Humanities 10 Questions

IMPORTANT ARTISTS AND INDIVIDUALS 4

Giotto 1276–1337 Italy (Italian) Giotto was an artist who lived in Florence, Italy, during the late thirteenth and the early fourteenth centuries. His full name was Giotto di Bondone, and his work was distinct, for it bridged the gap between the Middle Ages and the beginnings of the Renaissance. He used strict symbolism, painting a gold glow around the gold halos circling the faces of saints and Jesus and his mother. But the wall paintings that he did in Padua were unique because of his ability to show how human beings felt towards one another, something very new to the world of painting. Little is known about his personal life. He has been called a transitional artist, for his paintings embodied both the elements of the past Gothic look and the beginnings of the new Renaissance style. Giotto painted altar pieces for cathedrals on wood panels with tempera paints. His subject matter was the Madonna and Child. His paintings were unique, with fl at areas lacking shadow and using little perspective. Some of the areas in his frescos incorporated a few areas that depicted some use of volume and a little contrast between light and dark. He began to introduce the use of perspective and humanism into his work. Being able to render individuals’ emotions and feel- ings was a new and innovative technique that would soon catch on. Giotto paved the way for other artists in the Renaissance, and that is what made him important (Fischner-Rathus 358).

In Doris Van de Bogart’s Introduction to the Humanities, she states that John Canady, a modern art critic and historian, thought that Giotto’s thirty-eight fresco paintings in the Arena Chapel in Padua were extremely infl uential on the future of emotion and passion in religious art from that time on (Van de Bogart 98). Giotto gave the Italian Renaissance a jump start.

Albrecht Dürer 1471–1528 Nuremburg, Germany (German) Albrecht Dürer was sent to study in the workshop of Michael Wolgemut for four years. After he studied, he wandered through northern Europe for an additional four years, until his father, a goldsmith, asked him to return to Nuremburg.

He left home again for a short time, traveling to Italy, where he studied the great artists of the Renaissance. He was intrigued with the use of perspective and was a master at creating illusions by using very thin black lines. He perfected the

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art and craft of using solid, porous pieces of wood that he first carved and then inked. He perfected the art of wood engraving and is still known today as one of the best wood engravers. Dürer was also a painter. He painted a picture of himself (a self-portrait) where one can see how he signed his name on his work with a large A and a large D inside it. Dürer looks very serious in his self-portrait which gives the viewer a sense that he took the role of artist very seriously.

Pieter Brueghel 1525–1569 Flanders/Belgium (Flemish/Belgian) In the Netherlands at this time, the accessibility and the purchasing of art became available to dealers and the rising upper-middle-class buyers. Previously artworks had been commissioned by aristocrats such as the royalty and religious centers (churches). This offered artists such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder the opportunity to sell his work. Brueghel’s travels to Italy influenced his interest in humanism, which helped him under- stand the importance of how man and nature are interrelated. One notices this aspect in his well-known painting Hunters in the Snow (oil on wood). The painting reflects how he represented nature and man side by side as he depicted a cold clear day with men, along with their dog, among a cluster of trees and birds on the left, as they look on to a town with a pond of frozen ice with townspeople ice skating. In the far distance one can view the mountains. (Source: Adapted from Lawrence S. Cunningham, John J. Reich, and Lois Fichner-Rathus, Culture and Values, A Survey of the Humanities [8th ed., vol 2, pp. 480-481].)

Pieter Bruegel was also referred to as Pieter the Elder, for he had a son, Pieter the Younger, who also became a painter. His son made copies of his father’s work.

Because of this situation, you may see some reproductions of works having the same name and looking similar but with different dates on them.

The country where Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born was called Flanders, which makes him Flemish. Flanders is modern-day Belgium; today he would be considered Belgian.

There is little known today about his personal life, but it is known that he was highly educated, a painter who was interested in the humanistic ideas that were relatively new in his country at that time. He had been commissioned to paint for the Hapsburg Court (Schloat 12).

Brueghel painted humble people who worked hard. He wanted to show how dif- ficult their work was while showing respect for their labor. In a series of paintings of an entire wedding, he painted several scenes of events that occurred at the wedding, from the guests eating to the guests dancing. The dancing of the guests is very lively, and viewers can almost imagine that they hear the music being played as they look at the painting in the museum.

The painting of the dancers reflects a happy scene, and the people in attendance are eating and enjoying themselves. The mood is light. It is a time of joy and happiness.

The title of the painting is The Wedding Dance. Brueghel portrayed the dancers as in movement by his mastery of line and shape and by the reddish-orange color he used throughout his work. This painting is a masterpiece that reflects how he was able to capture a scene with its mood using space, form, line, and shape. As a great artist, he understood how to use the elements of art to create a composition that reflected the mood he wished to portray.

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Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519 Vinci, Italy (Italian) Leonardo da Vinci was born in Vinci, a small village in Italy. His father sent Leonardo to a school of a goldsmith named Andrea Verrochio, who was very impressed with his student’s ability as a painter. In the Florence of that day, the Medici family had a lot of influence in the world of art. Because it did not notice Leonardo’s talent, he left Florence to pursue other opportunities.

Some stories say that da Vinci was invited to go to Rome before he made a decision to go to Milan, Italy. He had been invited to paint some of the walls at the Vatican but decided to go to Milan, where he painted the mural The Last Supper, from 1495 to 1498, which would become one of his most famous works (Hobbs and Duncan 125–127). He began working for Lodovico Sforza then, who was Regent of Milan at that time.

While working in Milan, da Vinci designed war machinery and sketched many studies having to do with science, anatomy, and engineering. He designed the altar piece for a church, and painted the Virgin of the Rocks in 1483. Leonardo also experi- mented

with materials and produced countless sketches and drawings for an equestrian

monument that was never built. The Mona Lisa, painted from 1503 to 1505, may very well have never been finished.

The actual name of the painting may have been that of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo—perhaps “del Giocondo,” or, as most books would have it, “Gioconda.” Francesco del Giocondo may have been a Florentine citizen of the merchant class. The Mona Lisa, as the painting is most often called, has an unusual background that gives the figure of the woman a realistic, three-dimensional appearance, particularly in her hands and in the appearance that she has just turned to look at the viewer. Her eyes appear to gaze at each viewer in the room, no matter the location. Most paintings of the day were related to religion, not women from the merchant class (some sources say that her husband was a Florentine banker), which in itself makes the painting unusual (Hobbs and Duncan 128).

The Mona Lisa also has a landscape in its background that gives it depth and makes it possible to imagine that the subject is a real person living in the real world. She appears to be someone not of the aristocracy, nor the mother of Jesus Christ or a religious per- son to be worshipped, even though such things might have been much more common themes and subjects. Why, then, do you think this painting is so famous and thought to be so innovative for its time? What types of other portraits were being painted at that time in history, and why did this painting end up in France, in the Louvre?

Leonardo da Vinci brought the Mona Lisa with him when he left Italy on his way to France where he was invited by King Frances I. Da Vinci kept the painting with him until his death. Because this painting was in the possession of the King of France, it became the possession of France and is now in the French museum. It has had an impact upon painters for many generations and represents the naturalness and grace of the Renaissance even today.

The painting is oil on panel, 30¼ by 21 inches. It is in the Louvre, Paris, France (Gilbert and McCarter 388, 477–478).

Raphael Sanzio 1483–1520 Italy (Italian) Raphael only lived for thirty-seven years. He was one of the most well-known portrait painters of the Italian Renaissance. He was born in Urbino and studied with the impor- tant artist Pietro Perugino during his youth. At twenty-six, he was commissioned to paint many rooms at the Vatican, where he painted the famous School of Athens (Schloat 12). The

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School of Athens was painted during the same period in which Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Pope Julius II had both artists working on many proj- ects at the Vatican during that period, a time when they were in competition with one another. For the large wall painting in the room where documents were signed by the pope, Raphael chose the subject of Athens, reflecting his interest in the ancient history of the Greeks, which was being studied at that time. Raphael selected that theme and chose to portray the two central figures as the two Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato. Some say that those two philosophers appear to resemble the faces of his two competitors of his day and time—Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Plato’s white hair and long beard, for example, seem to depict da Vinci. The background of the painting has arches and, above them, clouds and a beautifully painted sky. The arches give the painting a great sense of depth and a feeling of enormous space such as is felt when walking inside St. Peter’s, which was being designed at that time (Schloat 12).

Michelangelo Buonarrotti 1475–1564 Italy (Italian) Michelangelo was born in Tuscany, Italy, in 1475. His teacher, Domenico Ghirlandaio, taught him how to paint when he was in his early teens. His father never married his mother (Gilbert, McCarter 390). Michelangelo is probably mostly known for painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel after he managed to build scaffolding seventy feet above the floor. He painted 5,760 square feet of ceiling at the Sistine Chapel, in the Vatican. Michelangelo was not interested in painting when Pope Julius II asked him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Fiero 202). He was expecting to sculpt a project for the pope instead but was unable to do so, because the artists of that period were not their own masters. The pope had other plans for Michelangelo. As a child, Michelangelo had attended a sculpting studio, where he had studied with the future Julius II, and now Michelangelo was unable to go against the pope’s wishes. Michelangelo is said to have started out with a design of drawings of disciples; when asked why he wanted to do dis- ciples as the paintings on the ceiling, he answered that they were all living as people with little means whom he felt were somewhat poor. But Michelangelo abandoned that idea after he came down from the scaffolding after a few days and didn’ t like what he saw. He realized that the figures were not large enough. Because the ceiling was so high, he had to make his paintings much larger. He then started completely over, using a different portion of the Bible as inspiration—the moment of God’s creation. He chose the separa- tion of light from darkness, the creation of the heavenly bodies and Earth from water, the creation of man, and the expulsion of man from the garden, as well as many other scenes.

Although Michelangelo, who preferred to sculpt, wanted to execute forty sculptures as an enormous monument to the pope, that work was never completed. Between 1498 and 1500 Michelangelo created a work of art that has epitomized his ability to handle marble in the method of the Classical Greek style while drawing from the Renaissance’s religiosity to gain work. He was expected to be able to sculpt work that would fit within the popes’ and the Church’s belief system. The work that brought him fame, showing just how much talent he had even as a young sculptor, was the Pieta, a magnificent work that is still in the Vatican, in the chapel area to the right after entering St. Peter’s Basilica. The sculpture was actually flown to the World’s Fair in 1964 to Flushing, New York, where people could actually touch it, it was so close to them. It was seen by several million people. But times have changed. The sculpture was struck with a hammer a number of years ago but was not badly damaged. It was repaired and is now behind a panel of bulletproof plexiglass, no less marvelous to lay eyes upon and considered one of the most fragile pieces of marble still to be in excellent condition.

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Michelangelo gained fame and another great work, the Pieta, that of Jesus with his mother Mary after he was taken from the cross. Those two early works are his most well known.

Before Michelangelo went to live in Rome, he was in competition with another well-known artist, Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci had been given a large piece of marble by the city fathers to create a sculpture but never managed to get it completed and gave it to Michelangelo. Michelangelo was in his twenties when he took the marble block and made his famous sculpture of David, the young boy who fought the giant Goliath. David was executed between 1501 and 1504 and is now displayed in the Gallery of the Academy of Florence. (It was originally outside the Palazzo Vecchio.) The sculpture is nearly eighteen feet high. David was one of the first sculptures by which Michelangelo was able to gain notoriety.

Peter Paul Rubens 1577–1640 Flanders (Flemish) Peter Paul Rubens grew up in Germany while his father, a peasant, worked in exile because he was a Protestant. After his father died in 1589, Rubens was brought up as a Catholic. His studies included working for the Duke of Mantua while he was traveling in Italy for eight years. Many of the years of his life that followed were spent in Flanders, until his wife died. He then served as a diplomat in Spain and England. He opened a studio and hired many qualified artists to complete the volumes of portraits that he and his staff were commissioned. He also received commissions to paint religious works for cathedrals. A very important set of paintings for the Luxembourg Palace were of the arrival of the future queen of France, who was coming from Italy to reign in France. In these Baroque paint- ings, Maria de Medici is depicted as protected by mythological figures such as Neptune. Rubens and his first wife had three children. Four years after his first wife died, he remar- ried and had four more children. Peter Paul Rubens died at the age of sixty-three.

William Shakespeare 1564–1616 Stratford-upon-Avon, England (English) William Shakespeare has been called the greatest writer of plays. He wrote thirty-seven plays, which vary from comedies to tragedies. He also wrote short poems and 154 son- nets. Some say he was also an actor who played several leading roles on stage.

At age eighteen, in 1582, William married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer’s daugh- ter who was eight years older than he was. They named their first daughter, born six months after they were married in 1583, Susanna. They later had twins named Judith and Hamnet, born in 1585.

Shakespeare was the greatest English writer, and possibly the greatest writer in any lan- guage since the Golden Age of Greece, according to many English scholars. Shakespeare studied Aescylus and Euripedis and their work in the Greek plays they wrote during the great Greek Era of tragedy and comedy. The elements of theater had been studied by Shakespeare, who used those elements and structure in his work. Shakespeare’s plays can be divided into three major categories: comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Shakespeare was born in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, England. His father, William, attended the local grammar school in Stratford, where he studied Latin rhetoric, history, and literature. He was not only a writer but also an actor and a stock holder.

Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon and joined a repertory theater company, which performed for an admission fee.

In 1594, Shakespeare began working with a theatrical group who performed for

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the royalty, including Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare’s plays began to be more recog- nized, and a time came in his career when a couple plays a year had to be written and performed on stage in London. Shakespeare wrote both tragedies and comedies. Shakespeare’s most famous plays, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear are tragedies.

Many of William Shakespeare’s plays were set at a time in history from the Roman Period to the Renaissance. These Shakespearian theatrical productions are still per- formed today because they have a universal appeal. They are comprised of interesting stories, useful narratives, meaningful dialogues, and are bursting with word meanings deep with symbolism. The main characters are studies of individual personalities and the audience responds to them with an emotional and responsive appeal.

Shakespeare—Hamlet Hamlet, Shakespeare’s most famous play, was first performed in 1601 and published in 1603. The Hamlet story was a widespread legend in northern Europe, and Shakespeare’s source for the play may have been Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques (1559). Shakespeare’s play may also have used as a source a lost play supposedly by Thomas Kyd, usually referred to as the Ur-Hamlet. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, however, has its own unique central element in Hamlet’s tragic flaw, his hesitation to avenge his father’s murder.

At the beginning of the play, Hamlet mourns the death of his father, who has been murdered, and also laments his mother’s marriage to his uncle Claudius within a month of his father’s death. Hamlet’s father’s ghost appears to Hamlet, telling him that he was poisoned by Claudius and asking him to avenge his death. Hamlet hesitates, requir- ing further evidence of foul play. His uncertainty and hesitancy make him increasingly moody, and everyone believes that Hamlet is going mad. The pompous old courtier Polonius believes Hamlet is lovesick over his daughter Ophelia.

Despite Claudius’ apparent guilt, Hamlet still cannot act. Nevertheless, he terror- izes his mother and kills the eavesdropping Polonius. Fearing for his life, Claudius sends Hamlet to England with his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have orders to have Hamlet killed. Discovering the orders, Hamlet arranges to have his friends killed instead. Returning to Denmark, Hamlet learns that Ophelia has killed herself, and her brother Laertes has vowed vengeance on Hamlet for Polonius’ death. Claudius happily arranges the duel. Both Hamlet and Laertes are struck by the sword that Claudius has had dipped in poison. Gertrude mistakenly drinks from the cup of poison intended for Hamlet. Before Hamlet dies, he fatally stabs Claudius.

In the play, Shakespeare appears to suggest that traditional beliefs about revenge are oversimplified, arguing that revenge does not solve evil if evil lies in a complex situation: “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right.” He also seems to maintain that revenge itself is morally wrong. In Hamlet, as well as the other tragedies (Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth), Shakespeare explores with great psychologi- cal subtlety how the personality flaws in the protagonist lead almost inevitably to his own destruction and the destruction of those around him.

Hamlet William Shakespeare Act 3, Sc. 1 Hamlet:

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

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And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep: No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale case of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.

Rembrandt van Rijn 1606–1669 Leyden, Holland (Dutch) Rembrandt learned to paint as a teen in a studio of Peter Lastman, who had been taught by a famous Italian artist named Caravaggio, famous for using a painting technique that drew sharp contrast between light and dark, called chiaroscuro. This dramatic use of light and shadow was a technique that Rembrandt used during his career as well. Rembrandt’s work has a certain quality about it that is timeless and captivating. Rem- brandt was not just a realistic painter. Although he painted realistic work, trying to make someone represent what he or she looked like, his images were indeed deep. He was concerned with the personality of the sitter and the deep meaning within the individual, which was psychological rather than superficial.

Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam when he was twenty-five years old and remained there until he died, at the age of sixty-three. His early work was mainly portraits, and he was so busy that he hired assistants for a short time. His style throughout his entire life can be seen by looking at his etching of himself and his self-portraits, done in oil, pen, and ink. Rembrandt also did landscape painting throughout his career in Amsterdam, during which he married twice. His first wife was from a family that had a favorable enough economic level in Amsterdam that Rembrandt was fortunate enough to be able

to start a business painting portraits. He found that to be profitable for a while, but he gradually lost sales and commissions. Several factors accounted for his professional

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demise. After he lost his first wife in childbirth, several other of his children died at very young ages, after having his female housekeeper move in with him, he was shunned. He then went bankrupt and moved to what was referred to as “Amsterdam’s worst ghetto.” He became dependent upon his son for a while, but his son died right before Rem- brandt died in 1669. Rembrandt outlived his entire family.

Rembrandt is considered to be one of the greatest portrait painters. His work is great because it is genuine and honest. His portraits were likenesses of individuals but went beyond that to express personality, the subjects’ innermost parts without saying a word. That this depth is evident upon each viewing of one of his paintings is the timelessness of Rembrandt. His self-portraits take you through the life of a young man who has it all—happiness, fun, glitter—and then at the end has nothing but himself. He is still the same, but he is stripped down to who he is alone, a lonely but satisfied and resolute gentleman. He is somber but not bitter. He may be somewhat sad but he is accepting. It is sad that Rembrandt was somewhat of a stubborn man. Seeing that he lost commissions and never even got paid for painting the famous group painting The Night Watch, perhaps Rembrandt did want to produce a painting that was more interesting in its composition, choosing to have the figures in the arrangement where some are hard to see and identify. It seems that he may have lost work by caring more about maintain- ing his artistic integrity than about receiving payment for his paintings. He certainly underwent major hardships, including having his work seized by the government.

Amsterdam is where many of Rembrandt’s works can be seen. The apartment where he lived in an upper level while working on his religious prints of the life of Christ using copperplates for his etchings is now the Rembrandt House Museum. The State Museum or Rijksmuseum is where one can visit to see more of his famous works, including the painting with Captain Cocq and the lieutenant in the center with those around them in shadow or hidden from full view. The arrangement is creative, and the viewer’s attention is drawn to two full figures who are in the middle of a conversation. The two seem almost oblivious to all the crowded folks behind them. No one has ever been able to explain why Rembrandt placed the older-looking “short woman” to the central figure on the left side. Whether it was added to communicate a certain meaning or to add a light area is unknown. His commissions dried up somewhat after this work was painted, and from then on Rembrandt was not in demand as a portrait painter. After this, he began to work more on etchings and paintings of religious subject matter.

In The Night Watch the use of line and the angular shapes created by the flags and the weaponry create a strong background for the two central human figures, making them more noticeable. The use of strong contrast between light and dark create the mood, and the intensity of the light and shadow give the painting an almost ominous feel. That may be why for so many years the painting was incorrectly labeled The Night Watch. Whoever first called it that may have thought that someone was lost, with a group of people being sent out to go find him or her. The painting evokes a feeling of worry, but the two central figures seem almost apart from the rest of the crowd. The painting did not seem to make sense at the time that it was painted, and supposedly Rembrandt was unable to receive payment for the painting, for some of the individuals in the painting did not like the composition and refused to pay their fee. The painting was supposed to hang in the company of the Banning Cocq Company but never did. Another version of the story is very different, describing how the painting was rolled away then placed on a wall, then trimmed to fit a wall on a pub, and then misnamed. But no matter the story, the painting is a masterpiece. It is a moment in time, capturing the feel of a cer- tain place. It gives us such a great sense of the humanness of the men and the use of three dimensions to create depth and spaciousness. Rembrandt was able to create on a flat piece of canvas an amazing composition that has stood the test of time to become a universal work of art. Those two men in the center toward the front of the canvas, once

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two average Dutch men going about their business making a living in Amsterdam in 1642, are now remembered not by their names but in a different way. Take a closer look; imagine what they may be saying to each other as they walk and talk. Taking time just to wonder is why some people take time to look at art. Think for a moment; go back in time and consider the connections that we all have with people from times past.

Also, think about how many years this was before the invention of the camera. Rembrandt did not have a photograph, a camera, or a television. He created this paint- ing in his studio, yet the men are casual and appear to be talking and walking, as if to depart from their place of business. It is a moment in time composed in an arrangement that offers viewers an opportunity to spend time gazing at many areas of the canvas and the wealth of captivating figures. The arrangement has been considered to be one of the best compositions ever produced from that period.

Historians have labeled this painting a Baroque style of art from that period. It reflects the style of the Baroque period: contrasting areas of light and dark, diagonal lines used to break up space, ornate decoration, precision, and accurate detail. Some areas of the work are decorated with ornate and highly detailed work, such as on the clothing of the gentleman and the figure of the short older female figure. The arrange- ment was actually of a military organization, such as a guard, preparing for an exercise. The work measures 12 feet 2 inches by 14 feet 7 inches, and is located in the Rijks- museum, Amsterdam, Holland (Gilbert and McCarter). In 1975 a patient from a Dutch mental institution visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and managed to gouge twelve deep slashes into the painting. It was repaired at the museum and still hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Gilbert and McCarter 474).

Johannes Vermeer 1632–1675 Delft, Holland (Dutch) Johannes Vermeer produced less than thirty-five paintings in his life. Those that exist today are exquisite. They reflect everyday activities in the lives of those in the middle of a task. Although Vermeer’s work was not noticed by a large audience during his lifetime, a Parisian art critic took note and published a monograph on Vermeer’s art. Vermeer’s work is considered to be about everyday life and is thus referred to as genre painting.

His work is so detailed, and its texture so smooth, that seeing it in the museum it seems almost unbelievable that it could be possible to do such detailed, believable work. But because Vermeer was so accurate and detailed in his work, he probably did not have time to do any more than he did, for he ran a tavern to support his family of eight chil- dren. Johannes Vermeer died at the age of forty-three.

Honoré Daumier 1808–1879 France (French) Daumier’s father hoped to keep him from being an artist by apprenticing him to an usher in the Paris law courts but was unsuccessful. Daumier learned about law and injustice, but his understanding of politics and his interest in art led him in a direction contrary to his father’s wishes. In the long run, Daumier became one of the leading printmakers in history, creating his biting satires that are still displayed in courts today.

In 1832, he was employed by the weekly paper La Caricature to create illustrations and was imprisoned for six months after depicting a politician as a Gargantua devouring the heavy taxes of the people. One of Daumier’s most famous paintings was The Third Class Carriage. But Daumier began having trouble with his eyesight, and by 1875 he was

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completely blind. (Daumier is a realistic painter also grouped into the Romantic Period but he is difficult to label. Daumier may also have been influenced by Impressionism.)

Honoré Daumier created artwork that drew attention to the social injustices and ill treatment of people living in difficult economic and cultural environments in his day. His painting Third Class Carriage has left us as viewers today more likely to understand his political views as we are able to see a glimpse into how he illustrated the social ills of his day and time.

His work has been divided into two parts: from 1830 to 1847, when he was a lithog- rapher, cartoonist, and sculptor; and from 1848 to 1871, when he was a painter whose art was representational and somewhat reflective of some Impressionistic tendencies as far as his style. He worked constantly throughout his life and produced approximately 4,000 illustrative drawings and 4,000 lithographs.

Théodore Géricault 1791–1824 France (French) Théodore Géricault is known as one of the best Romantic painters. He was born in Rouen, France. Known for his love of horses, Gericault died at the age of thirty-three in an accident while he was horse racing. One of the most famous and dramatic works which art historians view as a masterpiece is his Raft of the Medusa, a painting that he did after hearing about a shipwreck. (Source: Doris Van De Bogart (author) Introduction to the Humanities, Barnes and Noble, Inc. 1977. ISBN: 0-06-463277-6)

The Medusa was a ship owned by the French, filled with immigrants from Algeria. The crew on the ship experienced a wreck and since there were not enough lifeboats, a raft with a chord pulled the immigrants along. It managed for some distance until the chord broke. Originally, the raft was carrying 149 people; however, by the time help was sought, only some of those were still alive on the raft. For days the raft floated defense- lessly upon the water. No help came. By the time there was a ship to help, of those on the raft, only 15 survived.

The painting represents the moment in time when the survivors on the raft desper- ately strain to draw attention to a ship that they finally see. They desperately tried for days to draw attention to their plight with no success and finally saw a ship that finally rescued them.

This painting is sixteen feet by twenty-three feet and located in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Romantic paintings by artists seem to evoke deep emotional response.

Source: Edmund Burke Feldman, Thinking About Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall, 1985)

Jacques Louis David 1748–1825 France (French) Jacques Louis David was a student of Joseph Vien who won the Prix de Rome in 1775. He studied in Paris at the Royal Academy after returning from his studies in Italy.

Under Napoleon’s regime, David was a major painter who executed works that had symbolic meaning and that possessed connections with political situations. Because he was especially knowledgeable about the history of Rome and wanted to reflect the ideals of fighting for one’s country, he used themes from ancient Roman legends. The Roman ideas of duty toward country and of fighting for a cause, even to death, were used in a famous work of a father with his sons saying an oath before departing for battle. That famous painting, along with other of his political paintings, are still thought of today as masterpieces. These formal compositions are filled with representational work, a close

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look reveals that the works are filled with political meanings. For example, in the paint- ing about a Roman father entitled The Oath to the Horatii, the sons take an oath before their father to fight even if it means that they have to die for their cause. The work is Classical—reserved and orderly. It has emotion, but even the emotion is restrained, and the painting does not feature flamboyance or extreme, intense emotion.

In another painting, which shows a writer in a bathtub, the artist David left some of his canvas almost blank, giving the painting a somewhat empty feel. The writer, Marat, suffered from a rare skin disorder and sat in the bathtub in order to feel well enough to write. But he was unexpectedly attacked by an intruder, a political opponent who walked into his apartment and stabbed him to death. The painting is stark and barren, and the person in the bathtub is actually a corpse. The painting might seem to be Romantic in style for dealing with such an intensely emotional situation, but its style is actually Classical. Some areas are without action, and the letters inscribed in the painting are Roman, a device used at that time by Classical painters.

Neoclassical in style, however, David is difficult to label and his Death of Marat, 1793, is almost more realistic than neoclassical.

The painting was a result of a commission which David had received after marrying the spirited Marguerite Pécoul, whose father was a wealthy building contractor and the superintendent of construction at the Louvre in 1782. In the Oath to the Horatii, David uses clear lighting and very somber expressions. He represents the courage of the three Horatii brothers as they face their father and vow to offer their lives to assure victory for Rome in the war with Alba.

Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/152567/Jacques-Louis-David

Francisco de Goya 1746–1828 Spain (Spanish) Francisco de Goya lived in Spain and may have supported himself as a bullfighter as a young man. By the age of twenty he had moved to Madrid, Spain. As a teenager, Goya was adventurous and had several close calls while in dueling matches. He was very serious about wanting to be an artist but was unable to win a scholarship to study at the Academy of San Fernando, the foremost art school at that time near where he lived. He was upset, but a court painter named Francisco Bayeu apprenticed him and helped Goya learn the art of decorating ceilings and painting portraits. Goya assisted his teacher and then left to study for a while in Italy (McCandless).

Goya returned to Spain and became one of the leading court painters (Gilbert and McCarter 158). His paintings of the royal family appeared to flatter the family of the king but actually reflected the greed and arrogance of the individuals he painted. Goya painted a portrait of the entire family of Charles IV, king of Spain during the late nine- teenth century, in which one of the women has her face turned and an elderly woman looks somewhat unattractive. It seems odd to many today that Goya was able to get away with what he did, especially for that day and time and in such political situations as those in which he lived. In the same painting, in the back and to the left, Goya himself is depicted behind an easel, painting. The painting was “nicknamed,” supposedly by the king himself, We Are All Here, because the entire royal family is pictured. Goya was a remarkable painter who was also personally concerned about the social and political issue of his day. He was extremely troubled by individuals who were placed in asylums, who he thought to be treated worse than unwanted animals.

One can view his paintings of The Madhouse at Saragosa and imagine what it may have been like at the asylum he visited. Goya was representing the struggles of humanity in his work. He personally suffered from a difficult marriage because he and his wife expe- rienced the deaths of all but one of their many children. Goya also suffered severe bouts

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with diseases that represented many setbacks for him throughout his career. He became totally deaf after one grave illness, first having ringing in his ears for some time and eventually losing his hearing entirely. At one point in his life, he became totally isolated and a recluse. During this period, he painted large, dark, somber canvases about Saturn, myths, skeletons, and an old lady. He was undergoing a terrible time mentally and was very depressed. But when he was able to come out of that state of mind, he created a beautiful painting, one of his last, called The Milkmaid of Bourdaux.

Goya has been known as one of the best printmakers. His Los Caprichos prints were satirical studies of how human beings are somewhat unaware, uncaring, corrupt, and devious. His etchings about the atrocities of war were titled The Disasters of War and were of superb craftsmanship. The pictures of fighting in the streets show dead bodies being taken away in a cart and a woman with a baby on her back loading a cannon, among other scenes. But although his paintings and etchings were emotionally charged, they were not sentimental. They are difficult to label, even though historians may call them Romantic because of the Romantics’ propensity for social and political rebellion and support of freedom of expression. Goya’s paintings and his prints express universal truths and are executed with great skill and technical ability. They show the horrors of war and “man’s inhumanity to man” but do not stop at that. Rather, they take a stand and denounce man’s inhumanity to man (Gilbert and McCarter 158, Van de Bogart 242).

Katsushika Hokusai 1760–1849 Japan (Japanese) The name Hokusai means “star of the northern constellation.” Hokusai was born in 1760 in Edo, now called Tokyo, Japan. He supposedly had fifty names and lived in ninety houses over the course of his life. He never opened the packet of money he received after his first book of sketches were published, and he was considered an “odd sort of fellow,” for he seemed not to care about money. He is remembered today in Japan as one of the greatest artists ever to have made prints. Hokusai was a versatile artist, spontaneous and creative, and was both a painter and a printmaker. He was a master craftsman at his art and knew how to use the tools that were essential for the difficult techniques he used to make his woodcuts. It is said whenever his rent came due, he refused to open the money packet he had earned and was then thrown out. After finding another place to live, he would work a while and then be forced to move again—and again. Hokusai did not believe in mate- rial things and seemed to care little about money, content to be a great, if eccentric, artist (Gilbert and McCarter 216).

Assessment of Hokusai Hokusai embodied in his long lifetime the essence of the Ukiyo-e school of art during its final century of development. His stubborn genius also represents, in its seventy years of continuous artistic creation, the prototype of the single-minded artist, striving only to complete a given task. Moreover, Hokusai constitutes a figure who has, since the later nineteenth century, impressed Western artists, critics, and art lovers alike, more, pos- sibly, than any other single Asian artist.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hokusai

Important Artists and Individuals 59

Hokusai had a long career and after he turned sixty years old, he produced most of what critiques say were his most important works. After his death, many of his prints were displayed in an exhibit in Europe and artists such as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent Van Gogh were influenced by his work.

Source: World Book Encyclopedia, vol H (Chicago: World Book Scott Fetzer Company, 1992), 289-290. ISBN 0-7166-0092-7

Auguste Rodin 1840–1917 France (French) One of the world’s most well-known sculptures was created by Auguste Rodin, who sculpted an enormous number of renderings of the human figure. His depiction of a man sitting with his chin resting upon his hand is his most famous. The man is in a trancelike state, thinking. Rodin preferred to work first in clay or wax and then cast his work in bronze. Rodin wanted to have the surface of the texture help create the mood. The rough texture can create a suitable conductor of light, with a different feel from that of marble. But his works were not understood when they were first created. For example, his sculpture of a man walking was missing some portions of the human form, reminiscent of ancient artistic relics. His doors to the gates of hell were also difficult for viewers to comprehend. Thus, because his work was difficult to sell, he made a living from his ornamental sculptures for commercial firms (World Book Encyclopedia).

Claude Monet 1840–1926 France (French) Claude Monet lived as a young boy in Le Havre, France, but was born in Paris. He is sometimes given credit for starting the movement of Impressionism, because his paint- ing of a sunrise, Impression Sunrise, gave the movement its name.

Claude Monet painted outdoors and used colors, avoiding black and white. His shadows were made of colors, not merely black or brown. Painting outdoors and using colors to depict everything created a new way of painting.

Monet was influenced by two English painters when he visited England in 1872. The style of Constable’s landscapes, which were of English countrysides and the cathe- drals and buildings in the area, gave Monet some ideas about mixing color. The paint- ings of Turner, with his use of texture and creative way of expressing the atmosphere with its steam or smoke, was very interesting to Claude Monet. Both of those painters’ styles helped Monet create a new way of painting that incorporated their techniques and ideas into his developing method. Monet then became aware of the way that light reflected off of surfaces such as water.

Claude Monet was an artist who made some of his income in his early career from painting portraits. He had been already known at age fifteen as an artist with talent, and when he lived in Le Havre he was known as a caricaturist.

Eventually Monet would sell his work, but he had difficulty at first making a living from his art. He was able to move when he was in his forties to a small town north of Paris, called Giverny, where he painted outdoor scenes. He became fascinated with the atmosphere and with the effects of the sunlight and other light on surfaces. Even though his work was not accepted during certain parts of his career, he continued to paint atmospheric conditions to show the way that weather conditions can change the way a viewer sees buildings and places.

He painted a cathedral façade in the town of Rouen to show how the sun shone on the cathedral at different times of day, making the cathedral look different during the

60 Artists and Styles of Art

morning, at noon, and in the evening. Monet was able to set up his easel in the apart- ment that he rented across from the Rouen Cathedral, from which he watched the effect of the sun on the surface of the façade as the sun rose and moved across the sky.

In 1890, Monet purchased a home at Giverny, and ten years before he died, he was able to build a large studio in which to paint. He had difficulty with his eyesight during the last years of his life; even surgery was unsuccessful. He died of lung cancer in 1926.

His studio, grounds (with their lily pond and bridge), and home have been made into a museum to let visitors see where he lived and painted. The location is very beauti- ful and worth visiting.

Auguste Renoir 1841–1919 France (French) Auguste Renoir has been known for the bright red-orange color that he used in many of his outdoor scenes picturing groups of people having pleasant outings talking together in the afternoon by the water.

Renoir was famous for lively group scenes of his friends, who congregated at one of his favorite restaurants where his fiancé would meet him with her little dog and eat lunch. His friends would casually talk and visit outside in an informal setting by the water, and Renoir would enjoy watching the sun cast shadows at different times during the afternoon. He was a master of light and color.

Renoir studied precision and drawing at an early age. He was an artist who knew the techniques of portraiture and how to draw depth and perspective. He had taken lessons from artists who taught him how to draw accurate renditions of reality. Renoir traveled to Italy in 1880. He studied in Italy where he was an apprentice to a porcelain painter. He learned how to paint windowshades and was able to master that art in the studio of artist Charles Gleyre. Renoir knew that Impressionism was useful to him, for he had tried working with its methods of color theory. He enjoyed working with the ideas of color in which he had been influenced by studying the works of the Impressionists with whom he had come into contact while in Paris. Renoir was interested in meeting the leading Impressionists, and the artists who influenced him most were Claude Monet and Edouard Manet, whom he supposedly met.

As he aged, Renoir continued to produce major work, but he suffered from extreme pain as he worked, from arthritis. He had to have a family member bandage his paint- brushes around his hands in order to be able to paint toward the end of his life because of his condition (World Book Encyclopedia).

Edgar Degas 1834–1917 France (French) Edgar Degas has been known as an artist who captured a moment in time. His subject matter included dancers about to go on stage or reaching for their slippers or get- ting ready to practice. He drew with pastels and painted with oils. He was known for his spontaneous work and for being able to design compositions on paper and canvas that viewed ballet dancers from a variety of viewpoints. Degas watched for hours as they practiced and as they prepared to go on stage at performances in Paris. He also watched the ballerinas in rehearsals, which helped him know how to paint and draw such impromptu positions of dancers. His works took a new approach to the way that artists painted, portraying the day-to-day activities of working women who danced as they tried to perfect their art. It was not something that artists had been painting fre- quently in Paris at that day and time. Degas was especially interested in the casual poses of the dancers as they prepared for their performances.

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Degas has not become known as a sculptor, even though his bronze sculptures are museum quality. The bronze sculptures that he created were only made for the use of the study of the human form, not for exhibition. However, even today they are consid- ered to be of superb quality and of artistic merit. Degas has been considered an artist from the Impressionist period who used exceptional craftsmanship to pursue his unique style (World Book Encyclopedia).

Mary Cassatt 1844–1926 Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (American) Mary Cassatt’s father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and came from a family of banking. The ancestral name in his family was actually Cossart. Mary’s family moved from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and then to Philadelphia, where she began school at the age of six.

When she was very young, her family traveled, and she was able to attend the Paris World’s Fair of 1855. She saw the work of the French artists Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Camille Corot, and Eugene Delacroix at an early age.

At the age of twenty-one she left Philadelphia, much to her family’s chagrin, to travel to Paris to study art. It was not a vocation that was acceptable at that time, and for her to be traveling alone on a ship all the way to Europe was quite troubling to her family. But Mary was adventurous; she knew that if she was going to become an artist she had to go to Europe to study. When she was young, she had seen enough to know what she wanted. When Mary arrived in Europe, she was not readily accepted and had to prove herself worthy of her craft. But she was of an independent nature and did not give up easily. She recognized the strength in tie between women and their chil- dren, and that is what she began to draw. Her pastel work began to be shown. She saw the work of the Impressionist painters who lived in Paris. She met Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and began to show her work in some of the exhibitions. One of the artists who was interested in her use of spontaneity was Edgar Degas, who was painting dancers in rehearsal. She and he met and struck up a somewhat difficult but professional friendship. It has been reported that Degas commented that her work was not so bad, for a woman’s. Cassatt was not entirely accepted by her male peers, but history places her with some of the Impressionists in some books, although she was an American artist. (An artist is considered to be from the place of his or her birth.)

Cassatt’s best work is probably her paintings of children with mothers. She worked with pastels and also did woodblock prints, perfecting the process of lithography in her art. Many of her paintings were done in oil, but she also used other media in her out- pouring of artistic work. Her innovative printmaking style was also influenced by the prints that were then being imported from Japan.

Paul Gauguin 1848–1903 Paris, France Paul Gauguin was born in France. His work became known as part of the movement of Impressionism; however, much of his work does not appear like other Impressionist artists. His work is much more flat and decorative in appearance. He used rhythmic lines and opposite colors in his work. His subjects were the women from the island of Tahiti when he traveled to that island. His work, as well as his friend van Gogh’s, are not always easy to place into a category.

Gauguin has been known for his paintings of decorative flat areas of color of patterns and shapes of beautiful women from the South Pacific. He traveled to that area from France and was able to sell his Tahitian canvases at that time in Paris. His dealer

62 Artists and Styles of Art

was Vincent van Gogh’s brother. During this later portion of Gauguin’s career, his art became well known.

As a stockbroker, he became interested in art and admired pointillism. In his mid- thirties, he left his wife and family and traveled after taking lessons from Camille Pissarro. His early works were influenced by the Impressionist style of painting, and he became acquainted with many of the Impressionist painters while living in Paris. He met van Gogh, and before he left France to travel to Tahiti, he lived for a short time in a town where the two painted in the town and fields outside Arles, France (Janson, H. W. and A. F. Janson 776).

Vincent van Gogh 1853–1890 Holland/Netherlands (Dutch) Vincent van Gogh has been known as the artist who cut off his own ear, but he did not. He did, however, cut part of a lobe off when he argued over a girl with his friend Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh was a great painter and printer who left behind unusual and outstanding works of art. But van Gogh was a troubled person. He signed his name Vincent because he wanted people to know him; he wanted attention and tried getting it from his teachers, but he never made it through art school. He was told that he could not draw using perspective correctly and that he was drawing with his paint instead of painting with it.

Vincent had a brother named Theo who was very close to him. Theo was an art dealer who had left home to be trained and had moved to Paris to work in a firm that dealt with successful artists. But Vincent never sold a painting in his life, although he was able to barter one painting, Red Vineyards. Theo tried to sell Vincent’s work and felt very troubled about not being able to help his brother sell his work. Theo was so distraught over Vincent’s death that he died six months later, leaving behind a wife and a very young son who they had named Vincent, Jr. Vincent lived in Holland as a young boy and was a son of a Dutch Reformed Church minister. He wanted to become a missionary and did attempt that, but he was too emotional and gave away all of his own material possessions, feeling so sorry for other people that he could not help anyone else.

When Vincent was twenty-seven years old, he went to stay with his brother in Paris. He painted for nine more years, producing his art. After living in Paris for two years, he moved to Arles, in the southern part of France. He painted with Paul Gauguin at that time, creating many of his landscapes. Vincent realized that he needed help and commit- ted himself to an asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment, where he created many paintings using intense color. In 1890, he left there and went to Auvers-sur-Oise, where his brother Theo had hired a doctor named Dr. Gachet to help make sure that his brother would be able to care for himself. Vincent was living in a small, upstairs apartment above a business establishment at that time. One day, Vincent took his easel and paints and left for a walk outside town, as he had made a habit of doing. He walked down a road and began to set up his easel to paint. Before he went, he had asked the shopkeeper to borrow his gun to shoot at crows. Instead, Vincent shot himself in the stomach, and three days later, he bled to death with his brother at his side (Gilbert and McCarter 24).

Vincent Van Gogh’s sister-in-law became interested in her brother-in-law’s art after her husband, Theo, died, and she decided to do some research. She traveled to where Vincent had worked and gathered up some of the canvases that had been stored in a neighbor’s barn, and Vincent her son and she decided to go to the Dutch government to try to convince them to create a museum for his art. They succeeded, and the Vincent Van Gogh Museum is where many pieces of his work are now located, from his early dark brown and earth-toned works to his late works, which are very bright and colorful.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864–1901 France (French) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was from the family of the counts of Toulouse. He suf- fered throughout his life from a rare bone disease that stunted his capacity to grow at a normal rate. When he was a child, he broke one of his bones in his upper thigh, and he later broke his other upper thigh. This gave him an appearance of being shorter than normal and a subsequent inferiority complex. As an adult, because his legs never grew to be the length of other adults’, he had difficulty walking normally, especially for long distances. Toulouse-Lautrec once painted a self-portrait that showed how the appear- ance of his physical form seemed to be dominated by the unusual proportion between his torso and his legs.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s mother always took a great interest in her son, and when he wished to move to Paris and work as an artist, she became extremely worried about his potential new companions. Some stories say that she sent a bodyguard to live with him for protection. Toulouse-Lautrec, who had to walk with a cane, lived in a Parisian area of nightclubs and bars. He felt more accepted in that environment, and his sur- roundings are evident in his paintings and lithographs. One can only imagine how a mother descended from nobility felt about her son living in such wretched conditions. Toulouse-Lautrec had constant difficulty with his health throughout his life, but his crippling illness did not keep him from his art. He sat for hours in cabarets, theaters, and circuses, composing his drawings in preparation for the prints he created in his studio. Some history books claim that van Gogh met Toulouse-Lautrec in Paris briefly.

When Henri was in his late thirties, he became even more physically inhibited as his medical condition worsened, but he continued to paint and draw. Even though it became even more difficult for him to walk, he was determined to go to the cabarets and draw. Although he himself was unable to dance, he created posters for the Moulin Rouge nightclub. He became known for his ability to produce mass-produced litho- graphs which were hung publicly to advertise upcoming events. At that time, Japanese wood block prints were a popular import. Their simplicity and beautiful design and execution influenced artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and the Impressionists.

A look at Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters makes his style evident, with their strong sil- houettes accompanied by printed words incorporated into his designs. Each work was easy to read from a distance. The positive shapes of dancers combined with a back- ground of lettering created posters that were striking. Toulouse-Lautrec made use of color and line effectively, and his patterns provided exceptional models for other artists involved in advertising design many years down the road. He introduced the concept of poster-making into the realm of the fine arts when the idea of associating advertising and art was unheard of.

During spring 1901, Henri became paralyzed and was taken home to live in one of his family’s estates. He died a few weeks later, with his family at his side. Today Toulouse-Lautrec is considered to have been not only one of the best lithographers of the Impressionists but of the past hundred years.

Henri Matisse 1869–1954 France (French) Henri Matisse’s art has sometimes been compared to children’s paper cutouts. Matisse meant his work to look as if he were trying to simplify his subject matter, whether human figures or plants. During the 1930s, he actually did cut up paper to plan his can- vases. Matisse would paint paper and then rearrange it to create mural-sized composi- tions. When he was ill, toward the end of his life, he sat in a wheelchair and continued to work using cutouts (Gilbert and McCarter 148).

64 Artists and Styles of Art

Matisse was born in Le Cateau, France. Although Henri’s father wanted him to study law, Henri did not want to become an attorney, and at age twenty-one he had an appendicitis attack that helped him make his decision. While he was recovering, his mother gave him some paints; later in his life, Matisse said that his life’s direction had been altered by his bout of appendicitis. When he recovered, he enrolled in the famous Paris art school Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His teacher was Gustave Moreau (Phipps and Wink 336.)

Matisse married a woman named Amelie Parayre, and together they had three chil- dren, all three of whom chose to be professionally trained in art; one became an art dealer in New York City. Pablo Picasso and Matisse were friends for several years and painted some of the same subjects. Some of the same art dealers who sold Picasso’s art works encouraged art collectors to consider purchasing Matisse’s work as well.

Edouard Manet 1832–1883 France (French) Edouard Manet was influenced by the art of Velasquez and Goya when he traveled to Spain. Manet was a son of a wealthy bourgeois family. He registered as a merchant marine as a teenager and entered art school, where he studied for seven years while spending much of his time practicing in the Louvre, where he studied and copied paint- ings to learn his craft.

Manet helped organize artists who had been rejected by official exhibitions in Paris and gave them support. He encouraged them to paint outdoors and to continue to show their work. He also shocked the public when he painted a nude meant to be a parody of a Francesco de Goya painting, except that Manet painted the woman looking directly out at the viewers, something that was completely shocking to critics. Some stories say that the woman may have resembled someone whom the critics rec- ognized, which may have escalated criticism of the work. Nevertheless, Manet’s work received acclaim, although he also received some negative reviews about his painting (Encyclopedia Americana 214).

Kathe Kollwitz 1867–1945 Prussia It is no wonder that Kathe Kollwitz’s art was about children and young men who were in despair. She saw both world wars firsthand, and her grandson and son, both named Peter, were killed in each one of the wars. Kollwitz painted, drew, and made prints of the situation of the helpless mothers who came to her husband’s clinic where she had an artist’s studio.

Kollwitz is now considered an Expressionist for her noteworthy ability to convey feeling and expression through her artistic media. Most of her work was done in black and white, and her major works focused on social and political themes.

Kollwitz was an active and educated woman who was ahead of her time. She has recently been recognized as a brave woman who even in those times made a way for herself to express deep and intense emotions in her remarkable prints.

Kollwitz was born in Konigsberg called Prussia at that time. Her parents allowed her to take art lessons, and she learned to draw at an early age. Kathe considered herself to be more of a printer than a painter, but not until she set up her studio after get- ting married. She had to set up a studio to run the press she needed to produce her prints, and to contain the many materials needed in such a studio, such as a press, ink, tools, plates, and still other equipment. Kollwitz became an excellent printmaker able to produce etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. Because she saw her husband at work,

Important Artists and Individuals 65

helping him on occasion and always closely connected to his work, she made her work reflect the suffering of the families who came to receive medical help. One of her well- known prints shows death seizing a child. Others show the suffering of mothers’ faces over their ill children. Kollwitz felt it her duty to portray the emotions of families when they lost a loved one in the war, which in turn helped her cope with her own grief. She was never able to really get over the feeling of duty she felt about drawing attention to the futility of war. Although she opposed war, she understood it, having lived in and through it. She identified with mothers who brought in their sick children or families who brought in injured soldiers, and she always felt their pain. She was filled with so much emotion that she had to let it out by drawing; she once said that while she drew hurting children she wept. Kollwitz never felt that she could do enough to help at the clinic, so she went to her studio and drew. She was involved in her own way, politically, trying to change the ways people thought by drawing attention to what suffering did to mothers and their families. She once called it her task “to voice the never-ending suf- ferings heaped mountain-high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfill. Work is supposed to relieve you. Did I feel relieved when I made the prints on war and knew that the war would go on raging? Certainly not.” (Gilbert and McCarter 182)

Kollwitz is considered now to be German; however in some books she is still con- sidered from Prussia, which is now part of Germany.

Source: This is from information gathered from the Museum tour in Berlin, Germany Käthe Kollwitz And Berlin‘s Neue Wache Source: http://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/k-the-kollwitz-and-berlin- s-neue-wache/

The Diary of Kathe Kollwitz On a personal level too, Kollwitz’s life—like so many Germans of her generation—was scarred by war. With the outbreak of the First World War, her sons Hans and Peter volunteered for service. Not yet of age, Peter required his parents’ consent to fight, which Kollwitz and her husband duly provided. Peter was killed on October 22, 1914, just months into the conflict, a loss which Kollwitz admitted she never recovered from. She later wrote:

‘I sometimes think, it was then that I gave up my strength. At that moment I became old. Began the walk to the grave. That was the break. The stoop to such a level, that I could never again stand straight’… Kollwitz’s first major recognition was obtained from

her prints of the subject matter pertaining to events that actually happened and she experienced. They were about the Peasant War of 1902– 1908. The prints (from woodcuts in black-and-white shapes) reflected images about how the poor were being oppressed.

Source: World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 11 (New York: Scott Foster, 1992), 364

66 Artists and Styles of Art

Diego Rivera 1886–1957 Mexico (Mexican) Rivera was born in Guanajuato City, Gto. Mexico. He lived and worked in the twentieth century and was considered controversial for disagreeing with the Mexican clergy. He portrayed Mexican life and was considered radical because of his political persuasion.

Rivera was a muralist who painted about the lives of the many underprivileged and hardworking people of the lower classes. He was considered a social and political painter and at times had difficulty obtaining support to have his work shown because of his controversial subject matter.

The working man in the assembly line in the Ford plant in Detroit, Michigan, can be seen in the fresco wall painting that was painted at the Detroit Institute of Arts. In that fresco, an entire day in the life of assembly plant workers at the Ford plant was painted in the fresco, demonstrating how the workers made cars using steel, process- ing and drilling the metal. Even the punching of the time clock and lunch break were included in the large wall scene.

Rivera’s famous murals in San Francisco and Mexico City include Escuela de la ciu- dad, La Historia de la Cardiología, Hombre en una Encrucijada, Desembarco de Españoles en Veracruz, and El Buen Gobierno which, though enormous, were still of high-quality craftsmanship. Rivera married the famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (Gilbert and McCarter 149, 196).

Vasily Kandinsky 1866–1944 Russia (Russian) Vasily Kandinsky was a law professor at a Russian university before he became an artist. He was part of a group of artists known as the Blue Riders, who used color in a nonrepresen- tional manner. Kandinsky’s paintings were meant to represent ideas not from the material world. His paintings were created from the use of the elements of art: colors, lines, and shapes. His paintings have been considered some of the first abstract artwork to have been created to influence the art world during the early twentieth century. His artistic creations directly affected the art world and helped instigate the theories that formed around the ideas about how sounds could be seen through colors and lines and how abstract shapes could be considered art. Kandinsky felt that painting colors and abstract shapes could be a form of universal communication, but that was not an accepted concept at the time. Scientific findings such as the splitting of the atom made a big enough impression upon Kandinsky to give him the courage to overcome feelings of obligation to represent the visible and obvious material world (Phipps and Wink 335). Kandinsky, who has been credited as one of the first abstract artists, died in 1944.

Grant Wood 1891–1942 American Grant Wood was born in Anamosa, Iowa, but he lived mainly in Cedar Rap- ids, Iowa. After studying at the Academic Julian in Paris in 1933, he began to paint in the Regionalist style in the midwestern part of the United States, working with close attention to sharp detail. Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa. His best- known works are American Gothic and Spring in Town.

“Grant Wood was born on a farm near the small town of Anamosa, in 1891. By painting simple scenes of the land and people he knew best, he helped create an impor- tant, all-American style of art. Grant Wood’s paintings show the love he had for the people and customs of the Midwestern United States. Grant Wood particularly loved the farmland of Iowa. While growing up, he enjoyed feeling the soft, warm soil between

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his toes as he walked barefoot through the fields. In his painting Young Corn it seems like the round, friendly hills are protecting the farmer and his children while they work in their fields.

“Grant Wood showed an interest in art at a very early age. He often drew pic- tures with burnt sticks his mother gave him from her stove. Even though Grant drew pictures every chance he got, everyone thought he’d grow up to be a farmer like his father. Grant seemed to enjoy his farm chores, and had his own goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys. When Grant was ten years old, a very sad thing happened to him. His father died, and his mother found that it was too difficult to keep the farm running. She decided to move her family to the nearby city of Cedar Rapids. It was a hard move for Grant. He missed his farm pets, and felt out of place at the new city school. Some kids even made fun of him. Because of his good sense of humor and his talent for drawing, things eventually got better for Grant. In high school he made friends and was always busy working on projects, like designing scenery for school plays and drawing pictures for the school paper and yearbook. After he graduated in 1910, Grant did a lot of differ- ent things. He took art classes, taught art, made jewelry, learned carpentry, decorated people’s houses and cared for his mother and his sister Nan.

“One day, while Grant was looking for something interesting to paint, he discov- ered a farmhouse with an unusual window. The arch-shaped window was based on a style of European architecture from the Middle Ages called Gothic architecture. Grant liked the contrast of a European window on an American farmhouse. After he made sketches of the house, Grant looked for just the right people to go with it. He thought his family dentist and his own sister, Nan, would be perfect for the farmer and his daughter. Grant entered American Gothic in a big show at the Art Institute of Chicago, and won the third place prize. People all over America loved the newspaper pictures they saw of it. Soon, Grant’s paintings started to become very popular. One reason for this was that many people felt Grant’s art was easier to understand than a lot of the new modern art being done. Another reason Grant’s paintings became so popular was that they came along during a rough time in history known as the Great Depression.”

Source: http://www.grantwoodartgallery.org/grantwood.htm

Andy Warhol 1928–1987 Pennsylvania (American) Andy Pitts- Warhol’s real name was Andy Warhola. He graduated from a high school in burgh and went to Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He earned his BFA in 1949 and became employed by Glamour magazine but was considered controversial. He received attention in the film industry for some of his off-the-wall ideas. His film about a person sleeping gained him artistic recognition, and he continued to make films and cre- ate art. In 1968 he was shot and severely injured, but he recovered from the incident.

When he was young, his father died and his mother and brother had to move to an upstairs apartment which he later described as very dismal and depressing. He was not a healthy child. In an interview, Andy related how his older brother would come home and open a can of tomato soup for his lunch during the winter months for him, when he had to stay home alone. With his father dead, his mother had to stay at work. He remembered how lonely he was but how important the kindness behind that can of soup was to him every day when his brother rushed home from school.

Warhol was a talented artist who drew and worked on perfecting his skill at print- making. He began using ink and silk to produce silk screens. Warhol produced silk screens of Marilyn Monroe, a film icon who rapidly rose to fame. The images he created of Monroe are iconic, as well (Fichner-Rathus 7).

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Warhol also did a series of silk screens of Campbell’s soup cans. He may have been drawing attention to the way people sometimes see the package more than the content, or he may have been drawing people’s attention to how so much of society is driven by the packaging of products. Could it be that sometimes the package is what sells the product more than the product itself? Was Andy Warhol drawing attention to the way that our society had become almost like one row after another of the same things?

In 1987, Andy Warhol died of a serious complication following a ruptured spleen, at age fifty-nine.

Pablo Picasso 1881–1973 Malaga, Spain (Spanish) Born in the city of Malaga in the Andalusia region of Spain, Pablo Picasso was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López. Picasso’s family was part of the middle class. His father was a college professor who taught Pablo to draw and paint at an early age. When Picasso was in his teenage years, his father was a painter and an instructor who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. After studying art in Madrid, in 1900 Picasso made his first trip to Paris, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob. Jacob helped Picasso learn French, opening to him the world of French (particularly Parisian) literature, which he incorporated into much of his artwork.

Picasso’s work has been divided by art historians into certain stages, most commonly accepted as the Blue (1901–1904), Rose (1905–1907), African (1908–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919) periods.

Pablo Picasso was influenced by his father and his entire family. When he was in his early teens, his beloved sister died—something he later described as having an immense influence upon his life. Picasso gave few interviews, saying that attempting to explain his paintings would be like barking up the wrong tree. (He said it in Spanish, however; something is probably lost through translation.)

Picasso was so upset by his sister’s death of malaria that he said later that when he painted a bull and young women together, he was depicting his memory of her terrible death and how helpless she had been to protect herself against the epidemic that spread through his town when he was a child. He once said that he had prayed that she would be spared. He could not understand how such a beautiful girl could die, so young and beautiful. To Picasso, the bull represented the power that left him no control over what happened. He never forgot how beautiful his sister was, and throughout his long life he etched the bull and innocent young women.

For Picasso, the bull also represented the horror of war, agony, and despair in other works, the symbol of the death, disease, despair, and helplessness he saw and felt. It may have been represented in other ways in his art in various forms and styles throughout his many phases. Picasso lived a very long life and has been credited with more paint- ings than any other painter in the twentieth century. When he died, he did not leave a will, but Jacqueline, his widow, was still alive. A museum was built to his honor in Paris, France, and much of his work was placed there, in the Picasso Museum.

Salvador Dali 1904–1989 Figueras, Gerona, Spain (Spanish) Salvador Dali was born in Figueres in Catalonia, Spain. He was eighty-four years old when he died in 1989. He was considered to be a painter and printer who did mainly etchings, lithographs, and some engravings. He also did many murals on walls. He was also known as an extremely innovative and creative filmmaker from Spain.

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Dali grew up in a small town in the northern area of Spain and lived there through out

- his youth. In 1927, at the age of twenty-three, he went to Paris, where he met artists

such as Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso, whose influence on his artistic career would help him become even more committed to being an artist who painted and drew from his imagination but yet who used recognizable imagery. His images were based on realistic objects to begin with, but by the end of his composition his work had evolved into many shapes and morphed to realms enough to make the head spin. As the years went on, Dali would become known as one of the leading Surrealists for his use of ideas drawn up from deep within his subconscious.

According to Milo Wold and Edmund Cykler in Music and Art in the Western World, Dali’s style was inspired by the developments of Freudian psychology and linked closely with post–World War I developments and research associated with new methods of dream interpretation. The style of Surrealism that Dali created had a unique appearance and was difficult to explain, and Dali was not known to verbally explain his work. He once remarked to a reporter he didn’t want to say much about his art, because if he had intended to explain his work, he would have become a poet instead of a painter.

At the age of ten Dali was already drawing realistically. He entered the famous Royal Academy of Art in Madrid, but an instructor was not pleased with his political views and became upset with his mannerisms. Dali was accused of causing other stu- dents to question authority.

Dali was expelled for inciting students and accused of creating an atmosphere that caused other students to be disruptive. He was ticketed and thrown in jail for a short period of time (Phipps and Wink 334).

His sentence was considered to be valid because Dali’s actions were prompted by beliefs different from the authorities’ and because his behavior was considered overly eccentric.

Two of Dali’s most memorable paintings are his renderings of limp watches and mountains entitled The Persistence of Memory and his interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Dali’s different interpretations and alternate viewpoints made him a leader in the Surrealistic movement through his paintings, murals, and many exquisite prints. He was a versatile and leading twentieth-century artist (Phipps and Wink 334).

Louis Armstrong 1900–1971 United States (American) Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Stories say that Armstrong started learning to play the cornet when he was five or six years old, picking up leftover firewood when riding on a cart and playing an old bugle. He worked, trying to make money, and dropped out of school when he was in elementary school. He always liked listening to music and wanted to play the cornet, an instrument similar to the trumpet that plays the same notes but is slightly shorter. He was able to earn $5.00 and bought a cornet at a pawn shop. He did not take lessons but taught himself instead. According to Dennis Sporre’s instructor’s manual, one New Year’s Eve Armstrong shot off a gun into the air to celebrate. He was picked up by authorities and sent to reform school. Later he described how at the reformatory he was able to learn to play the cornet and take les- sons. He had been upset to be sent to the reform school, but in the long run, he said, he learned a lot, and had he not been picked up that night, he might never have been able to learn to play the cornet the way he did.

Armstrong had a style of his own that made him great, and popular around the world. In interviews later in his life, he talked about how a bad incident turned into something that became a turning point in his life. He learned to read in reform school, and later said how important that education was to his life.

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In 1922 he left for Chicago with his cornet in one hand and a trout sandwich that his mother had made for him in the other. He was off to change the world of music, and he changed the world of jazz. He had a major influence on other players and musicians and made a lasting impact on the way musicians improvise.

He became a world traveler and an ambassador of sorts, spreading American ideas to the world. People across the globe knew who Louis Armstrong was. He had a style of his own with its variations of rhythm and pitch. He popularized scat singing, alter- nating between lyrics and syllables. He played the trumpet so well that he caused other trumpet players to have to compete with him. He created new trends in jazz all over the country and eventually the world (Sporre, 21; World Book Encyclopedia).

Georgia O’Keeffe 1887–1986 American United States (American) Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin. Her artwork was first shown by a friend of hers to a photographer whom O’Keeffe eventually married. According to one story, O’Keeffe sent some of her drawings to a friend, writing that they were not to be shown to anyone. But her friend showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, a successful photogra- pher with a studio. A year later, in 1917, Stieglitz organized a one-person exhibit for O’Keeffe. The artist found that her painting style was more original when she painted in the Southwest—and she certainly had a unique style of her own. One of her trade- marks was taking a flower or object and painting a section of it at an enlarged scale. In 1924, Alfred and Georgia were married. Stieglitz spent most of his time in New York City, and O’Keeffe spent most of her time in New Mexico (Gilbert and McCarter 90).

Sir Alfred Hitchcock 1934–1980 London, England (British) Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in London, England. In 1934, he moved to California, where he began making films. North by Northwest, made in 1959, was a suc- cessful film about a twice-divorced, sleekly handsome debonair mistaken for someone else. Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason starred. The famous scenes of the crop duster airplane swooping down upon Cary Grant in a field out in a barren area with no crops to be dusted is a classic movie moment, as is the well-known chase scene involv- ing the sculptures of the presidents of the United States at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota. Psycho was made in 1960; Anthony Perkins played a demented son who operated a motel. The Birds was made in 1954. The Man Who Knew Too Much was made in 1934.

In each film Hitchcock placed himself somewhere in a scene, even if only for half a minute, as when he got on a bus at the beginning of North by Northwest. He was known for his ability to create suspense, making an audience enjoy even the emotions of terror. Hitchcock died of natural causes on April 29, 1980, in Los Angeles, California. Shortly before his death, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

Jackson Pollock 1912–1956 Cody, Wyoming (American) Jackson Pollock was in his prime at only forty-four years old when he died in an automobile accident. He was born in Cody, Wyoming, the youngest boy in the family of a rancher who moved around quite a bit in his life. Pollock had a somewhat troubled youth, during which the problems that would eventually cause his death from an auto- mobile accident first started. The main problem seems to have been alcoholism and his family’s movement from place to place.

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At age eighteen, Pollock moved to New York and studied with Thomas Hart Benton, a regionalist painter at the Art Students League. He was hired during the Great Depres- sion to work for a federally funded program in which artists were hired to paint murals in public buildings. He managed to produce one major work suitable for installation approximately every six weeks. He realized at that time that he had to do something about his drinking problem, and he sought help through psychotherapy.

Pollock met another artist whom he would marry, named Lee Krasner, and they exhibited their art. The years between 1948 and 1952 were when most of the paintings known as his “drip” abstract paintings were accomplished. Pollock experimented with using lines and throwing streams of paint from buckets to create lines on canvas that failed to become shapes. Those lines intersected and still remained lines. The idea was to play with his own subconscious feelings. Some of his canvases were very big, and he actually walked onto the canvas and threw paint down in streams of lines onto the surface. The finished product was a mixture of several colors of lines in layers of textures. They were vibrant and full of patterns that seemed to some people to go against every definition of art they had ever known. To Pollock this was expression, and since his death his paintings have become known as “action painting.” His drip paintings are his most important works and their style has been called Abstract Expressionism. Pollock certainly shook up the world of art. His art may still be difficult for some individuals to understand today unless they realize that art can be an expression of a time and place and that in art lines and colors can be used to create art for the sake of lines and colors (Gilbert and McCarter 53).

Anna Marie Holmes Canada (Canadian) Anna Marie Holmes was the first Canadian-born ballerina to perform in Russia and was able to perform during an era when it was very difficult to be invited to that part of the world. She was invited to dance with the Kirov Ballet (www.balletadriatico.com). She was able to travel to Cuba and dance there as well. She was in demand as a dancer for several years until she became a choreographer and teacher in the early 1990s with the Boston Ballet.

Anna was married to David Holmes while living in Winnipeg, Canada, during the 1970s, when Norman McLaren, with the Canadian Film Board, was filming experimen- tal films on dance and creating educational documentaries. David and Anna created the documentary Tour en l’air which proved to be an informative documentary about the lives of ballet dancers that showed the ups and downs of their way of life.

Their practice and devotion to their art was evident. The entire hour was extremely interesting and informative for students of humanities to watch. At the end of the documentary the filmmaker produced a short film that received international acclaim, Springwater. The musical score was slowed down, and David was the choreographer. The ballet dance was their original dance, and they took it to several countries on tour.

Zubin Mehta India (Indian) Born in Bombay, India, Zubin Mehta grew up in a musical environment. His father, Mehli Mehta, founded the Bombay Symphony. Despite this musical influence, Zubin’s initial field of study was in medicine. At the age of eighteen, he abandoned his medical career to attend the Academy of Music in Vienna. Seven years later, he conducted both the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. From 1961 to 1967 he was music director of both New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Montreal Symphonies. He was appointed music director for life of the Israel Philharmonic in 1981.

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Counting concerts, recordings, and tours, Zubin has conducted over 1,600 per- formances on five continents with his extraordinary orchestra. Since 1986, he has also acted as music advisor and chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the summer festival in Florence, Italy.

In 1978, Maestro Mehta became the music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. During his thirteen years in New York, he conducted over 1,000 concerts, holding the position longer than any music director in the orchestra’s modern history. One of Zubin’s many highlights occurred in 1988, when the orchestra embarked on a ten-day tour of the Soviet Union that culminated in an historic joint concert with the State Symphony Orchestra of the Soviet Ministry of Culture in Moscow’s Gorky Park. In May 1991, the maestro concluded his tenure in New York with three performances celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Carnegie Hall, followed by a series of perfor- mances of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Twice in 1992 Zubin returned as guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic: first for the world premier of Olivier Messiaen’s last orchestral work, Eclairs sur l’Au Dela, and later in the gala A Philharmonic Celebration: 150th Anniversary Concert.

Frank Lloyd Wright 1869–1959 United States (American) Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the theater center in Dallas, Texas, and he developed the idea for a mile-high skyscraper. But the most well-known residence that he built was the one for the Kaufmann fam- ily as a weekend house named Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pennsylvania. Today, it is a museum. Fallingwater was built in 1936 and has a waterfall built into the topography of the landscape, with the structure’s architectural plan based on the form of the can- tilever.

From 1915–1922, Wright designed the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo which withstood the earthquakes (World Book Encyclopedia).

Henry Moore 1898–1986 England (British) Henry Moore was born in Castleford, England, in 1898. As a student attending the Royal College of Art in London, he became interested in art from the Prehistoric Era and visited Stonehenge, near Salisbury, England. Stonehenge intrigued him at that time and stuck in his mind throughout his entire career, influencing him in two ways. First, he wanted his work to have an evident connection with ancient civilizations, and second, he wanted to be able to do large-scale pieces (interview, July 1979). In his art history classes, he studied African sculpture and Mayan art from the Yucatan Peninsula. Both styles of art were an influence upon his own; he was interested in their forms and shapes, and both are evident in his own sculptures. His selection of organic shapes was purposeful, designed to reflect their natural beauty as well as his interest in the art of the Mayan and African cultures. He collected wood scraps and stones for use when he made models as trials for sculptures before deciding which ones he would enlarge. His large sculptures were executed and eventually caste in bronze if he had the funds to make a finished product. Because he did not have the funds to cast in bronze until late in life (an expensive operation), he had to wait for commissions.

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In 1936 a work in elm wood of a reclining figure reflected how he had become inter- ested in using nature as his inspiration and as a way to find examples for his surfaces. Some critics said that he used caves and hillsides and cliffs as his inspiration for sculpt- ing during that part of his career (World Book Encyclopedia).

Henry Moore valued the art of ancient cultures and wanted to tie the past to the present. As he progressed in his career and his work was increasingly shown in exhib- its, he became more successful. He wanted to do larger works so that he could work in bronze. He was able to cast large pieces of bronze outside the Lincoln Center in New York City in 1965, which was a boost to his career. In the early 1970s he was given a commission to erect a large bronze titled the Dallas Piece for the Dallas City Hall in Dallas, Texas, which was an enlargement of a group called a vertebrae series. The Dallas Piece is one of the largest pieces he did. The Sheep Sculpture, which was placed behind his studio in England, was one of his later works and is known to have been one of his personal favorites.

Interview with Henry Moore I have always been interested in reading about the lives of artists. When I was a student, some of my art history professors told stories about artists that sounded so real it was as if they had met the artist about whom they were lecturing. I was so interested in what they were saying that if I had not known better, I would have thought they had—as if they had been friends with artists who lived 400 years earlier, with Michelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci.

From those talks, I realized that when I spoke to my students, I wanted to be able to relay important and correct information about artists’ lives that was current and also exciting.

It occurred to me that there was still a very famous artist alive with whom I could possibly talk so that I could share what I learned from him with my students. For that reason, I wrote Henry Moore a letter. Surprisingly he wrote me back, and my husband and I planned a trip to his studio in July 1979. We took photographs, toured his prop- erty, saw his studio, and talked with him.

I opened up the interview by thanking him for allowing us to visit him at his home. I told him that I thought that he had a beautiful place and that the grounds with their plants and flowers were lovely. He replied, “The flowers and the plants are all done by my wife. She does all of that herself.”

I told him that I taught and that my students would greatly appreciate being able to see photographs of his studio so they would be able to see how an artist works and comes up with his ideas.

He said that he taught for a number of years. I asked if he was glad to be able to finally be a full-time artist and not have to teach, but he said that he never gave up teach- ing and that he was still mentoring some students.

He said he was interested in meeting me since I was a teacher, he having taught so many years, and that teaching was something that would always be very important to him.

He asked me if I had been able to talk to Malcom who had been working on his enlargement piece, commissioned by Raymond Nasher of Dallas, Texas. We talked about that piece and a few other works he had been commissioned to do.

I asked him which works he felt the best about and he mentioned the Dallas Piece and the Sheep Sculpture. The model of his Dallas Piece, called a Marquette, was in his studio. He told me about it and how he came up with the idea (it came from a collection of bones). He also told me about the Sheep Sculpture and why he had placed it on his own

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property. He had purchased a strip of property and decided to make the sculpture out of bronze, a hard surface, while making the surface appear as soft as a sheep’s wool.

He also talked about his youth, and about how he was influenced by World War II. He was caught in the Underground (subway) in London overnight when London was bombed, and he sketched scenes of the terrified people. He said that his drawings were sold by Kenneth Clark, an American art dealer, which is what helped him become recognized as an international artist. He was able to start making a small amount of income from some of his art, which allowed him to move to Perry Green. He said that he first rented part of the house where he lived. Eventually he was able to buy the house, and he retired from teaching.

At the end of the interview, he explained that he always wanted to sculpt big pieces of bronze—that for him was the measure of his success. He said that the Dallas Piece was one of his large pieces, and that he was going to continue to try to work until he was unable to do any more work. He explained that he had several Marquettes in his studio ready to be made into enlargements.

Mr. Moore was very thoughtful and gracious, and a humble, nice person. He showed me his drawings and said that he had collected way too many things. He said that he was a very lucky person, because he never really felt as if he ever had to work, because to him, art was just such a great life. He said that being an artist is like being on a perpetual vacation, doing something you enjoy all the time. My husband and I thanked him for the interview, and I told him how much it meant to me to actually meet him, and to have had an opportunity to now be able to tell my students I had met a great artist. He stood up and said, “I know what it is like, because when I was young, I got to meet Picasso.”

Christo and Jeanne Claude Christo born in Bulgaria Jeanne Claude born in Morrocco

Christo Javacheff, an American artist of Bulgarian birth, studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia (1953–1956), after which he spent six months in Prague. There he encountered Russian Constructivism, which impressed him with its concern for monumental visionary structures. Like his contemporaries, Christo rebelled against abstraction, seeing it as too theoretical. Christo began by wrapping everyday objects, including tin cans and bottles, stacks of maga- zines, furniture, automobiles, or various objects such as Wrapped Luggage Rack (1962; New York, Jeanne-Claude Christo). From 1961 he collaborated with his wife, Jeanne-Claude [née de Guillebon] (b Casablanca, 13 June 1935). Industrial materials, usually polypropylene sheeting or canvas tarpaulins held in place with irregularly tied ropes, were used for the wrappings. The use of fabric sometimes involved wrapping an object.

Jeanne Claude (1935–2009) Jeanne Claude spent her younger years in and out of many different schools. She was a fast learner, but her behavior held her back. Her mother’s fourth husband, however, helped change her life, and she adapted to a more stable lifestyle. Her mother was the first female officer to enter liberated Paris with Free French forces. Her mother and father were married illegally on an army base. After their separation, her mother gave birth to Jeanne-Claude at 17. Jeanne Claude died in 2009 from complications of a brain aneurysm.

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Both Jeanne-Claude and her husband were born June 13, 1925. They worked on projects such as the Valley Curtain in Colorado, which was a massive piece of orange fabric that hung between two mountains. After that, they went to California to erect a fence of white nylon fabric about twenty-five miles in length over ranchers’ proper- ties and then into the Pacific Ocean. The fence was white, a conductor of light, and represented what fences do, such as building boundaries. It was up less than two weeks. A big project called the Mastaba has been attempted in New York City, Houston, the Netherlands, and the United Arab of Emirates. The mastaba has been an ongoing idea of Christo and Jeanne-Claude for over twenty years. The word mastaba means “bench” in Arabic. The shape of a mastaba is somewhat like a pyramid’s trapezoidal shape, and the way it has been drawn in Christo’s plan has many multicolored stainless steel oil bar- rels in it, making the shape of the mastaba. Christo and Jeanne-Claude spend their own foundation’s finances and by the sale of his art have already raised much of the funding for the approximately $1 million project. Together they have created other projects, which wrapped some islands off the coast of Florida, a portion of a beach in Australia, and part of a city block in New York City. They also built a gate along a pathway in Central Park, New York City, using a wooden framework and orange fabric. All these projects were released at the same time; the gates were up for less than three weeks. The idea of New York City as the gateway to the world may have been part of the gates’ underlying meaning. What other ideas do gates represent to you?