Friday, December 12, 2008

Study Video # 3



If you wish to make this full-size, you can click on this YouTube version...

Thursday, December 11, 2008

The Billy Goats Gruff (or The Three Billy Goats Gruff)

The Billy Goats Gruff

Once upon a time there were three billy goats called Gruff. In the winter they lived in a barn in the valleyspring came they , but when the longed to travel up to the mountains to eat the lush sweet grass.

On their way to the mountains the three Billy Goats Gruff had to cross a rushing river. But there was only one bridge across it, made of wooden planks. And underneath the bridge there lived a terrible, ugly, one-eyed troll.

Nobody was allowed to cross the bridge without the troll’s permission - and nobody ever got permission. He always ate them up.

The smallest Billy Goat Gruff was first to reach the bridge. Trippity-trop, trippity-trop went his little hooves as he trotted over the wooden planks. Ting-tang, ting-tang went the little bell round his neck.

"Who’s that trotting over my bridge?" growled the troll from under the planks.
"Billy Goat Gruff," squeaked the smallest goat in his little voice. "I’m only going up to the mountain to eat the sweet spring grass."

"Oh no, you’re not!" said the troll. "I’m going to eat you for breakfast!"

"Oh no, please Mr Troll," pleaded the goat. "I’m only the smallest Billy Goat Gruff.
I’m much too tiny for you to eat, and I wouldn’t taste very good. Why don’t you wait for my brother, the second Billy Goat Gruff? He’s much bigger than me and would be much more tasty."

The troll did not want to waste his time on a little goat if there was a bigger and better one to eat. "All right, you can cross my bridge," he grunted. "Go and get fatter on the mountain and I’ll eat you on your way back!"

So the smallest Billy Goat Gruff skipped across to the other side.

The troll did not have to wait long for the second Billy Goat Gruff. Clip-clop, clip-clop went his hooves as he clattered over the wooden planks. Ding-dong, ding-dong went the bell around his neck.

"Who’s that clattering across my bridge?" screamed the troll, suddenly appearing from under the planks.

"Billy Goat Gruff," said the second goat in his middle-sized voice. "I’m going up to the mountain to eat the lovely spring grass."

"Oh no you’re not!" said the troll. "I’m going to eat you for breakfast."

"Oh, no, please," said the second goat. "I may be bigger than the first Billy Goat Gruff, but I’m much smaller than my brother, the third Billy Goat Gruff. Why don’t you wait for him? He would be much more of a meal than me."

The troll was getting very hungry, but he did not want to waste his appetite on a middle-sized goat if there was an even bigger one to come. "All right, you can cross my bridge," he rumbled. "Go and get fatter on the mountain and I’ll eat you on your way back!"

So the middle-sized Billy Goat Gruff scampered across to the other side.
The troll did not have to wait long for the third Billy Goat Gruff. Tromp-tramp, tromp-tramp went his hooves as he stomped across the wooden planks. Bong-bang, bong-bang went the big bell round his neck.

"Who’s that stomping over my bridge?" roared the troll, resting his chin on his hands.

"Billy Goat Gruff," said the third goat in a deep voice. "I’m going up to the mountain to eat the lush spring grass."

"Oh no you’re not," said the troll as he clambered up on to the bridge. "I’m going to eat you for breakfast!"

"That’s what you think," said the biggest Billy Goat Gruff. Then he lowered his horns, galloped along the bridge and butted the ugly troll. Up, up, up went the troll into the air... then down, down, down into the rushing river below. He disappeared below the swirling waters, and was drowned.

"So much for his breakfast," thought the biggest Billy Goat Gruff. "Now what about mine!" And he walked in triumph over the bridge to join his two brothers on the mountain pastures. From then on anyone could cross the bridge whenever they liked - thanks to the three Billy Goats Gruff.

Wikipedia information

Three Billy Goats Gruff (Norwegian: De tre bukkene Bruse) is a famous Norwegian fairy tale in which three goats cross a bridge, under which is a fearsome troll who wants to eat them.[1] The fairy tale was collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr. It has an "eat-me-when-I'm-fatter" plot (Aarne-Thompson type 122E).

The story introduces three male goats named Gruff of varying size and age, sometimes identified in the story as youngster, father and grandfather, but more often they are described as brothers. There is no grass left for them nearest where they live, so they must cross a river to go a "sæter" (a summer farm in the hills) "to make themselves fat", but the only way across is by a bridge and it is guarded by a fearsome troll who eats any who pass that way. The youngest goat, knowing nothing of this, crosses the bridge and is threatened by the troll but is spared when he tells the troll that his brothers are larger and more gratifying as a feast. The middle goat sees that the youngest one has crossed and reaches the conclusion that the bridge must be safe after all, but when he crosses and the troll challenges him, he too tells him of his eldest brother. When the eldest and largest of them attempts to cross, the troll comes out to seize him but is gored by his horns and knocked into the river. From that time on the bridge is safe, and all three goats are able to go to the rich fields around the summer farm in the hills.

The tale is, essentially, a tale of mind over matter and good against evil. The first two goats save their own lives by using their wits. It could also be said they act somewhat rashly and carelessly in the first place by crossing paths with a troll and then afterwards by putting their eldest brother at risk by telling the troll to wait for him instead. Ultimately, the eldest goat, who is older, stronger and more intelligent than both the younger goats and the troll, comes out as the story's hero.
Another perspective is that the protagonist is the troll and that the moral is to accept a good deal, rather than to wait for a better one.

Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin

Once there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the king, and in order to make himself appear important he said to him, "I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold."

     The king said to the miller, "That is an art which pleases me well, if your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her to-morrow to my palace, and I will put her to the test."

     And when the girl was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a reel, and said, "Now set to work, and if by to-morrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die."

     Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and left her in it alone. So there sat the poor miller's daughter, and for the life of her could not tell what to do, she had no idea how straw could be spun into gold, and she grew more and more frightened, until at last she began to weep.

     But all at once the door opened, and in came a little man, and said, "Good evening, mistress miller, why are you crying so?"

     "Alas," answered the girl, "I have to spin straw into gold, and I do not know how to do it."

     "What will you give me," said the manikin, "if I do it for you?"

     "My necklace," said the girl.

     The little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was full, then he put another on, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the second was full too. And so it went on until the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels were full of gold.

     By daybreak the king was already there, and when he saw the gold he was astonished and delighted, but his heart became only more greedy. He had the miller's daughter taken into another room full of straw, which was much larger, and commanded her to spin that also in one night if she valued her life. The girl knew not how to help herself, and was crying, when the door opened again, and the little man appeared, and said, "What will you give me if I spin that straw into gold for you?"
< 2 >

     "The ring on my finger," answered the girl.

     The little man took the ring, again began to turn the wheel, and by morning had spun all the straw into glittering gold.

     The king rejoiced beyond measure at the sight, but still he had not gold enough, and he had the miller's daughter taken into a still larger room full of straw, and said, "You must spin this, too, in the course of this night, but if you succeed, you shall be my wife."

     Even if she be a miller's daughter, thought he, I could not find a richer wife in the whole world.

     When the girl was alone the manikin came again for the third time, and said, "What will you give me if I spin the straw for you this time also?"

     "I have nothing left that I could give," answered the girl.

     "Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child."

     Who knows whether that will ever happen, thought the miller's daughter, and, not knowing how else to help herself in this strait, she promised the manikin what he wanted, and for that he once more spun the straw into gold.

     And when the king came in the morning, and found all as he had wished, he took her in marriage, and the pretty miller's daughter became a queen.

     A year after, she brought a beautiful child into the world, and she never gave a thought to the manikin. But suddenly he came into her room, and said, "Now give me what you promised."

     The queen was horror-struck, and offered the manikin all the riches of the kingdom if he would leave her the child. But the manikin said, "No, something alive is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world."

     Then the queen began to lament and cry, so that the manikin pitied her.

     "I will give you three days, time," said he, "if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child."

     So the queen thought the whole night of all the names that she had ever heard, and she sent a messenger over the country to inquire, far and wide, for any other names that there might be. When the manikin came the next day, she began with Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, and said all the names she knew, one after another, but to every one the little man said, "That is not my name."
< 3 >

     On the second day she had inquiries made in the neighborhood as to the names of the people there, and she repeated to the manikin the most uncommon and curious. Perhaps your name is Shortribs, or Sheepshanks, or Laceleg, but he always answered, "That is not my name."

     On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, "I have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, where the fox and the hare bid each other good night, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon one leg, and shouted -

     'To-day I bake, to-morrow brew,
     the next I'll have the young queen's child.
     Ha, glad am I that no one knew
     that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.'"

     You may imagine how glad the queen was when she heard the name. And when soon afterwards the little man came in, and asked, "Now, mistress queen, what is my name?"

     At first she said, "Is your name Conrad?"

     "No."

     "Is your name Harry?"

     "No."

     "Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?"

     "The devil has told you that! The devil has told you that," cried the little man, and in his anger he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two.

Wikipedia Information

Rumpelstiltskin is a character in a fairy tale of the same name that originated in Germany (where he is known as Rumpelstilzchen). The tale was collected by the Brothers Grimm, who first published it in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales. It was subsequently revised in later editions until the final version was published in 1857.

The story has been retold in other countries, sometimes with the main character's name changing completely; Tom Tit Tot in England (from English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs), Päronskaft (meaning "pear stalk") in Sweden and Martinko Klingáč in Slovakia.

Plot synopsis
In order to make himself appear more important, a miller/commoner lied to the king that his daughter could spin straw into gold. The king called for the girl, shut her in a tower room with straw and a spinning wheel, and demanded that she spin the straw into gold by morning, for three nights, or be executed. Some versions say that if she failed, she would be skewered and then fricasseed like a pig, while others take a less graphic approach and say that the girl is locked in the dungeon forever. She had given up all hope, when a dwarf appeared in the room and spun straw into gold for her in return for her necklace; then again the following night for her ring. On the third night, when she had nothing with which to reward him, the strange creature spun straw into gold for a promise that the girl's first-born child would become his.

The king was so impressed that he let the miller's daughter marry his son, the prince, but when their first child was born, the dwarf returned to claim his payment: "Now give me what you promised". The queen was frightened and offered him all the wealth she had if she could keep the child. The dwarf refused but finally agreed to give up his claim to the child if the queen could guess his name in three days. At first she failed, but before the second night, her messenger overheard the dwarf hopping about his fire and singing. While there are many variations in this song, the 1886 translation by Lucy Crane reads

"To-day do I bake, to-morrow I brew,
The day after that the queen's child comes in;
And oh! I am glad that nobody knew
That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!"[1]

When the dwarf came to the queen on the third day and she revealed his name, Rumpelstiltskin lost his bargain. In the 1812 edition of the Brothers Grimm tales, Rumpelstiltskin then "ran away angrily, and never came back". The ending was revised in a final 1857 edition to a more gruesome version where Rumpelstiltskin "in his rage drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized the left foot with both hands and then took his left foot and tore himself in two." Other versions have Rumpelstiltskin driving his right foot so far into the ground that he creates a chasm and falls into it, never to be seen again. In the oral version originally collected by the brothers Grimm, Rumpelstiltskin flies out of the window on a cooking ladle (Heidi Anne Heiner).

The story of Rumpelstiltskin is an example of Aarne and Thompson's folklore type 500 (The Name of the Helper; see links below). Other fairy tale themes in the story include the Impossible Task, the Hard Bargain, the Changeling Child, and, above all, the Secret Name.
Rumpelstiltskin is most commonly interpreted as a cautionary tale against bragging (compare with the concept of hubris in Greek mythology), but in this case not the miller himself but rather his daughter is punished for his lies. An alternative explanation is that the tale could have been meant to teach women the importance of performing a supporting role in their later marriage. The gift of spinning straw into gold is seen here as a metaphor for the value of household skills. Indeed, the king in this tale does not seem to be interested in the girl besides her alleged magical capabilities — even though her beauty is mentioned in passing — and she exists only to bring him riches and bear his children.
Because of Rumpelstiltskin's odd name, magical powers involving gold and attempted theft of a human child, some critics have also interpreted the story in the context of medieval German anti-semitism. [2]
Specific analysis as related to Secret Name is the idea we cannot banish problems that plague us until they are properly identified for what they are. Knowing the name of the problem is understanding the problem.
The dwarf's demand for the girl's first-born child probably has remnants of older legends which held that malignant sprites and goblins would steal unattended babies and replace them with a child (or "changeling") of their own.[3] (Similar tales exist about trolls as well, though their motives were generally seen as selfish rather than unpleasant, in that they supposedly found some of their own children too humanoid to exist among them.) However, tales like these in themselves were intended to stop children from playing outside without care, or mothers from leaving their children in danger, and the miller, famously, puts his own child in the power of a greedy king, while she in turn agrees to hand over her child to a virtual stranger.
Another tale revolves about a girl trapped by false claims about her spinning abilities: The Three Spinners. However, the three women who assist that girl do not demand her first born, but that she invite them to her wedding and say that they are relatives of hers. With this more reasonable request, she complies, and is freed from her hated spinning when they tell the king that their hideous looks spring from their endless spinning. In one Italian variant, she must discover their names, as with Rumpelstiltskin, but not for the same reason: she must use their names to invite them, and she has forgotten them.

Another tale revolves about a girl trapped by false claims about her spinning abilities: The Three Spinners. However, the three women who assist that girl do not demand her first born, but that she invite them to her wedding and say that they are relatives of hers. With this more reasonable request, she complies, and is freed from her hated spinning when they tell the king that their hideous looks spring from their endless spinning. In one Italian variant, she must discover their names, as with Rumpelstiltskin, but not for the same reason: she must use their names to invite them, and she has forgotten them.

Study Guide 12-09-08 - possible questions

1. Q In visual art, what includes pointillism, feathering, and divisionism?

A.Methods of painting.

2. Q. During what years was Ludwig Beethoven alive?

A. 1770-1827

3. Q. In visual art what includes abstract expressionism, baroque, cubism, impressionism, neo-impressionism, op art, pop art, realism, romanticism, and symbolism?

A. Art movements

4. Q. In literature, what includes haiku, biography, autobiography, fiction, limerick, and non-fiction?

A. Literary Forms

5. Q. When was Johann Sebastian Bach alive?

A. 1685-1750.

6. Q. In the performing arts, what includes comedy, tragedy, melodrama, tragicomedy, satire, and epic?

A. Subjects

7. Q. What country was Johann Sebastian Bach from?

A. Germany

8. Q. In music, what includes eighth notes, eighth rests, sharps, flats, natural, fermata, measure, bar lines, and ledger lines?

A. Musical Notation

9. Q. In music, what includes baroque, classical, modern and rock and roll?

A. Music Periods.

10. Q. What style of art was created by Edouard Manet?

A. Impressionism.

11. Q. In visual art, what includes graver and gouge

A. Art tools.

12. Q. In visual art, what includes arch, column, and capital?

A. Architectural terms.

13. Q. When was Cyrus E. Dallin alive?

A. 1861-1943.

14. Q. What style of art did Pierre Auguste Renoir create?

A. Impressionism

15. Q. In music, what type of markings include pianissimo, fortissimo, and diminuendo?

A. Dynamic Markings.

16. Q. What are three music careers?

A. Composer, lyricist, recording technician

17. Q. What style of music did Antonio Vivaldi create?

A. Baroque.

18. Q. In the performing arts, what includes point of attack (main action), exposition (important information), rising action, climax (crisis), and resolution?

A. Dramatic Structure.

19. Q. In visual art, what element of design includes hue, intensity, and the color wheel?

A. Color

20. Q. What in the elements of design includes primary, secondary, tertiary, complementary monochromatic, warm/cold and neutral?

A. The color wheel.

21. Q. Who created the piece of art that is a collage called “Summertime”?

A. Romare Bearden.

22. Q. Who created the piece of art that is a Northern Renaissance landscape called “The Harvesters”?

A. Pieter Brueghel.

23. Q. In the Principles of Design, what includes focal point and contrast?

A. Emphasis.

24. Q. In Visual Art, what includes an Architect, Art Buyer, Art Critic, Artist, Art Educator, Landscape Architect, and Sculptor?

A. Art Careers.

25. Q. In music, what includes allegro and presto?

A. Tempo.

26. Q. What style of music did Maurice Ravel create?

A. Impressionistic.

27. Q. What fairy tale included a father, and young daughter, a castle, a mirror, and a character that at the beginning of the story was not a prince?

A. Beauty and the Beast.

28. Q. Who composed “Fur Elise”?

A. Ludwig Beethoven.

29. Q. In the performing arts, what includes ballet, jazz, modern, tap, ballroom, and Latin?

A. Dance forms.

30. Q. What principle of design refers to the way the elements of art are arranged to create a feeling of stability in a work?

A. Balance.

31. Q. What principle of design refers to the repetition of anything — shapes, lines, or colors — also called a motif, in a design?

A. Pattern.

32. Q. Which art movement was a painting movement when artists typically applied paint rapidly, and with force to their huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and emotions (sometimes with large brushes, dripping, or even throwing)?

A. Abstract Expressionism.

33. Q. Who was the artist who created “Mural on Indian Red Ground” in 1950 using oil and enamel on board?

A. Jackson Pollock.

34. Q. Which art movement was of the Counter-Reformation in the 17th century and was mainly limited to Catholic countries?

A. Baroque.

35. Q. Who was the artist considered to be the master of Dutch art?

A. Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn).

36. Q. Which art movement rejected the purely visual realism of the Impressionist, and the rationality of the Industrial Age in order to depict the symbols of ideas?

A. Symbolism.

37. Q. Who was the Impressionist who created “The Beet Harvest” in 1881?

A. Camille Pissarro

38. Q. Which art style is one in which an artist intends to represent a subject as it appears in the natural world?

A. Naturalism.

39. Q. Which art career is a person who designs and draws plans, elevations, and cross sections of buildings and other environmental features?

A. Architect.

Robert Schumann, "Catch-As-Catch-Can"



"Robert Schumann
1810-1856

There were few more important figures of the romantic era than Robert Schumann, massively influential during his life and long after his death. A composer, critic, virtuoso pianist and philosopher, he was the paradigm of the romantic individual, highly emotionally charged (and indeed unstable), and brilliantly talented.

For his time, Schumann was relatively progressive; his Papillons was one of the first instrumental pieces of its kind to be a representation of a literary subject. The composer continued this trend with the Fantasiestucke and Kinderszenen, two masterpieces for solo piano, arguably the ancestors of works such as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

Schumann was perhaps the most well known practitioner of cryptography in music – using codes. Carnaval and the F-A-E sonata both equate musical notes with letters, words and names, giving a fascinating subtext to many of his pieces. Indeed, his works often make reference to his wife Clara, an interesting subject in itself given her debated relationship to Brahms.

Schumann’s emotional state was often in turmoil, to the point where he attempted suicide. In response he was eventually confined to an asylum, where he died two years later. The result of this tumultuous mental state was constantly changing music, almost schizophrenic in nature, featuring small contrasting sections of different speed and mood. His compositions are often genuinely beautiful and tuneful, particularly the pieces for piano.

Recommended Listening:

Kindersezen, Carnaval, Piano Concerto" -- Boosey Radio.Com

Stars and Stripes Forever



"Stars and Stripes Forever" is a patriotic American march widely considered to be the magnum opus of composer John Philip Sousa. By act of Congress, it is the National March of the United States of America.

In his autobiography, Marching Along, Sousa writes that he composed the march on Christmas Day 1896. He had just learned of the recent death of David Blakely, then manager of the Sousa Band. Sousa was on a ferry in Europe at the time, and he composed the march in his head. He committed the notes to paper on arrival in America. Although he would conduct performances of it at virtually every concert until his death, only one recording, made in 1909, is known to survive today." -- Wikipedia

Monday, December 8, 2008

Robert Schumann - "Knight of the Hobby Horse"

The first song is called "Knight of the Hobby Horse".



"Robert Schumann (1810-1856), German composer, a principal figure of the early romantic movement in 19th-century music.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856), German composer, a principal figure of the early romantic movement in 19th-century music.

Robert Alexander Schumann was born on June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony, and educated at the universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg. The son of a bookseller, he early became absorbed in literature, particularly that of romanticism. In 1830 he abandoned the study of law in order to devote himself to music. He studied piano with the German teacher Friedrich Wieck, but a permanent injury to one of his fingers forced him to abandon the career of pianist. He then turned to composition and the writing of musical essays. In 1834, he founded the music journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which he edited until 1844. Schumann married the pianist Clara Josephine Wieck, the daughter of his former teacher, in 1840. In 1843 Schumann was appointed to the faculty of the newly founded Leipzig Conservatory, but finding himself emotionally unfit for teaching, he soon resigned. In 1850 he was named town music director at Düsseldorf; advancing mental illness, which had threatened him since adolescence, forced him to resign in 1854. That same year Schumann attempted suicide and was confined to an asylum near Bonn, where he died on July 29, 1856.

One of the most typical of romantic composers, Schumann characterized himself in two imaginary figures, the forceful Florestan and the poetic Eusebius, whose names he signed to his critical articles and whose musical portraits he drew in his piano suite Carnaval (1834-1835). During 1840, he achieved what generally is considered his greatest work when he suddenly turned to the song form. In that year he composed 138 songs of the finest quality, among them the great song cycles Liederkreis (two cycles, texts by Heinrich Heine), Myrthen (texts by various poets), Frauenliebe und Leben (Woman's Love and Life, text by Adelbert von Chamisso), and Dichterliebe (Poet's Love, text by Heinrich Heine). Schumann concentrated on the psychological subtleties of a poem and in his songs gave to the piano accompaniment an equal role in expressing the mood and meaning of a poem.

Schumann's piano works are largely musical expressions of literary themes and moods. With the exception of the Fantasy in C Major (1836) and Études Symphoniques (1854), his best piano compositions consist of cycles of short pieces in which a single lyrical idea is brought to completion within a small framework. In addition to Carnaval, they include Papillons (Butterflies, 1820-1831), Kinderscenen (Scenes from Childhood, 1838), Kreisleriana (1838), and Album für die Jugend (Album for the Young, 1848)." -- Robert Schumann, Encarta

Robert Schumann (Schumann Kinderszenen)

Robert Schumann 1810-1856
There were few more important figures of the romantic era than Robert Schumann, massively influential during his life and long after his death. A composer, critic, virtuoso pianist and philosopher, he was the paradigm of the romantic individual, highly emotionally charged (and indeed unstable), and brilliantly talented.
For his time, Schumann was relatively progressive; his Papillons was one of the first instrumental pieces of its kind to be a representation of a literary subject. The composer continued this trend with the Fantasiestucke and Kinderszenen, two masterpieces for solo piano, arguably the ancestors of works such as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Schumann was perhaps the most well known practitioner of cryptography in music – using codes. Carnaval and the F-A-E sonata both equate musical notes with letters, words and names, giving a fascinating subtext to many of his pieces. Indeed, his works often make reference to his wife Clara, an interesting subject in itself given her debated relationship to Brahms.
Schumann’s emotional state was often in turmoil, to the point where he attempted suicide. In response he was eventually confined to an asylum, where he died two years later. The result of this tumultuous mental state was constantly changing music, almost schizophrenic in nature, featuring small contrasting sections of different speed and mood. His compositions are often genuinely beautiful and tuneful, particularly the pieces for piano.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Remember to study every day!

Remember to study every day. You are doing a great job!

If you have any questions, please contact

Natasha Call

Home: 653-2763
Cell: 801-915-9130

Emails should be coming from me at harvestknowledge09@gmail.com. If you are not receiving them, please let me know by calling or by emailing me at ntashacall@gmail.com.

Winslow Homer - Biography





Winslow Homer, 1836-1910. American. American Realism. Outdoor scenes with much movement.

Breezing Up (left picture)
Snap the Whip (right picture)

Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art.
Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator.[1] He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836, Homer was the second of three sons of Charles Savage Homer and Henrietta Benson Homer, both from long lines of New Englanders. His mother was a gifted amateur watercolorist and Homer’s first teacher, and she and her son had a close relationship throughout their lives. [3] Homer had a happy childhood, growing up mostly in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was an average student, but his art talent was on display early. Homer’s father was a volatile, restless businessman who was always looking to “make a killing”. When Homer was thirteen, Charles gave up the hardware store business to seek a fortune in the California gold rush. When that failed, Charles left his family and went to Europe to raise capital for other get-rich-quick schemes that didn’t materialize.[4] After Homer’s high school graduation, his father saw an ad in the newspaper and arranged for an apprenticeship. Homer’s apprenticeship to a Boston commercial lithographer at the age of 19, was a formative but “treadmill experience”.[5] He worked repetitively on sheet music covers and other commercial work for two years. By 1857, his freelance career was underway after he turned down an offer to join the staff of Harper's Weekly. “From the time I took my nose off that lithographic stone”, Homer later stated, “I have had no master, and never shall have any.” [6] Homer’s career as an illustrator lasted nearly twenty years. He contributed to magazines such as Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly, at a time when the market for illustrations was growing rapidly, and when fads and fashions were changing quickly. His early works, mostly commercial engravings of urban and country social scenes, are characterized by clean outlines, simplified forms, dramatic contrast of light and dark, and lively figure groupings — qualities that remained important throughout his career.[7] His quick success was mostly due to this strong understanding of graphic design and also to the adaptability of his designs to wood engraving.

Edward Hicks - Biography



Edward Hicks, 1780-1849. American. Naïve, simplistic style. Flat patterns without perspective.

Peaceable Kingdom ( see picture)

Edward Hicks (1780-1849) was an American folk painter whose chief subject was the "Peaceable Kingdom, " based on the biblical prophecy from Isaiah.

Edward Hicks was born on April 4, 1780, in a small Pennsylvania town (now Langhorne). He was orphaned early and boarded out at the age of 3 to David Twining, a Quaker, civic leader, and prosperous farmer near Newtown, Pa.
At 13 Hicks was apprenticed to a coach maker. In 1800 he began working as a journeyman coach painter and 6 months later struck out on his own. When he came of age in 1801, Hicks began to attend Quaker meetings at nearby Middletown. Two years later he applied for Quaker membership there and married Sarah Worstall, whom he had known since childhood. The couple began married life in Milford, Pa., where the first of their four children was born.
Hicks painted an elaborate tavern sign, probably in 1813, the same year that he turned from coach painting to farming. Failing as a farmer, he returned in 1815 to New-town and to painting. That year a Friends' meeting was established there, and the painter met his cousin, Elias Hicks of Long Island, who had founded the Hicksite movement, which urged a return to the principles of the early Quakers. A fireboard painted in 1817 may have been Hicks's first easel painting.
Hicks's 1819 visit to Niagara Falls was used later as the subject of at least two paintings. In 1820, with few painting commissions to occupy him, Hicks visited Elias's Long Island meetings to work for peace among disparate Quaker factions. That year he also painted the first version of the "Peaceable Kingdom, " a favorite subject of which almost 60 versions are extant. In 1827, when a schism developed among the Quakers, Hicks joined his cousin as a member of the dissenting Hicksites.
Hicks continued to paint "Peaceable Kingdom" pictures, both as gifts and as commissions from relatives and friends. In the 1840s he painted the first of several landscapes that range from beautiful and romantic versions of Bucks County, Pa., farms to renditions of the Grave of William Penn, based on a print or book illustration. He painted several versions of other subjects, including Penn's Treaty with the Indians and Washington Crossing the Delaware.
On Aug. 23, 1849, Hicks died in Newtown. According to a contemporary account, his funeral was the largest ever held in Bucks County. More than 100 paintings by this supremely talented, intensely personal, and unique folk artist still exist.

William Harnett - Biography


William Harnett, 1848-1892. American. Realism. Still-life with remarkable detail.

My Gems (see picture)

Harnett was born in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland during the time of the potato famine. Shortly after his birth his family emigrated to America, settling in Philadelphia. Becoming a United States citizen in 1868, he made a living as a young man by engraving designs on table silver, while also taking night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later, in New York, at Cooper Union and at the National Academy of Design. His first known oil painting, a still life, dates from 1874.
The style of trompe l'oeil painting that Harnett developed was distinctive and inspired many imitators,[1] but it was not without precedent. What sets Harnett's work apart, besides his enormous skill, is his interest in depicting objects not usually made the subject of a painting. Harnett painted musical instruments, hanging game, and tankards, but also painted the unconventional Golden Horseshoe (1886), a single rusted horseshoe shown nailed to a board. He painted a casual jumble of second-hand books set on top of a crate, Job Lot, Cheap (1878), as well as firearms and even paper currency. His works sold well, but they were more likely to be found hanging in a tavern or a business office than in a museum, as they did not conform to contemporary notions of high art. Harnett spent the years 1880–1886 in Europe,[1] staying in Munich from 1881 until early 1885.[2] Harnett's best-known paintings, the four versions of After The Hunt, were painted between 1883 and 1885. Each is an imposing composition of hunting equipment and dead game, hanging on a door with ornate hinges at the right and keyhole plate at the left. These paintings are especially effective as trompe l'oeil because the objects occupy a shallow space, meaning that the illusion is not spoiled by parallax shift if the viewer moves. Crippling rheumatism plagued Harnett in his last years, reducing the number but not the quality of his paintings.[3] He died in New York City in 1892. For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harnett

Thomas Gainsborough - Biography


Thomas Gainsborough, 1727-1788. England. Rococo. Colorful portraits and landscapes.

Blue Boy (see picture)

Gainsborough, Thomas (1727-88). English painter of portraits, landscapes, and fancy pictures, one of the most individual geniuses in British art.
He was born at Sudbury, Soffolk, and went to London in about 1740, probably studying with the French engraver Gravelot. He returned to Sudbury in 1748 and in 1752 he set up as a portrait painter at Ipswitch. His work at this time consisted mainly of heads and half-length, but he also painted some small portrait groups in landscape settings which are the most lyrical of all English conversation pieces (Heneage Lloyd and his Sister, Fitzwilliam, Cambridge). His patrons were the merchants of the town and the neighboring squires, but when in 1759 he moved to Bath, his new sitters were members of Society, and he developed a free and elegant mode of painting seen at its most characteristic in full-length portraits (Mary, Countess Howe, Kenwood House, London, c.1763-64).
In 1768 he was elected a foundation member of the Royal Academy, and in
1774 he moved permanently to London. Here he further developed the personal style he had evolved at Bath, working with light and rapid brush-strokes and delicate and evanescent colors. He became a favorite painter of the Royal Family, even though his rival Reynolds was appointed King's Principal Painter.
Gainsborough sometimes said that while portraiture was his profession landscape painting was his pleasure, and he continued to paint landscapes long after he had left a country neighborhood. He produced many landscape drawings, some in pencil, some in charcoal and chalk, and he occasionally made drawings which he varnished. He also, in later years, painted fancy pictures of pastoral subjects (Peasant Girl Gathering Sticks, Manchester City Art Gallery, 1782). Gainsborough's style had diverse sources. His early works show the influence of French engraving and of Dutch landscape painting; at Bath his change of portrait style owed much to a close study of van Dyck (his admiration is most clear in The Blue Boy, Huntingdon Art Gallery, San Marino, 1770); and in his later landscapes (The Watering Place, National Gallery, London, 1777) he is sometimes influenced by Rubens. But he was an independent and original genius, able to assimilate to his own ends what he learnt from others, and he relied always mainly on his own resources. With the exception of his nephew Gainsborough Dupont, he had no assistants and unlike most of his contemporaries he never employed a drapery painter.
He was in many ways the antithesis of Reynolds. Whereas Reynolds was sober-minded and the complete professional, Gainsborough (even though his output was prodigious) was much more easy-going and often overdue with his commissions, writing that `painting and punctuality mix like oil and vinegar'. Although he was an entertaining letter-writer, Gainsborough, unlike Reynolds, had no interest in literary or historical themes, his great passion outside painting being music (his friend William Jackson the composer wrote that he `avoided the company of literary men, who were his aversion... he detested reading'). Gainsborough and Reynolds had great mutual respect, however; Gainsborough asked for Reynolds to visit him on his deathbed, and Reynolds paid posthumous tribute to his rival in his Fourteenth Discourse. Recognizing the fluid brilliance of his brushwork, Reynolds praised `his manner of forming all the parts of a picture together', and wrote of `all those odd scratches and marks' that `by a kind of magic, at a certain distance... seem to drop into their proper places'. For more information see http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gainsborough/

Louise R. Farnsworth - Biography


Louise R. Farnsworth, 1878-1969. American. Expressionism.


Capitol from North Salt Lake (see picture)



Louise Richards Farnsworth was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1878. She painted Utah landscapes in brilliant fauvist style. She died in Salt Lake City in 1969.Farnsworth’s cousin, Lee Greene Richards, influenced her painting style with his use of bright color and his loose application of paint. The neoimpressionist work of Birger Sandźen and the expressionist work of Henri Moser also influenced her approach. From 1898 to 1900, she studied in New York at the Art Students League where her instructors were Kenyon Cox and Joseph De Camp. She later studied in Paris where her work was exhibited in the Salon in 1904. She returned to Utah in that same year. Although she frequently exhibited outside Utah, she maintained a studio in Salt Lake City until 1960. Capitol from North Salt Lake (1935), Hay Stacks (1935), and Springtime (1935) are examples of her work.In 1934, an exhibition of her work, 52 oils of mountain scenes from Utah to Alaska, was exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York. The Stendahl Gallery in Los Angeles exhibited 20 of her mountain landscapes. The Springville Art Museum includes her work in its permanent collection.Biographical information on this page was adapted from the Springville Museum of Art.
For more information see http://webpac.lib.utah.edu/fa/UtahArtists/artists/farnsworth/index.html

Leonardo da Vinci - Biography


Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519. Italian. Renaissance. Portraits and religious works.

Mona Lisa (see picture)


Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (pronunciation (help·info), April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath, being a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose "unquenchable curiosity" was equalled only by his powers of invention.[1] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.[2] Helen Gardner says "The scope and depth of his interests were without precedent...His mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".
Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by King François I.

Leonardo was and is renowned[2] primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.[1] Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,[3] being reproduced on everything from the Euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.[nb 2] Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered[2] for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,[nb 3] but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.[nb 4] As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics. For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

James C. Christensen - Biography


James C. Christensen, 1942-present. American.

Rhinoceros (see picture)

James C. Christensen (born 1942) is an American artist. His main body of work, mostly paintings, is heavily influenced by fantasy themes. Even his small body of religious work shows heavy fantasy influence. Christensen says his inspirations are myths, fables, fantasies, and tales of imagination.
Christensen was raised in Culver City, California and attended UCLA. He then moved to Utah to finish his higher education at Brigham Young University (Christensen is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints[1], BYU's sponsor). He then went on to teach art for over 20 years where he finished his teaching career at Brigham Young University in the
late 1990s. Christensen now resides in Orem, Utah.
Most of Christensen's paintings have a philosophical message. He is loath to describe them, however, preferring to allow the viewer to discern their own message. Christensen's work has appeared in the American Illustration Annual and Japan's Outstanding American Illustrators. He also won all the professional art honors the World Science Fiction Convention offers, and multiple Chesley Awards from the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. Christensen appeared in an episode of ABC's show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in 2005. He created a picture featuring a member of the family as a fairy. The design team filmed a segment at his studio. The Greenwich Workshop donated a framed Court of the Faeries that Christensen presented to the family for the room as well. Christensen has published three books, with many of his works appearing in many more. His first book, A Journey of the Imagination: The Art of James Christensen, was printed in 1994 to great acclaim. His second, Voyage of the Basset (October 1, 1996), contains a frame story for a great deal of original work. His third book, Rhymes & Reasons, was published in May 1997. Christensen also illustrated A Shakespeare Sketchbook (May 2001) with text by Renwick St. James. Christensen lives in a house he designed filled with secret passages and sculptures inspired by his paintings. Not employed in all his paintings, his trademark is a flying or floating fish, often on a leash. Christensen co-chairs the Mormon Arts Foundation with his wife Carole.[2] Christensen has produced some pieces that can be placed in historical periods such as "Harvey Cluff".[3] For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Christensen.

Marc Chagall - Biography



Marc Chagall, 1887-1985. Russian (lived in France). Expressionism. Scenes of Russian life and much symbolism.

I and My Village (I and the Village) -- see picture

"Marc Chagall: Russian-born French painter. Born to a humble Jewish family in the ghetto of a large town in White Russia, Chagall passed a childhood steeped in Hasidic culture. Very early in life he was encouraged by his mother to follow his vocation and she managed to get him into a St Petersburg art school. Returning to Vitebsk, he became engaged to Bella Rosenfeld (whom he married twelve years later), then, in 1910, set off for Paris, 'the Mecca of art'. He was a tenant at La Ruche, where he had Modigliani and Soutine for neighbours. His Slav Expressionism was tinged with the influence of Daumier, Jean-François Millet, the Nabis and the Fauves. He was also influenced by Cubism. Essentially a colourist, Chagall was interested in the Simultaneist vision of Robert Delaunay and the Luminists of the Section d'Or.
"Chagall returned to Vitebsk in 1914, where he was caught by the outbreak of the First World War. He married Bella there in 1915. He was appointed provincial Commissar for Fine Art in 1917 and became involved in ambitious projects for a local academy, but he left after two and a half years in order to escape the revolutionary dictates of Malevich. After a stay in Moscow, where he worked in the Jewish theatre, then in Berlin, where he studied the technique of engraving, he returned to Paris in 1923. For the publisher Vollard he illustrated Gogol's Dead Souls, La Fontaine's Fables and the Bible. Breton, who admired the 'total lyric explosion' of his pre-war painting, tried to claim him for Surrealism but Chagall only flirted with it briefly during his exile in New York (1941-48). His emblematic irrationality shook off all outside influences: colour governed his compositions, calling up chimerical processions of memory where reality and the imaginary are woven into a single legend, born in Vitebsk and dreamed in Paris. Back in France, Chagall discovered ceramics, sculpture and stained glass. He settled in the south of France, first at Vence (1950), then in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1966). Commissions poured in: for the Assy baptistery in 1957, the cathedrals of Metz (1960) and Rheims (1974), the Hebrew University Medical Centre synagogue in Jerusalem (1960), the Paris Opéra (1963). The Musée Chagall in Nice dedicated to the 'Biblical Message' set the seal on his fame in July 1973. A painter-poet celebrated by Apollinaire and Cendrars, Chagall brought back the forgotten dimension of metaphor into French formalism." For more information see http://www.artchive.com/artchive/C/chagall.html

Paul Cezanne - Biography





Paul Cezanne, 1839-1906. French. Post Impressionism. Reduced objects in nature to basic shapes. Considered the founder of modern art.

Apples and Oranges (see left picture)

and The Card Players (see right picture)

The French painter Paul Cézanne, who exhibited little in his lifetime and pursued his interests increasingly in artistic isolation, is regarded today as one of the great forerunners of modern painting, both for the way that he evolved of putting down on canvas exactly what his eye saw in nature and for the qualities of pictorial form that he achieved through a unique treatment of space, mass, and color.
Cézanne was a contemporary of the impressionists, but he went beyond their interests in the individual brushstroke and the fall of light onto objects, to create, in his words, ``something more solid and durable, like the art of the museums.''
Cézanne was born at Aix-en-Provence in the south of France on Jan. 19, 1839. He went to school in Aix, forming a close friendship with the novelist Emile Zola. He also studied law there from 1859 to 1861, but at the same time he continued attending drawing classes. Against the implacable resistance of his father, he made up his mind that he wanted to paint and in 1861 joined Zola in Paris. His father's reluctant consent at that time brought him financial support and, later, a large inheritance on which he could live without difficulty. In Paris he met Camille Pissarro and came to know others of the impressionist group, with whom he would exhibit in 1874 and 1877. Cézanne, however, remained an outsider to their circle; from 1864 to 1869 he submitted his work to the official SALON and saw it consistently rejected. His paintings of 1865-70 form what is usually called his early ``romantic'' period. Extremely personal in character, it deals with bizarre subjects of violence and fantasy in harsh, somber colors and extremely heavy paintwork. Thereafter, as Cézanne rejected that kind of approach and worked his way out of the obsessions underlying it, his art is conveniently divided into three phases. In the early 1870s, through a mutually helpful association with Pissarro, with whom he painted outside Paris at Auvers, he assimilated the principles of color and lighting of Impressionism and loosened up his brushwork; yet he retained his own sense of mass and the interaction of planes, as in House of the Hanged Man (1873; Musee d'Orsay, Paris). In the late 1870s Cézanne entered the phase known as ``constructive,'' characterized by the grouping of parallel, hatched brushstrokes in formations that build up a sense of mass in themselves. He continued in this style until the early 1890s, when, in his series of paintings titled Card Players (1890-92), the upward curvature of the players' backs creates a sense of architectural solidity and thrust, and the intervals between figures and objects have the appearance of live cells of space and atmosphere. Finally, living as a solitary in Aix rather than alternating between the south and Paris, Cézanne moved into his late phase. Now he concentrated on a few basic subjects: still lifes of studio objects built around such recurring elements as apples, statuary, and tablecloths; studies of bathers, based upon the male model and drawing upon a combination of memory, earlier studies, and sources in the art of the past; and successive views of the Mont Sainte-Victoire, a nearby landmark, painted from his studio looking across the intervening valley. The landscapes of the final years, much affected by Cézanne's contemporaneous practice in watercolor, have a more transparent and unfinished look, while the last figure paintings are at once more somber and spiritual in mood. By the time of his death on Oct. 22, 1906, Cézanne's art had begun to be shown and seen across Europe, and it became a fundamental influence on the Fauves, the cubists, and virtually all advanced art of the early 20th century. For information see http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/bio.html

Mary Cassatt - Biography



Mary Cassatt, 1845-1926. American. Impressionism. Family scenes, especially mothers and children.


Artist. Born on May 22, 1844, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. Mary Cassatt was one of the leading artists in the Impressionist movement of the later part of the 1800s. Born into a prosperous family, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1861 to 1865.Traveling abroad, Mary Cassatt studied and painted in Paris, Italy, Spain, and Holland from 1866 to 1874. She finally settled in Paris, which became her home for the rest of her life. Befriended by Edgar Degas, she was soon characterized as an Impressionist painter in both style and subject matter. By 1883 she was emphasizing more the linear aspect, and the 1890 exhibition of Japanese prints in Paris also influenced her style. She never married, but her own family gradually joined her in Paris. After 1910 her increasingly poor eyesight virtually put an end to her serious painting. Mary Cassatt died on June 14, 1926. She is best known for her luminous portraits of women and children, such as The Morning Toilet (1886) and Mother Feeding a Child (1898). A less recognized legacy was her influence in getting many Americans to acquire Impressionist and other contemporary French paintings now in U.S. museums.
For more information see http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=9240820

Pieter Brueghel - Biography



Pieter Brueghel, 1521-1569. Flemish (Dutch). Northern Renaissance. Humorous scenes of daily life and landscapes.

The Harvesters (see picture)

Pieter Brueghel (1525-69), usually known as Pieter Brueghel the Elder to distinguish him from his elder son, was the first in a family of Flemish painters. You'll often find his name spelled as Bruegel (Pieter spelled it like that from 1559 onwards) or Breugel or Breughel. He was born in Breda in the Duchy of Brabant, which is now part of The Netherlands but back then part of the Flanders. Note: Flanders or Vlaanderen and the Netherlands (aka known as Holland) or Nederland share the same language. It's called Flemish, or "Vlaams" in Belgium and Dutch, or "Nederlands" in The Netherlands. And the name Holland, although it's often taken to mean the whole of the Netherlands, is really part of that country only, the area of the provinces called Zuid Holland and Noord Holland (South and North Holland). Brueghel was accepted as a master in the Antwerp painters' guild in 1551, after being an apprentice of Coecke van Aelst, a leading Antwerp artist, sculptor, architect, and designer of tapestry and stained glass. Brueghel traveled to Italy in 1551 or 1552, completing a number of paintings, mostly landscapes, there. Returning home in 1553, he settled in Antwerp but ten years later moved permanently to Brussels. He married van Aelst's daughter, Mayken, in 1563. His paintings, including his landscapes and scenes of peasant life, stress the absurd and vulgar, yet are full of zest and fine detail. They also expose human weaknesses and follies. He was sometimes called the Peasant Brueghel. But it was in nature that he found his greatest inspiration. His mountain landscapes have few parallels in European art. Popular in his own day, his works have remained consistently popular. Brueghel died in Brussels on Sept. 9, 1569 For more information see http://breughel.8m.net/

George Bellows - Biography



George Bellows, 1882-1925. American. Realism. Action-filled paintings of prize fights. Member of the Ash Can School.

Dempsey and Firpo (see picture)

George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925) was a prolific and accomplished leader among American painters who approached representation of the American scene realistically.
George Bellows was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 19, 1882. At Ohio State University (1901-1904) he distinguished himself as an athlete, but he determined that he wanted to be an artist and went to New York City in 1904 without graduating. For a time he supported himself as a professional athlete. He studied at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri, who became an influential and lifelong friend.
Bellow's early paintings are swift and vivid character studies, of somber tonality. His development was very rapid, and from 1906 on his works were accepted in national exhibitions. He was fascinated with the spectacle of the great city: its buildings, crowds, types, and rivers. Though he was denounced by conservative critics as one of the "apostles of ugliness, " his technical brilliance made him more acceptable than any of the other painters of similar impulse. He became an associate of the National Academy of Design at the age of 27, the youngest person ever so honored, and was elected a full academician 4 years later. His work is marked by exuberance, variety of subject matter, humor, and vitality, always depicted with gusto.
In 1907 Bellows produced the first of several paintings of prizefighters in action in the ring; these expressed violent action with power and seeming spontaneity. He married in 1910, rebuilt an old house on 19th Street, and started his teaching career at the Art Students League. He was a teacher of the Henri variety - bringing out the individuality of each student with excitement and imagination. He spent several summers in Maine, where he painted windswept landscapes and sea scenes. In the summer of 1912 Bellows visited California and New Mexico - his only excursion to the Far West. He never went to Europe.
Bellows was well represented in the important Armory Show of 1913. The new European movements exhibited there may have had an unsettling influence on him, as they did on many progressive American painters who discovered that their innovations had been in subject matter rather than in method or form. In 1916 Bellows turned to lithography (at this time seldom used by serious artists) because its immediacy attracted him, His nearly 200 lithographs deal with a wide variety of subjects - genre scenes, nudes, portraits, landscapes, literary illustrations, and humorous or satiric commentaries. He was deeply and emotionally affected by World War I and recorded his reactions in a series of powerful and painful prints that have been compared with those of Goya. In 1918 he became interested in Jay Hambidge's theory of dynamic symmetry, which provided a geometric system of composition for controlling the artist's work. Hambidge (and Bellows) believed it was followed by many of the great artists of antiquity. Bellows taught at the Chicago Art Institute in 1919; his sojourn there was remembered as a whirlwind of enthusiasm and activity. His illustrations for novels by Don Byrne and H. G. Wells (1921-1923) are rich in action, characterization, and imagination. Bellows's finest late works are undoubtedly the portraits of his wife, two small daughters, mother, and aunt. Brilliantly painted, with solid structural design and probing characterization, they are among the triumphs of American realism, legitimate successors to the best works of Thomas Eakins. Less successful are some of the late landscapes, which tend to be mannered in style and lurid in color, and the large Crucifixion, his only religious work. A neglected attack of appendicitis caused Bellows's death on Jan. 8, 1925, in New York. For more information, see http://www.answers.com/topic/george-bellows

Romare Bearden - Biography


Artists and Their Masterworks
(be familiar with biographical data, period, style, and listed works)

Romare Bearden, 1911-1988. American. Modern. collage.


Summertime (see picture)

Romare Howard Bearden was born on September 2, 1911, to (Richard) Howard and Bessye Bearden in Charlotte, North Carolina, and died in New York City on March 12, 1988, at the age of 76. His life and art are marked by exceptional talent, encompassing a broad range of intellectual and scholarly interests, including music, performing arts, history, literature and world art. Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong support of young, emerging artists.
Romare Bearden began college at Lincoln University, transferred to Boston University and completed his studies at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in education. While at NYU, Bearden took extensive courses in art and was a lead cartoonist and then art editor for the monthly journal The Medley. He had also been art director of Beanpot, the student humor magazine of Boston University. Bearden published many journal covers during his university years and the first of numerous texts he would write on social and artistic issues. He also attended the Art Students League in New York and later, the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1935, Bearden became a weekly editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Afro-American, which he continued doing until 1937.
After joining the Harlem Artists Guild, Bearden embarked on his lifelong study of art, gathering inspiration from Western masters ranging from Duccio, Giotto and de Hooch to Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse, as well as from African art (particularly sculpture, masks and textiles), Byzantine mosaics, Japanese prints and Chinese landscape paintings.
From the mid-1930s through 1960s, Bearden was a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services, working on his art at night and on weekends. His success as an artist was recognized with his first solo exhibition in Harlem in 1940 and his first solo show in Washington, DC, in 1944. Bearden was a prolific artist whose works were exhibited during his lifetime throughout the United States and Europe. His collages, watercolors, oils, photomontages and prints are imbued with visual metaphors from his past in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Harlem and from a variety of historical, literary and musical sources.
In 1954, Bearden married Nanette Rohan, with whom he spent the rest of his life. In the early 1970s, he and Nanette established a second residence on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, his wife's ancestral home, and some of his later work reflected the island's lush landscapes. Among his many friends, Bearden had close associations with such distinguished artists, intellectuals and musicians as James Baldwin, Stuart Davis, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Joan Miró, George Grosz, Alvin Ailey and Jacob Lawrence.
Bearden was also a respected writer and an eloquent spokesman on artistic and social issues of the day. Active in many arts organizations, in 1964 Bearden was appointed the first art director of the newly established Harlem Cultural Council, a prominent African-American advocacy group. He was involved in founding several important art venues, such as The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Cinque Gallery. Initially funded by the Ford Foundation, Bearden and the artists Norman Lewis and Ernest Crichlow established Cinque to support younger minority artists. Bearden was also one of the founding members of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in 1970 and was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1972.
Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of the twentieth century, Romare Bearden had a prolific and distinguished career. He experimented with many different mediums and artistic styles, but is best known for his richly textured collages, two of which appeared on the covers of Fortune and Time magazines, in
1968. An innovative artist with diverse interests, Bearden also designed costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and programs, sets and designs for Nanette Bearden's Contemporary Dance Theatre.
Among Bearden's numerous publications are: A History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, which was coauthored with Harry Henderson and published posthumously in 1993; The Caribbean Poetry of Derek Walcott and the Art of Romare Bearden (1983); Six Black Masters of American Art, coauthored with Harry Henderson (1972); The Painter's Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting, coauthored with Carl Holty (1969); and Li'l Dan, the Drummer Boy: A Civil War Story, a children's book published posthumously in September 2003.
Bearden's work is included in many important public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. He has had retrospectives at the Mint Museum of Art (1980), the Detroit Institute of the Arts (1986), as well as numerous posthumous retrospectives, including The Studio Museum in Harlem (1991) and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2003).
Bearden was the recipient of many awards and honors throughout his lifetime. Honorary doctorates were given by Pratt Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Davidson College and Atlanta University, to name but a few. He received the Mayor's Award of Honor for Art and Culture in New York City in 1984 and the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Ronald Reagan, in 1987.

Snow White - Fairy Tale

Snow White

Snow White (in Low German Schneewittchen; in High German Schneeweißchen) is the title character of a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm. The German version features elements such as the magic mirror and the seven dwarfs, who were first given individual names in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
In the Aarne-Thompson folklore classification, tales of this kind are grouped together as type 709, Snow White. Others of this kind include Bella Venezia, Myrsina, Nourie Hadig, The Young Slave and Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree.
In the many non-German versions, the dwarfs are generally robbers, while the magic mirror is a dialog with the sun or moon. In a version from Albania, collected by Johann Georg von Hahn and published in Griechische und albanesische Märchen. Gesammelt, übersetzt und erläutert (1864), the main character lives with 40 dragons. Her sleep is caused by a ring. The beginning of the story has a twist, in that a teacher urges the heroine to kill her evil stepmother so that she would take her place. The origin of this tale is debated; it is likely no older than the Middle Ages.

Story outline
The English translation of the definitive edition of the Grimm's Kinder - und Hausmärchen (Berlin 1857), tale number 53, is the basis for the English translation by D. L. Crapiman.
Once upon a time, as a queen sits sewing at her window, she pricks her finger on her needle and a drop of blood falls on the snow that had fallen on her ebony window frame. As she looks at the blood on the snow, she says to herself, "Oh, how I wish that I had a daughter that had skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony". Soon after that, the queen gives birth to a baby girl who has skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony. They name her Princess Snow White. As soon as the child is born, the queen dies.
Soon after, the new king takes a new wife, who is beautiful but very vain. She possesses a magical mirror that answers any question, to whom she often asks: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in the land is fairest of all?" to which the mirror always replies "You, my queen, are fairest of all." But when Snow White reaches the age of seven, she becomes as beautiful as the day, and when the queen asks her mirror, it responds: "Queen, you are full fair, 'tis true, but Snow White is fairer than you."
The queen becomes jealous, and orders a huntsman to take Snow White into the woods to be killed. She demands that the huntsman return with Snow White's heart as proof of her killing. The huntsman takes Snow White into the forest, but after raising his knife to stab her, he finds himself unable to kill her. Instead, he lets her go, telling her to flee and hide, and brings the queen the heart of a young boar, which is then prepared by the cook and eaten by the queen.
In the forest, Snow White discovers a tiny cottage belonging to seven dwarfs, where she rests. There, the dwarfs take pity on her, saying "If you will keep house for us, and cook, make beds, wash, sew, and knit, and keep everything clean and orderly, then you can stay with us, and you shall have everything that you want." They warn her to take care and let no one in when they are away delving in the mountains. Meanwhile, the Queen asks her mirror once again "Who's the fairest of them all?", and is horrified to learn that Snow White is not only alive and well and living with the dwarfs, but is still the fairest of them all.
Three times the Queen disguises herself and visits the dwarfs' cottage while they are away during the day, trying to kill Snow White. First, disguised as a peddler, the Queen offers colorful stay-laces and laces Snow White up so tight that she fainted, causing the Queen to leave her for dead. Snow White is revived by the dwarfs, however, when they loosen the laces. Next, the Queen dresses as a different old woman and brushes Snow White's hair with a poisoned comb. Snow White again collapses, but again is saved by the dwarfs. Finally, the Queen makes a poisoned apple, and in the disguise of a farmer's wife, offers it to Snow White. When she is hesitant to accept it, the Queen cuts the apple in half, eats the
white part and gives the poisoned red part to Snow White. She eats the apple eagerly and immediately falls into a deep stupor. When the dwarfs find her, they cannot revive her, and they place her in a glass coffin, assuming that she is dead.
Time passes, and a prince traveling through the land and sees Snow White strode in her coffin. The prince is enchanted by her beauty and instantly falls in love with her. He begs the dwarfs to let him have the coffin. The prince's servants carry the coffin away. While doing so, they stumble on some bushes and the movement caused the piece of poisoned apple to dislodge from Snow White's throat, awakening her. The prince then declares his love for her and soon a wedding was planned.
The vain Queen, still believing that Snow White is dead, once again asks her mirror who is the fairest in the land, and yet again the mirror disappoints her by responding that "You, my queen, are fair; it is true. But the young queen is a thousand times fairer than you."
Not knowing that this new queen was indeed her stepdaughter, she arrives at the wedding, and her heart fills with the deepest of dread when she realizes the truth.
As punishment for her wicked ways, a pair of heated iron shoes are brought forth with tongs and placed before the Queen. She is then forced to step into these and dance until she falls down dead.


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