with Henri Matisse.

André Derain was born on June 10, 1880 in an affluent commune region west of Paris, France. At the age of 18 he took a painting class conducted by Eugene Carriere while studying to become an engineer at the Academie Camillo. It was there that he first met Henri Matisse. Two years later he would come to share a studio with Maurice de Viaminck. His first landscapes were created at this location around 1900.

The beginning of his career was interrupted after he was called to duty by the French Army in 1901. Mr. Derain served in the military for 3 years. After his release, his friend Henry Matisse lobbied André’s parents to allow their son to pursue his true love of art as opposed to concentrating on becoming an engineer. His mother and father subsequently relented to the Matisse idea and Derain enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris.

Derain worked with Matisse in the summer of 1905 on the shores of the Mediterranean in southern France. He produced very unique paintings that were a short time later shown as part of the Salon d’ Automne. The bright and unusual color combinations of these works led critics to describe the paintings as “les Fauves”. The English translation is “wild beasts.” However, the attention given these pieces was widespread and eventually led to the art form being dubbed “Fauvism.”

Shortly thereafter, a respected art dealer by the name of Ambroise Vollard commissioned Derain to travel to London and compose a series of the city’s landscape. The result of this assignment was a collection of 30 paintings including scenes of the Tower Bridge and Thames. The vibrant colors and bold compositions were heralded as exceeding the likes of Monet and Whistler who had previously painted scenes of the English city.

In particular his interpretations of the Thames, he used a technique employing multiple dots, which came to be known as Pointillism. His separation of colors provided a wonderful sensation of the sunlight flickering off the water, which is an art form deemed as Divisionism.

When an art dealer purchased Derain’s entire collection in 1907, the artist found financial stability at age 27. With this, he moved to Montemartre to be near another artist he had befriended by the name of Pablo Picasso. In Montemartre, he also began to experiment with sculptures and moved from his Fauvism period to one of Cubism. At this point he was inspired by the works of Paul Cezanne. Derain also began to show an inclination towards the Old Masters in his art. 1911 to 1914 became known as his gothic period.

Derain’s livelihood was once again interrupted in 1914 by the military, when he was mobilized to serve during World War One. This portion of his life lasted until 1919. Upon his release from the Army, after the war, he was heralded as a traditionalist and a leader in the Classism movement. Also during this time period he produced a variety of projects including book illustrations and ballet designs. The high point in his career may have been being awarded the Carnegie Prize in 1928. A low point occurred in 1941 when he made a visit to Nazi Germany during that country’s occupation of France, which brought accusations of collaboration from many Parisians.

Derain died in 1954 at the age of 74 as a result of being struck by a motor vehicle on a French street.

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Today is the 132nd birthday of the woman that said, “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”  Coco Chanel.  I admire a person that creates their life how they wish it to be.  Determination, focus, drive and perseverance.  Her life is as beautiful as her designs.  The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

NAME: Coco Chanel
BIRTH DATE: August 19, 1883
DEATH DATE: January 10, 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH: Saumur, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: With her trademark suits and little black dresses, fashion designer Coco Chanel created timeless designs that are still popular today.

Famed fashion designer Coco Chanel was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on August 19, 1883, in Saumur, France. With her trademark suits and little black dresses, Coco Chanel created timeless designs that are still popular today. She herself became a much revered style icon known for her simple yet sophisticated outfits paired with great accessories, such as several strands of pearls. As Chanel once said,“luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.”

Fashion fades, only style remains the same.

Her early years, however, were anything but glamorous. After her mother’s death, Chanel was put in an orphanage by her father who worked as a peddler. She was raised by nuns who taught her how to sew—a skill that would lead to her life’s work. Her nickname came from another occupation entirely. During her brief career as a singer, Chanel performed in clubs in Vichy and Moulins where she was called “Coco.” Some say that the name comes from one of the songs she used to sing, and Chanel herself said that it was a “shortened version of cocotte, the French word for ‘kept woman,” according to an article in The Atlantic.

Around the age of 20, Chanel became involved with Etienne Balsan who offered to help her start a millinery business in Paris. She soon left him for one of his even wealthier friends, Arthur “Boy” Capel. Both men were instrumental in Chanel’s first fashion venture.

It is always better to be slightly underdressed.

Opening her first shop on Paris’s Rue Cambon in 1910, Chanel started out selling hats. She later added stores in Deauville and Biarritz and began making clothes. Her first taste of clothing success came from a dress she fashioned out of an old jersey on a chilly day. In response to the many people who asked about where she got the dress, she offered to make one for them. “My fortune is built on that old jersey that I’d put on because it was cold in Deauville,” she once told author Paul Morand.

In the 1920s, Chanel took her thriving business to new heights. She launched her first perfume, Chanel No. 5, which was the first to feature a designer’s name. Perfume “is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion. . . . that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure,” Chanel once explained.

In 1925, she introduced the now legendary Chanel suit with collarless jacket and well-fitted skirt. Her designs were revolutionary for the time—borrowing elements of men’s wear and emphasizing comfort over the constraints of then-popular fashions. She helped women say good-bye to the days of corsets and other confining garments.

Another 1920s revolutionary design was Chanel’s little black dress. She took a color once associated with mourning and showed just how chic it could be for eveningwear. In addition to fashion, Chanel was a popular figure in the Paris literary and artistic worlds. She designed costumes for the Ballets Russes and for Jean Cocteau’s play Orphée, and counted Cocteau and artist Pablo Picasso among her friends. For a time, Chanel had a relationship with composer Igor Stravinsky.

Another important romance for Chanel began in the 1920s. She met the wealthy duke of Westminster aboard his yacht around 1923, and the two started a decades-long relationship. In response to his marriage proposal, she reportedly said “There have been several Duchesses of Westminster—but there is only one Chanel!”

When I find a colour darker than black, I’ll wear it. But until then, I’m wearing black!

The international economic depression of the 1930s had a negative impact on her company, but it was the outbreak of World War II that led Chanel to close her business. She fired her workers and shut down her shops. During the German occupation of France, Chanel got involved with a German military officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage. She got special permission to stay in her apartment at the Hotel Ritz. After the war ended, Chanel was interrogated by her relationship with von Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator. Some have wondered whether friend Winston Churchill worked behind the scenes on Chanel’s behalf.

While not officially charged, Chanel suffered in the court of public opinion. Some still viewed her relationship with a Nazi officer as a betrayal of her country. Chanel left Paris, spending some years in Switzerland in a sort of exile. She also lived at her country house in Roquebrune for a time.

At the age of 70, Chanel made a triumphant return to the fashion world. She first received scathing reviews from critics, but her feminine and easy-fitting designs soon won over shoppers around the world.

In 1969, Chanel’s fascinating life story became the basis for the Broadway musical Coco starring Katharine Hepburn as the legendary designer. Alan Jay Lerner wrote the book and lyrics for the show’s song while Andre Prévin composed the music. Cecil Beaton handled the set and costume design for the production. The show received seven Tony Award nominations, and Beaton won for Best Costume Design and René Auberjonois for Best Featured Actor.

Coco Chanel died on January 10, 1971, at her apartment in the Hotel Ritz. She never married, having once said “I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.” Hundreds crowded together at the Church of the Madeleine to bid farewell to the fashion icon. In tribute, many of the mourners wore Chanel suits.

A little more than a decade after her death, designer Karl Lagerfeld took the reins at her company to continue the Chanel legacy. Today her namesake company continues to thrive and is believed to generate hundreds of millions in sales each year.

In addition to the longevity of her designs, Chanel’s life story continues to captivate people’s attention. There have been several biographies of the fashion revolutionary, including Chanel and Her World (2005) written by her friend Edmonde Charles-Roux.

In the recent television biopic, Coco Chanel (2008), Shirley MacLaine starred as the famous designer around the time of her 1954 career resurrection. The actress told WWD that she had long been interested in playing Chanel. “What’s wonderful about her is she’s not a straightforward, easy woman to understand.”

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Today is the 116th birthday of the photographer Brassaï.  I learned about him while researching some of his contemporaries on their birthdays and became fixated on his nighttime Paris photos, the thick fog, the lights fighting to do their jobs and the Parisians that continue to live and love inside of all of it.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Brassaï
OCCUPATION: Poet, Photographer, Sculptor
BIRTH DATE: September 9, 1899
DEATH DATE: July 8, 1984
PLACE OF BIRTH: Brasso, Hungary
PLACE OF DEATH: Eze, France
FULL NAME: Gyula Halász

BEST KNOWN FOR: Brassaï was a Hungarian-born French photographer, poet, and sculptor who became known for his photographs of Paris nightlife in the 1930s.

BRASSAI took his name from the town of his birth, Brasso, in Transylvania, then part of Hungary, later of Roumania, and famous as the home of Court Dracula. He studied art at the academies of Budapest and Berlin before coming to Paris in the mid-twenties. He was completely disinterested in photography, if not scornful of it, until he saw the work being done by his acquaintance Andre Kertesz, which inspired him to take up the medium himself.

In the early thirties he set about photographing the night of Paris, especially at its more colorful and more disreputable levels. The results this project — a fascinatingly tawdry collection of prostitutes, pimps, madams, transvestites, apaches, and assorted cold-eyed pleasure-seekers — was published in 1933 as Paris de Nuit, one of the most remarkable of all photographic books.

Making photographs in the dark bistros and darker streets presented a difficult technical problem. BRASSAI”s solution was direct, primitive, and perfect. He focused his small plate camera on a tripod, opened the shutter when ready, and fired a flashbulb. If the quality of his light did not match that of the places where he worked, it was, for BRASSAI, better: straighter, more merciless, more descriptive of fact, and more in keeping with BRASSAI’s own vision, which was as straightforward as a hammer.

When Paris de Nuit was published, the great photographer and theorist Dr.Peter Henry Emerson, then approaching eighty, wrote BRASSAI in care of his publisher, asking BRASSAI to please send his proper address, so that Emerson could send him the medal that he had awarded him for his splendid book. It is an interesting comment on the chaotic incoherence of photographic history that BRASSAI had never heard of Emerson.

from “Looking at Photographs” by John Szarkowski

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Today is the 112th birthday of the artist Mark Rothko.

NAME: Mark Rothko
BIRTH DATE: September 25, 1903
DEATH DATE: February 25, 1970
EDUCATION: Yale University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Dvinsk, Russia
PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
Originally: Marcus Rothkovitch

BEST KNOWN FOR:  Marc Rothko is best known as one of the central figures of the Abstract Expressionist movement in American art in the 1950s and ’60s.

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), on September 25, 1903. He was the fourth child of Jacob Rothkowitz, a pharmacist by trade, and Anna (née Goldin) Rothkowitz. The family immigrated to the United States when Rothko was 10 years old, resettling in Portland, Oregon.

Rothko excelled at academics and graduated from Portland’s Lincoln High School in 1921. He attended Yale University, studying both the liberal arts and the sciences until he left without graduating in 1923. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Art Students League. In 1929 Rothko started teaching at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center.

In 1933, Rothko’s art was shown in one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Art in Portland and the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York. During the 1930s, Rothko also exhibited with a group of modern artists who called themselves “The Ten,” and he worked on federally sponsored arts projects for the Works Progress Administration.

In the 1940s, Rothko’s artistic subjects and style began to change. Earlier, he had been painting scenes of urban life with a sense of isolation and mystery; after World War II, he turned to timeless themes of death and survival, and to concepts drawn from ancient myths and religions. Rather than depicting the everyday world, he began to paint “biomorphic” forms that suggested otherworldly plants and creatures. He was also influenced by the art and ideas of Surrealists like Max Ernst and Joan Miró.

In 1943, Rothko and fellow artist Adolph Gottlieb wrote a manifesto of their artistic beliefs, such as “Art is an adventure into an unknown world” and “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought.” Rothko and Gottlieb, along with Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman and others, became known as the Abstract Expressionists. Their art was abstract, meaning that it had made no reference to the material world, yet it was highly expressive, conveying strong emotional content.

By the 1950s, Rothko’s art was completely abstract. He even preferred to number his canvases, rather than giving them descriptive titles. He had arrived at his signature style: working on a large, vertical canvas, he painted several colored rectangles of color floating against a colored background. Within this formula he found endless variations of color and proportion, resulting in different moods and effects.

Rothko’s use of broad, simplified areas of color (rather than gestural splashes and drips of paint) caused his style to be categorized as “Colorfield Painting.” He painted in thin, layered washes of color that seemed to glow from within, and his large-scale canvases were intended to be seen at close range, to that the viewer would feel engulfed by them.

In the 1960s, Rothko began to paint in darker colors, especially maroon, brown and black. He received several commissions for large-scale public works during these years. One was a group of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s Seagram Building, which Rothko never completed since he withdrew from the project; another was a series of paintings for a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas. Rothko consulted with the chapel’s architects, and the final product was the ideal space for contemplation of his stark, yet immersive, canvases.

Rothko was diagnosed with heart trouble in 1968 and suffered from depression. He committed suicide in his studio on February 25, 1970. He was survived by his second wife, Mary Alice Beistle, and by his children, Kate and Christopher. His personal holdings of nearly 800 paintings possession became the center of an extended legal battle between his family and the executors of the will. The remaining work was eventually divided between the Rothko family and museums around the world.

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