Month: November 2019

Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico, at the Casa Azul, which was her home for most of her life, although she spent the majority of her life claiming she was born in 1910: in part because she was younger than her peers in school due to having been infected with Polio as a child, but mostly because she wanted to be known as a child of the Mexican revolution, which began in 1910. Frida enjoyed art as a child, but was quite academically inclined and was well on her way to medical school until she was in a tragic bus accident at the age of 18.

On her way home from school, the wooden bus Frida was riding collided with a streetcar. She was very badly injured: she fractured multiple ribs, her collarbone, both her legs, and she was impaled through her pelvis by an iron handrail. This left her bedridden and unable to walk for 3 months, she turned to art. Her parents set up an easel and mirror that allowed her to paint while in bed.

In 1928, she married the well known Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who was 20 years older than her. Only a couple of years into their marriage they moved to the US for Diego’s work. Frida did not like it there, so they eventually returned to Mexico, much to Diego’s dismay. This caused some tension in their marriage, and they divorced in 1939. This proved to be a productive time for Frida’s career where she painted many of her important pieces. She remarried Diego one year later. Their marriage was marked with infidelity and affairs.

Frida never had it easy in terms of health and suffered quite a bit. As her health began to decline she got increasingly confined to the Casa Azul. She had her first solo show in Mexico in 1953 but had been put on bed rest by her doctors. Determined she had to be there, she had her bed moved to the gallery and arrived at the show in an ambulance.

Throughout her life, Frida was an active member of the Mexican Communist Party, was very passionate about her Mexican culture and heritage, and expressed her feminist and anti-colonialist ideals through traditional indigenous Mexican peasant clothing.

Frida’s main subject was herself, painting a total of 55 portraits in her lifetime. In a style that combined realism and fantasy, she also commonly painted themes of identity, post-colonialism, gender, class and race in Mexican society. Although she is sometimes classified as a surrealist, she strongly disagreed with this, once saying: ” this bunch of coocoo lunatics and very stupid surrealists”.

As she neared the end of her life, her paintings got darker in subject matter, often containing themes of terror, suffering, wounds and pain. After losing the bottom half of her right leg to gangrene and set off by another affair of Rivera’s, she attempted an overdose. The last words she wrote in her diary were “I joyfully await the exit — and I hope never to return”. Her cause of death was officially ruled to be a pulmonary embolism, but it was found that she had taken an overdose the same night she died. No autopsy was ever performed.

The home where she was born, lived and died is now known as the Frida Kahlo Museum. Although she remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, by the 90s she had become an icon to Chicanos, feminism and the LGBTQ+ movements. Today Frida is “one of the most instantly recognizable artists.”

I LOVE THIS WOMAN SHE IS INCREDIBLE!

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XYtPqWLB4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0VwjzuEn7o

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo_Museum

Philip Guston was born in Montreal in 1913 and moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was young. When he was 10 years old, his father hung himself. Philip found his body in their shed. This obviously had a profound impact on his life. As a kid, his preferred setting to draw in was inside a small closet lit by a hanging lightbulb.

When Guston was 14, he began painting when he started attending the LA Manual Arts High School. While he was there, he published a paper alongside Jackson Pollock that got them both expelled. After that, aside from a one-year scholarship at Otis Art Institute, he was mostly a self-taught artist. In his early career, Guston painted many murals.

He moved to New York in 1935 and began to teach and lecture in universities in 1941 at the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa. He taught there until 1945. Other schools he taught at are Washington University in St. Louis, New York University, the Pratt Institute, and Boston University where he ran a monthly graduate seminar from 1973 until 1978.

In the 1950s, Guston moved away from mural painting and became a first-generation abstract expressionist (although he preferred the term New York School for the movement). In the late 60s, he began to get frustrated with abstraction and helped lead the transition from abstract expressionism to neo-expressionism. This transition led Guston’s style to become representational and cartoonish, which was widely misunderstood by critics and led him to isolate himself in his little art world. After 1968 his palette became limited and his pieces were very existential and sad.

I really really like his work, especially his later stuff. It’s so funky and I just really love it!!

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Guston

https://www.moma.org/artists/2419#works

Jean Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. He was born in 1901 in Le Havre to successful wine merchants. Exposed to art during his childhood through art classes, he moved to Paris to study painting at the Academie Julian in 1918, where he met and formed friendships with many other well-known artists including Fernand Leger. Unsatisfied with academic art training, Dubuffet only stayed at the school for 6 months, after which he chose to go study independently. He ended up abandoning art for a while, turning instead to the family business of winemaking. He opened his own wine business which was quite successful.

In 1942, Dubuffet decided to devote himself back to art. he was most interested in painting subjects of everyday life: people sitting in the Paris Metro or people walking. He often painted individuals in cramped spaces, which had a psychological impact on the viewer.

In 1944, he had his first solo show at the Galerie Rene Drouin in Paris. This was his 3rd attempt to become an established artist (so be persistent!). In 1945, Dubuffet was impressed by a show of Jean Fautrier paintings: he viewed is as meaningful art that expressed the depth of a person. Shortly after this, he began to use thick oil paints mixed with various stuff for his pieces — mud, sand, coal, dust, straw, gravel. This led to some backlash from critics, who accused him of ‘anarchy,’ and ‘scraping the dust bin’.

Despite this, he quickly became successful when he moved to America. He was included in a Pierre Matisse exhibition in 1946. Matisse was an influential dealer of contemporary European art in America. Dubuffet’s work was placed alongside Picasso, Braque and Rouault. By the following year, Dubuffet had his first solo show in New York.

One of the most important things Dubuffet started was the Art Brut movement. ‘Art Brut’ means ‘raw art’ in french. He became very interested in art produced by non-professionals such as psychiatric patients, prisoners, and children. He collected this type of art and had exhibitions for the pieces. Inspired by the art he was collecting, he wanted to create art himself that was free from intellectual concerns. Many of his ‘art brut’ style pieces have been called primitive and childlike and compared to wall scratchings and children’s art.

From 1962 onwards, he limited his palette to red, white, black and blue, which makes his paintings from this time very cohesive. Near the end of the 1960s, he turned himself mostly towards sculpture.

I find some of Dubuffet’s work very childlike looking, but some of even those pieces contain really interesting and humorous subject matter, which I really appreciate. A lot of his later work with the limited colour palette I really enjoy.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Dubuffet

https://www.moma.org/artists/1633

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/jean-dubuffet

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter in the last 19th and early 20th centuries. He was most interested in painting the female body and human figure in expressive and erotic ways that showed the domination of woman over man. He also painted many murals and landscapes of Attersee.

Klimt attended the University of Applied Arts in Vienna where he studied Architectural Painting from 1876-1883. He was poor during his time as a student but later gained popularity and wealth. He later became an honorary member of the University of Munich and the University of Vienna. Klimt received the Golden Order from Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria in 1888 and his painting Death and Life won him a prize in the World Exhibition in Rome in 1911.

Klimt’s “Golden Phase” was a period in his painting style that brought him very much positive critical reaction and financial success. He used gold leaf in his pieces throughout this time. His most well-known piece, The Kiss, came out of this period.

One of the most important things Klimt was a part of was leading the Vienna Secession Movement. The Vienna Secession was a movement of artists that revolted against academic art and provided exhibitions for unconventional and unknown young artists. He was a part of the movement from 1897 until 1908.

Although Gustav Klimt could be considered ‘unimportant’ in art history because he did not directly make any drastic changes, he was a very popular and influential artist. His most important influences include Egon Schiele and the expressionist movement. His mural work pioneered a union of art and architecture that went on to influence the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism.

Klimt didn’t care for censorship or criticism, in fact he fought against it, aiming to ‘shake up the establishment’. There was major controversy around a ceiling he was commissioned to paint in the Great Hall of the University of Vienna (Philosophy, Medicine, & Jurisprudence). The piece was criticized as ‘pornographic’. This was the last time Klimt took a public commission; his fame brought him many patrons, but he could afford to be selective.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gustav-Klimt

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-gustav-klimt

Henri Rousseau was a french post-impressionist painter that began painting later on in his life. Rousseau studied law after high school, served in the army for 4 years and then spent much of his life working as a toll and tax collector for the Paris customs office.

Painting as a hobby, Rousseau eventually took early retirement to focus all of his time on painting. Having never received any formal artistic instruction, he was self-taught. Many critics took his self-taught, naive style as flat and childish, ridiculing him for it. His paintings were disproportionate and exaggerated, portraying images that made it impossible to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Despite the push back from critics, Rousseau was self-confident and had quite a sense of entitlement in his work.

Rousseau’s unique style was very primitive, serving as a driving force for surrealism and other avant-garde artists such as Picasso. Appreciative of Rousseau’s work, Picasso even held a banquet in his honour, showing many of his paintings. He also heavily influenced and got to exhibit with the Fauves. Additionally, Rousseau regularly exhibited at the ‘Salon Des Indépendants’. Despite all this, Rousseau didn’t become well until shortly after his death.

Henri Rousseau is known for his jungle scenes, despite the fact that he never left France and never saw a jungle in his life. His inspiration came from children’s book illustrations, botanical gardens he visited in Paris, as well as from stories he heard from soldiers who went on the French Exhibition to Mexico while serving in the army.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau

http://www.henrirousseau.net/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Rousseau/Later-paintings-and-recognition

In the early 1900s, there was major competition in the transatlantic passenger trade between the two leading lines in the business: Cunard and White Star. In 1906 and 1907, Cunard completed the construction of the Mauretania & the Lusitania who both set speed records crossing the Atlantic Ocean. In response to this, White Star set out to build 3 large sister ships that would be known for their comfort over their speed: The Olympic, Titanic & Britannic.

The most well known of these is of course the Titanic. After 2 years of construction, the Titanic was finally ready to embark on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York across the Atlantic Ocean. Containing 840 cabins, a swimming pool, turkish baths, a gymnasium and many other extravagant amenities for first class passengers, the Titanic was the most luxurious cruise ship in the world at the time. Second class cabins were comparable to first class on most other similar ships at the time. With 2224 passengers including many wealthy and important people, the Titanic departed from Southampton on April 10th 1912.

The Titanic never made it to New York. Despite at least 6 iceberg warnings throughout the day leading up to the ship’s tragic demise, an iceberg was spotted ahead of the Titanic, directly in its path. Spotted too late to avoid a collision, the engines of the ship were reversed and the boat was turned, but only 30 seconds after the iceberg was noticed, the side of the Titanic scraped alongside it. Having torn a massive gash into the side of the ship, ripping open 6 compartments, there was no way the “unsinkable” ship would survive. The Titanic could only survive 4 flooded compartments.

At 2:20 AM on April 15th, 1912, the Titanic sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, killing over 1500 passengers. Only 31% of people on board survived.

A major reason so many people lost their lives when the Titanic sank can be traced back to issues surrounding lifeboats. Firstly, the Titanic was equipped to carry a total of 64 lifeboats, but the decision was made to only carry 20 onboard in order to not clutter the decks. This was above the legal requirements. Additionally, a lifeboat drill the day before had been cancelled, so the crew was not sure if the ship’s davits could handle filled lifeboats. They could. Because of this combined with confusion around the ‘women and children first’ rule, as well as an overall disorganized and haphazard evacuation, most lifeboats were launched with fewer than half their capacities.

Although the SS Californian was very close to the Titanic when it sank, they did not respond to distress flares and decided to ignore them. They had turned off their wireless for the night and could not be reached. Had they responded, many of the lives lost could have been saved. The RMS Carpathia came to the surviving passenger’s rescue. Nearly 2 hours after the Titanic sank, the ship arrived to save a little over 700 passengers that made it into lifeboats.

Sources

https://allthatsinteresting.com/titanic-survivors

https://titanicfacts.net/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb3UUwc-TBc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41B_BlwKS6U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqbsrj6-FgM

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/unsinkable-titanic-sinks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHJ8DwXlFyQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pywFRpEcZA

Essentially all motion picture depicts the illusion of motion by displaying multiple pictures that appear in rapid succession.

The foundation of motion picture technology can be brought back to Eadweard Muybridge’s zoetrope & zoogyroscope, which both showed the illusion of a horse in motion by spinning multiple pictures. These pictures were taken by setting up multiple cameras that would be triggered one after the other in rapid succession by a tripwire set off by the horse running by.

Kinetograph & Kinetoscope

Working in Thomas Edison’s lab, William K. L. Dickson developed a tool that would allow multiple pictures to be taken in rapid succession without needing multiple cameras; the kinetograph. The kinetograph used rapid intermittent (stop & go) film movement to take motion pictures.

To show the movies shot on the kinetograph, they also developed the kinetoscope. The kinetoscope was an early motion picture exhibition device that allowed one viewer at a time to watch the movie through a peephole at the top of the device.

Kinetoscopes were quite successful and many ‘kinetoscope parlours’ opened all over America. Kinetoscope parlours were a place people could go to view the short films. These could almost be considered the very first precursor to movie theatres.

As much as the kinetograph/kinetoscope was revolutionary in the history of film, it had quite a few drawbacks. Firstly, it was too big and heavy to move, so everything had to be shot inside a studio. Second, it required a huge amount of light, which limited the time of day to shoot. Editing was not possible, so every movie was one take. Finally, only one person was able to view the films at a time, which meant people often had to wait in line a while to view the film.

The Lumière Brothers & The Cinématographe

The next development in motion pictures was developed by Auguste and Louis Lumière. The cinématographe, meaning “writing with movement,” was able to make and project motion picture. The cinématographe was better than the kinetograph in multiple ways: it was compact and light enough to carry, required no electricity, and most importantly, projected film.

On December 28th, 1895, The Lumière Brothers had a screening of 10 short films in Paris. This event was a hit and popularized cinema. The genre of movies the brothers produced was named “actualités” which means ‘commonplace occurrences’. Films of people leaving a factory or off-boarding a train, a baby having lunch, etc.

Although nowadays we would get bored quite quickly with this genre, these films of everyday occurrences were very successful at the time. The novelty eventually wore off and people wanted to see more. This is when storylines had to come into motion pictures.

George Méliès

George Méliès was a magician by trade who made paramount developments in film editing and effects. His movies are considered to be the first to contain stories as well as science fiction. He came up with multiple editing techniques known as ‘in-camera effects’ including double exposure, split-screen, and matting. His most successful and well known to this day film was “A Trip To The Moon” which ran a whopping 14 minutes long (a long movie for the time).

Sources

https://www.theaterseatstore.com/blog/history-of-motion-picture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKSmcmueTbA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFkSjdaqbyE

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pickford-early-history-motion-pictures/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8is28gAOTc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7ZHd1xU2w8&list=PL2vrmieg9tO3PwHdLO9_PC5zXIBglsWPE&index=5

The Confederation in 1867 marked the formation of Canada as a country. Consisting only of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec until 1870 when Manitoba joined. In 1871, British Columbia also joined the country, but with the condition that a transcontinental railway be built within 10 years.

Despite some controversy surrounding the government at the beginning leading to major delays in construction, in 1880 a group of Scottish Canadian businessmen formed a viable syndicate to get the construction started, and the CPR railway company was officially founded in 1881.

That same year, construction began in various locations that would eventually meet up along the railway. Since there was such a delay in beginning construction, they had to show BC that the railway was coming so that they would not leave the country, so they started construction in Port Moody heading east along the Fraser Canyon towards the Rockies. The Fraser Canyon was treacherous and incredibly dangerous for the railway workers. Many workers lost their lives along the way. Meanwhile, construction in the prairies went smoothly and seamlessly because of the easy flat terrain, regularly beating records for number of miles built in one day.

Finally, on November 7th, 1885, the last spike was driven, combining the eastern and western parts of the railway in Craigellachie, BC. This marked the official completion of the CP railway. In July of 1886, the first passenger train arrived in Port Moody from Montreal. The railway was incredibly important in the settlement and population of western Canada. CP sold many plots of cheap land and went to great measures to get people from eastern Canada and Europe to move.

Injustices

It is simply a question of alternatives: Either you must have this (Chinese) labour or you can’t have the railway.

Prime Minister John A. MacDonald

There were unfortunately many injustices surrounding the construction of the railway that have only much more recently come into the light and been acknowledged. Much of the railway that goes through British Columbia was built by illegally imported Chinese labourers. Approximately 15,000 men were brought to work on the construction of the railway, over 600 of which died from various causes including the dangerous working conditions they were subjected to, drowning, disease, and much more. Chinese workers were paid on average $1/day (not including food or gear), while caucasian workers were paid on average $2-2.50/day including food and accommodations. Additionally, Chinese workers were assigned the most difficult and most dangerous work. It is also important to note that most of the railway was built on stolen indigenous land.

Sources

https://cpconnectingcanada.ca/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-pacific-railway

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism/chinese-legacy-bc/history/building-the-railway

https://canada.constructconnect.com/Leaders2017/chinese-workers.html

https://cpconnectingcanada.ca/the-history-of-the-cp-logo/