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I was originally trying to get a picture of a single white tulip bulb among the red ones. Then, this woman in a sundress walked into my shot...but I'm not complaining!
This guy is only about 1/2 inch top to bottom. I lay flat on my (rather round) belly in the middle of my neighbor's lawn to get this shot. Yes, I was under the influence, but fortunately, not of drink or drugs...
How Geology Influenced Central Park's Design
One of the Park's gneiss outcroppings
SEP 7, 2017
Have you ever noticed—or climbed—Central Park’s impressive rock formations? Although it’s true that the Park is man-made, the rocks that you see are not. They are exposed portions of ancient bedrock – solid rock that lies under soil and other loose surface materials. The bedrock found throughout New York City ranges in age from 190 million to 1.1 billion years old, and many of the outcrops you see in Central Park were shaped by ice.
The land on which Central Park was constructed featured an unusually large amount of exposed bedrock, which heavily influenced how it was designed and built. To construct the Park, workers excavated, removed, and reset about 476,000 cubic yards of rock. Much of it had to be blasted away in order to create the Park’s four sunken transverse roads that separate west-east traffic from the landscape.
Cómo la geología influyó en el diseño de Central Park
Uno de los afloramientos de gneis del Parque
7 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2017
¿Alguna vez has notado, o escalado, las impresionantes formaciones rocosas de Central Park? Si bien es cierto que el Parque está hecho por el hombre, las rocas que ves no lo son. Son porciones expuestas de lecho rocoso antiguo: roca sólida que se encuentra debajo del suelo y otros materiales superficiales sueltos. El lecho rocoso que se encuentra en toda la ciudad de Nueva York tiene una antigüedad de entre 190 millones y 1100 millones de años, y muchos de los afloramientos que se ven en Central Park fueron formados por hielo.
El terreno en el que se construyó Central Park presentaba una cantidad inusualmente grande de roca madre expuesta, lo que influyó mucho en la forma en que se diseñó y construyó. Para construir el Parque, los trabajadores excavaron, retiraron y restauraron alrededor de 476,000 yardas cúbicas de roca. Gran parte tuvo que ser volada para crear las cuatro carreteras transversales hundidas del parque que separan el tráfico de oeste a este del paisaje.
Romanino (Girolamo Romani - Brescia, around 1484 - around 1566) - Presentation of Jesus in the temple (1529) - Oil on canvas 188 x 140 cm - Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
La tavola, firmata e datata, rappresenta un punto fermo nel catalogo del pittore bresciano. Fra le opere meglio conservate di Romanino, non è però documentata dalle fonti se non a partire dal 1826, quando viene ricordata in una guida di Brescia; è verosimile quindi che provenga in origine da un contesto diverso da quello bresciano.
Nel 1529, anno di realizzazione del dipinto, Romanino si trovava infatti a Salò per eseguire un quadro con Sant’Antonio da Padova (oggi nel duomo), ed è pertanto verosimile che la Presentazione al tempio sia stata realizzata per un committente di quest’area del Garda. La gestualità pacata e devota delle figure, la rigorosa simmetria della scena e lo sfondo architettonico dimostrano un’adesione alle formule compositive di Moretto, divenuto in quegli anni un fondamentale punto di riferimento nell’ambito della pittura bresciana.
I colori smaglianti e accesi denunciano invece l’influenza della pittura veneziana, mentre in alcuni dei volti dei personaggi di secondo piano si riconosce una ricerca ritrattistica che riconduce a Tiziano. A sinistra si vedono Giuseppe e Maria, mentre in primo piano un’ancella si inginocchia portando in dono le due colombe della tradizione ebraica. A destra il sacerdote sostiene il Bambino sull’altare, circondato da un gruppo di personaggi veri e convincenti come autentici ritratti.
This signed and dated painting is a mainstay in the corpus of Romanino’s works, and one of the best preserved. It is not documented by the sources until 1826 when it is mentioned in a guide to Brescia. So it is likely that it came originally from somewhere outside the city.
In fact, in 1529, the year it was painted, Romanino was in Salò to execute a picture with Saint Anthony of Padua (now in the cathedral), and so it is plausible that the Presentation in the Temple was realized for a client in this area of Lake Garda. The figures’ calm, devout gestures, the rigorous symmetry of the scene and the architectural background reflect an adherence to the compositional formulas of Moretto, who had become a fundamental point of reference in Brescian painting in those years. The glowing and brilliant colors, on the other hand, betray the influence of Venetian painting, while in some of the faces of the figures in the background it is possible to discern an interest in portraiture that harks back to Titian.
Mary and Joseph are over to the left, while a kneeling maidservant in the foreground brings the traditional Hebrew gift of two doves. A priest on the right holding the Christ Child on the altar is surrounded by a group of real people who are entirely convincing as genuine portraits.
Master of the Life of the Virgin (active approximately between 1463 and 1490 and belonging to the late Gothic current) Visitation of Mary and the donor Johann von Hirtz - scenes from the life of the Virgin (1470-80) Oil on panel 85.3 x 105.2 cm - Alte Pinakothek, Munich
La sua bottega è identificata dal suo capolavoro, una serie di otto dipinti che ritraggono scene della vita della Vergine, realizzato per la chiesa di Sant'Orsola di Colonia; sette si trovano alla Alte Pinakothek di Monaco, mentre l'ultimo è conservato alla National Gallery di Londra assieme a quattro pannelli esterni della pala d'altare di Werden (1485-90 circa), la cui parte centrale è andata perduta. Altre opere provenienti dalla stessa mano sono la Crocifissione di Gesù per la cappella dell'ospedale a Bernkastel-Kues, l’Adorazione dei Magi nel Germanisches Nationalmuseum di Norimberga e la Crocifissione e Deposizione di Cristo al Wallraf-Richartz Museum di Colonia.
A causa della palese influenza di pittori fiamminghi quali Dieric Bouts e Rogier van der Weyden si pensa che possa essersi formato nei Paesi Bassi. Anche se il suo nome non ci è noto, attraverso i suoi dipinti è diventato il più celebrato tra i pittori tardogotici della Scuola di Colonia. Il suo stile elegante stile figurativo è conosciuto al punto che la sua notevole influenza può essere notata nelle opere di altri pittori di Colonia.
His workshop is identified by his masterpiece, a series of eight paintings depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin, made for the church of Sant'Orsola in Cologne; seven are located at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, while the last is kept at the National Gallery in London together with four external panels of the Werden altarpiece (around 1485-90), the central part of which has been lost. Other works from the same hand are the Crucifixion of Jesus for the hospital chapel in Bernkastel-Kues, the Adoration of the Magi in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg and the Crucifixion and Deposition of Christ at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne.
Due to the blatant influence of Flemish painters such as Dieric Bouts and Rogier van der Weyden it is thought that he may have trained in the Netherlands. Although his name is not known to us, through his paintings he has become the most celebrated of the late Gothic painters of the Cologne School. His elegant figurative style is known to the point that his notable influence can be noticed in the works of other Cologne painters.
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Frescoes on the left wall by Bernardino Lanino (Mortara, 1512 - Vercelli, 1578): the Marriage of the Virgin, the Visitation, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Visit of the Magi (1562-64). Major Chapel of the Basilica of San Magno, Legnano
Fu allievo di Gerolamo Giovenone e fortemente improntato all'arte di Gaudenzio Ferrari. Successivamente, in occasione di soggiorni milanesi, Lanino risentirà dell'influsso di Leonardo. Tutte queste esperienze confluiranno poi in uno stile originale ed autonomo in cui la tradizione dell'alto rinascimento e del nascente Barocco si fondono in un decorativismo manieristico
He was a pupil of Gerolamo Giovenone and strongly influenced by the art of Gaudenzio Ferrari. Later, during stays in Milan, Lanino will feel the influence of Leonardo. All these experiences will come together in an original and autonomous style in which the tradition of the high Renaissance and the nascent Baroque blend in a mannerist decorativism.
“I like to dress differently. I try to blend various ethnic and cultural influences but let one dominate each time.”
“And how often do you change your outfits? Once a week? Every day?”
“I can probably go a year without having to wear the same outfit twice.”
Frescoes on the right wall by Bernardino Lanino (Mortara, 1512 - Vercelli, 1578): the Purification, the Massacre of the Innocents, the rest flight into Egypt, the Dispute in the Temple. The smaller panel at the top depicts the flight into Egypt (1562-64). Major Chapel of the Basilica of San Magno, Legnano
Fu allievo di Gerolamo Giovenone e fortemente improntato all'arte di Gaudenzio Ferrari. Successivamente, in occasione di soggiorni milanesi, Lanino risentirà dell'influsso di Leonardo. Tutte queste esperienze confluiranno poi in uno stile originale ed autonomo in cui la tradizione dell'alto rinascimento e del nascente Barocco si fondono in un decorativismo manieristico
He was a pupil of Gerolamo Giovenone and strongly influenced by the art of Gaudenzio Ferrari. Later, during stays in Milan, Lanino will feel the influence of Leonardo. All these experiences will come together in an original and autonomous style in which the tradition of the high Renaissance and the nascent Baroque blend in a mannerist decorativism.
Italy, pizza, “Portobello”, thin pizza with a golden brown crusty border, outside crunchy, inside soft, topped with pizza sauce, buffalo mozzarella & grated Appenzeller cheese, Portobello mushrooms, rosemary.
Italian Pizza should be baked at temperatures between 360°C - 575°F & 426°C - 800°F, best in a pizza wood-fired brick oven by placing them on the very hot oven stone floor. If the oven dome has the above mentioned baking temperature, the oven floor will typically be cooler than that temperature.
📌...This very tasty variant of the brown mushroom came from America via the Netherlands to Europe, also known as a “Grill-Mushroom”.
The Portobello becomes a giant mushroom thanks to a special cultivation method. The mushroom has a large cap measuring 6 to 12 cm in size with a small stalk. The fins on the underside of the hat are brown in colour & clearly visible. The flesh is brown & very firm good for grilling, without the stalk also for stuffing & baked in the oven, also great as a tempura etc. etc.
📌…. a little slice of Italian pizza history..............
Etymologically, the term “Picea or Piza” first appeared in the Neapolitan dialect around the year 1000 & meant something like "push, jolt" & thus probably referred to the hand movement when lifting the pizza with a pizza turning peel out of the oven.
Tomatoes were first introduced to Italy from South America in 1522. At first the tomato was believed by the poorer peasants to be poisonous, fortunately they farmers overcame their doubts about tomatoes in the 17th century & started adding it to the bread dough,…focaccia was created & became the "gran, gran, gran mother" of today's pizzas.
Mozzarella had become available in Italy after water buffalos were imported from India in the 7th century, but its popularity grew very slowly until the last half of the 18th century. Like the growing acceptance of tomatoes, mozzarella cheese was slowly gaining ground too. But the cheese & tomatoes did not meet on a pizza until 1889 when Don Raffaele Esposito, an Italian tavern owner developed a pizza featuring tomatoes, mozzarella cheese & basil, components bearing the colours of the Italian flag. He named it "Pizza Margherita", after the Queen of Italy, Margherita Teresa Giovanni.
Italy unified in 1861, King Umberto I & Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889, legend has it that the traveling pair became bored with their steady diet of French haute cuisine & asked for an assortment of pizzas from the city’s Pizzeria Brandi.
In the late half of the 19th century, Italians migrated to North-America & with them their pizza bread recipe from Naples, replicating their trusty, crusty pizzas in New York & other American cities, relatively quickly, the flavours & aromas of pizza began to intrigue also non-Italians.
Beginning of the 20th century, Italian immigrants begun to open their own bakeries & were selling besides groceries as well pizza. The first documented United States pizzeria was Gennaro Lombardi’s, licensed to sell pizza in 1905 on Spring Street in Manhattan, a part known as “Little Italy” Lombardi’s, is still in operation today, however, no longer at its 1905 site, but has the same oven as it did originally. Pizza as we know & the world likes took the United States by storm before it became popular in its native Italy
Especially in the 50th, pizza’s popularity in the United States boomed & no longer seen as an Italian folkloric treat, it was increasingly identified as fast & fun food. Regional, decidedly non-Neapolitan variations emerged, eventually including California-gourmet pizzas topped with anything from barbecued chicken to smoked salmon.
Post-war pizza finally reached Italy & beyond their borders also influenced by the starting tourism. Like blue jeans, rock & roll, fast food etc. the Italians & the rest of the world picked up on pizza just because it was "Americano"…easy to eat, fast & tasty.
📍 …So actually pizza the way we like it is an "Italo-American" creation.
I personally like the pizza thin with a nice crunchy crust, fresh & hot with the particular flavour only a pizza right out of a pizza wood-fired brick oven has, sprinkled with a little oregano & a drizzle of Calabrian native olive oil, …but there is a pizza for each & everyone's age, taste & favours.
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WM 5982, transferred from C&O of the same number, is switching cars in Baltimore with caboose WM 1864. No date or photographer listed, slide from my collection.
Studio 26 assignment - Nature Morte.
I chose this image for my final submission as it's the one where I achieved the best lighting in camera. It needed very little work in processing.
Colantonio (Niccolò Antonio 1420 circa - Naples, after 1460) - Deposition (1455-1460) Oil on panel, 295x149 cm -
National Museum of Capodimonte Naples
Questa bellissima tavola originariamente nella Chiesa di S.Domenico Maggiore, sarebbe stata dipinta tra il 1455 e il 1460 basandosi sul modello di un arazzo – su disegno di Rogier van der Weyden – acquistato da Alfonso il Magnanimo proprio nel 1455.
Qui sono più evidenti gli influssi nordici apportati, dopo l’arrivo degli aragonesi, dall’arte fiamminga: i panneggi, il paesaggio urbano sullo sfondo, la donna in lacrime sulla sinistra che è la copia speculare di una analoga figura presente in una deposizione di Petrus Christus
This beautiful panel originally in the Church of S. Domenico Maggiore, would have been painted between 1455 and 1460 based on the model of a tapestry - designed by Rogier van der Weyden - purchased by Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1455.
Here are more evident the Nordic influences brought, after the arrival of the Aragonese, by Flemish art: the drapery, the urban landscape in the background, the woman in tears on the left which is the mirror copy of a similar figure present in a deposition of Petrus Christus
View large.
Special NOTE: On Feb. 8, 2012 I attached a comment, readable & easily discoverable on Page 2 of the comments below, that details the vast corporatist scheme, fronted by Jeb Bush, financed in part with hundreds of millions from Rupert Murdoch (FOX nooze), to privatize American public education & reduce it to 'virtual' schools - not to improve anything (as national & international educational research studies clearly show), but rather to become the final recipients of the taxes people pay so that they can skim huge profits off of the top while providing grotesquely inferior services & lots of lying propaganda to keep the public bamboozled. I beg everyone to read the report.
The McGuffey's Ecclectic Spelling Book was published in 1879.
Raymond Cyrus Hoiles (1878-1970) founded Freedom Communications, a newspaper publishing & broadcasting company that has never hesitated to shape the news to fit right wing ideology. When Hoiles was alive & roaring I lived in Orange County, California, home of the equally right wing Walt Disney & Walter Knott, & was frequently compelled to suffer people who agreed with Hoiles' constantly editorialized insistence that public education was a form of theft & communism that must at once be got rid of. Hoiles was motivated by his fundamentalist Christian persuasions, & quite serious. We should restrain our laughter at the abysmal stupidity of his example, because in many ways he & people like him won & are still winning control of public education. - To introduce the article below, I'll say a little about the Christian strategy.
For many years Orange County's teachers worked under a Draconian ruling that forbade the teaching of values. There is no way around the fact, however, that the statement, "Values may not be taught," is itself a value statement belonging to a class of propositions known as Epimenidean Paradoxes. A comparably illustrative sentence would be, "This is not a sentence." Or, a favorite of the best hypnotists, used when addressing a resistant subject, "Do not obey any instruction which I give you."
What, then, was intended by those who created the paradoxical Orange County law? Well, if any teacher dared to say or imply something that would be disagreeable to any person whose beliefs began & ended with church, flag & free-for-all capitalism, then that teacher could be charged with teaching values & be suspended. One family friend, a young man teaching at an elementary school in Anaheim, was charged, hounded, publicly disgraced, threatened with death & discharged from his post, immediately after which he died from a heart attack. The case was depicted in Life Magazine. His only crime was that he was Jewish. His wife, also a teacher, remained bereft & embittered the rest of her long life.
These people became increasingly invisible over time, largely by devising ever more clever ways for gaining control of both education policy & the public dialogue about education.
Ralph Reed, working for Pat Robertson & the Christian Coalition, devised the "stealth agenda" to place fundamentalists in every local school board in America. The plan helped select & fund candidates, who in accord with Reed's instructions never mentioned their religion or religious connections when campaigning for office. In 1983 Reed rigged an election at his university - he got started early, in other words. Recently we learned that Mr. Reed & Jack Abramoff were associate crooks. The revelation forced Reed to abandon his run to become the lieutenant governor of Georgia. Mr. Reed will not disappear, however. He remains a darling of the far Christian right, & owns Century Strategies, a dirty-tricks political consulting & lobbying organization. In 1999 Karl Rove got reed a nice contract with Enron, which was paying Reed $30,000 per month. And guess who recently went to Georgia to try to save poor Reed? Rudy Giuliani, who has the hots to be the next U.S. president & is pandering to the Christians so he can be their new burning Bush.
Stealthiness did not go away when the Christian Coalition folded & Reed went off on his own to rig elections for big bucks. Rather, the stealth moved into policy matters. For instance, all the phony propaganda claiming religious & private education is more successful, creating the excuse to promote vouchers (for which the motives are both religious & racist). Or, most recently, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which was sought by the Christians not because they believed all the testing of students would lead to improved education, but rather because they wanted teachers to be made too busy preparing students for endless tests about facts to find time to do the great evil thing, which is the teaching of concepts. Teaching concepts leads to teaching logic, scientific & other academic methodologies which by their nature instill respect for critical - read, skeptical - thinking. Dogmatists, advertisers & con men have equal cause to fear skepticism.
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From: Truthdig.com
Taking Back Our Schools--and Fixing Them
Full text with links: www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_taking_back_our_sch...
Posted on Apr. 25, 2006
By Wellford Wilms
The recent news reported in The New York Times that schools are throwing out science, social studies and art to make time for drilling students in remedial math and reading is a sign of things gone terribly wrong. Former New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol told the Times that narrowing education to just math and reading would be akin to restricting violin students to playing scales day after day. “They’d lose their zest for music.” But most schools that serve poor populations, like those in Cuero, Texas, are squeezed to meet federal math and reading standards. Cuero Superintendent Henry Lind told the paper, “When you have so many hours per day and you’re behind in some area that’s being hammered on, you have to work on that.”
But by the looks of things, hammering students for higher test scores isn’t making much of a difference. Most students have already lost their zest for learning. How do we know? In Los Angeles, upwards of 50% of Latino and African American students never finish high school. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been a professor of education at UCLA for more than 25 years and am convinced that despite the fads that come and go, nothing has put a dent in the public schools’ failure to educate inner-city children. In fact, things are getting worse. But I am also convinced that we’ve been looking in the wrong places for solutions. My own research across a wide array of organizations—corporations, trade unions, public schools, colleges, teacher unions and police agencies—suggests another way of looking at the problem and that solutions will come from a new direction.
This essay is a proposition—one that I hope will spark a lively debate among Truthdig readers and inform policy leaders. Future essays will examine Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to take over the public schools, analyze whether teacher unions can be a force for productive change, and expose promising ways to rebuild public investment in the schools.
Let’s start with Jonathan Kozol’s new book, “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.” It is a scathing indictment of American social policy that banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955 and then turned a blind eye to its implementation. Today, Kozol says, schools are more segregated than ever. But he fails to explain why resegregation has occurred. Because Kozol overlooks the root causes of the problem, his solutions—spending more money on dysfunctional schools and wishing for a social mandate to desegregate the schools—miss the point.
To be sure the problems are undeniable. Kozol examines the appalling condition of big-city schools. In school after school we see children who are brimming with potential but who are walled off from the larger society and abandoned by the schools. Most middle-class white Americans simply cannot comprehend the horrid schools that Kozol describes. Ceilings fall in, toilets are filthy, libraries, music and arts have been stripped away. Teachers in these schools, who are paid 40% less than teachers in the suburbs, are forced to teach “scripted” lessons that are written for children who are deemed incapable of learning.
It is all part of the latest reform pushed by the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind initiative, a reform aimed at the singular pursuit of increasing test scores. Learning has been stripped of its intrinsic meaning and reduced to simplistic steps—“Authentic Writing,” “Active Listening,” “Accountable Talk”—that hamper teachers in teaching anything but how to take a test. Behind it all is an attempt to impose control, much as mass production techniques were used a century ago, to standardize instruction to fit new immigrants to the system.
Meanwhile, millions of children are failing. In nearly half of the high schools in America’s 100 largest districts, fewer than 50% of students graduate in four years. Most of these students are from poor Latino and African-American families. And from 1993 to 2000 the number of failing schools has mushroomed by 75%. Mayor Villaraigosa calls Los Angeles’ high dropout rates “numbers that should put a chill down your spine.”
The reasons, Kozol argues, are lack of money and racial discrimination that produce inferior and segregated schools. No doubt this is partly true. We have tried to desegregate the schools for a half-century and failed. Middle-class white parents have voted for individual freedom with their feet, enrolling their children in private schools, leaving the public schools more segregated than ever. The same is true for middle-class black families. Gail Foster, an educator who has studied black independent schools, was quoted in 2004 in The New York Times as saying: “Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children. What’s left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There’s been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn’t stopping now.”
More money is not the answer either. Kozol points to wide disparities in educational expenditures ranging from $11,700 per student in New York City to $22,000 in suburban Manhasset. Disturbing as that is, study after study shows that equalizing money does not necessarily equalize learning.
In 1966, sociologist James Coleman conducted the most extensive study ever made of desegregating education and found that what mattered most in students’ learning was the economic status of their peers rather than the racial makeup of the school. He also found that school funding was not closely related to students’ achievement—their families’ economic status was far more predictive. Coleman’s findings were controversial and led to a bitter debate, but they have been replicated many times. Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up best when he commented shortly after Coleman’s groundbreaking study, “We should begin to see that the underlying reality is not race but social class.”
Since social class matters because money follows privilege, and since desegregation will take generations to eradicate, what can be done now? Are poor children doomed to attend grossly inadequate schools? Surely not. We must find ways to remove the influences that have crippled the schools. Money must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies that snuff out innovation. Instead it must go directly to schools where principals and teachers can influence what is taught and what children learn, and help bring parents back into the fold. Otherwise, it is going down a rat hole.
Parents have a significant role to play in their children’s education, but their voices have been largely silenced. Over the last 40 years, we have witnessed the decline of civic involvement and the growing dominance of self-interest over the greater good, a social deterioration that sociologist Robert Putnam calls “hollowing out” in his 2000 book “Bowling Alone.” One result, as the old saying goes, is that “the rich get richer” and the poor fall ever further behind in crumbling schools.
Over the last 25 years, education in general has been taken from ordinary citizens and teachers by politicians, administrators, union leaders, publishers, test makers, consultants, university professors, hardware and software developers and the media, each playing its part in keeping alive the illusion of reform. All in all, this $1-trillion industry has replaced the common interest, and no one, it seems, can muster the will to rein it in.
Local control is only a dim memory. Decisions now come from the top—from the federal and state governments, school boards and high-level administrators who have little knowledge of what goes on in the classroom. Teachers are left out of these decisions, carrying on the best they can, safe in the assumption that the newest fad, like those before it, will blow over. Parents are all but forgotten.
While command-and-control management may seem to produce results in the short run, it strips schools of the capacity to develop the stable leadership that is necessary to sustain success. Principals are besieged with demands from district offices and from the educational fads that emanate from publishers and university researchers. Many principals know that they put their careers in peril unless they do what their bosses want. One elementary school principal told me, “District directives undermine our own abilities to think for ourselves, to believe in what we see and know.” When schools discover something that works, it is rarely sustained because they lack authority or stable leadership.
In 1969 when I worked for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, I monitored the schools in impoverished Ocean Hill-Brownsville in New York City. The local school board hired a charismatic superintendent, who fired incompetent teachers and hired young and idealistic ones. The firings set the local board at odds with the huge teachers’ union, which demanded due process for the fired teachers. The superintendent, Rhody McCoy, was convinced that good teachers had to respect the children they taught. He put it in plain words: “If you’re convinced that this kid is doomed by nature or by something else to lead a shrunken and curtailed life, then you’re basically incompetent to teach that child.” The experiment worked. Observing classrooms left no doubt in my mind that students were learning. Eager first-graders sat attentively on the floor in semicircles shouting out answers to fraction problems and reading aloud. The schools buzzed with excitement as parent helpers streamed in and out of classrooms. But in a bitter power struggle the board seized authority and the experiment ended.
Years later, in 1985, Deborah Meier, a passionate educator who founded Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary School, achieved stunning successes that led the school to be celebrated as a model alternative school in Time magazine. But it could not be sustained beyond Meier’s unique leadership. Today, 10 years after Meier left, a respected children’s advocacy group, Insideschools and Advocates for Children, reports that the Harlem school “…has fallen on hard times in recent years with rapid staff turnover, low staff morale and uneven discipline.”
In risk-averse environments like public schools, few principals will stick out their necks, because they don’t want to buck the bosses downtown. Courageous and visionary principals like Rhody McCoy and Deborah Meier keep coming. But charismatic leadership is no match for heavy-handed district management, which always wins out.
Take Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles, for example. In 1989, Howard Lappin took over a failing middle school. With the help of teachers and an infusion of money, Lappin wrested control from the district and transformed Foshay. The school expanded into a K-12 “learning center” and became largely autonomous of the district’s bureaucratic requirements. Teachers and administrators decided who would be hired and what would be taught. Foshay succeeded, and in 2000 its high school was selected by Newsweek as one of the 100 best in America. But in 2001 Lappin retired, and his unique leadership was lost. Today Foshay is being threatened with sanctions by the district and the county because gains in students’ test scores have stalled. As the school has fallen under the district’s “one-size-fits all” bureaucratic requirements, the impact has been to undermine the once vibrant teacher leadership that made the school so enviable.
The problem with public education is not with the teachers, or with the children, but the way we organize the schools. Probably the greatest casualties are teachers themselves, who are forced to accept decisions by authorities about teaching that they know to be nonsense. One professor interviewed by Kozol said that forcing an absurdity on teachers teaches something: acquiescence. For example, in study after study, teachers report that relying on test scores as sole marks of student achievement and teaching scripted lessons destroy students’ natural love of learning. And such practices also erode teachers’ professional authority, which is fundamental to student learning.
Why is it so hard to foster the only kind of reform that really works, which is right in the schoolhouse? Because politicians, school board members and administrators are under intense pressure to produce immediate results, i.e., higher and higher test scores—a goal that is pursued through directives from districts with little input of principals, teachers and parents. Superintendents serve at the pleasure of school boards, and most board members are elected or appointed and have limited terms of office. As test scores have become the measure of educational quality, everyone is under immense pressure to show fast results or be turned out.
No wonder that school boards hire superintendents who promise to deliver quick results. But few do. Superintendents last on average only three or four years. Many are thwarted by outmoded bureaucracies that were designed a century ago using top-down control practiced in American industry to mass-produce learning. Within these organizations, power has quietly accumulated, making them all but impervious to outside influence. Sid Thompson, former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told me: “Trying to change the district is like trying to change the direction of a fast-moving freight train. You might knock it off course for a moment, but before you know it it’s rattling right down the tracks again.”
Frustration and suspicion about who might emerge from the shadows to sabotage their plans often lead superintendents to jealously guard their power. In 2002, Day Higuchi, then president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the Los Angeles teacher union, had high hopes for working with the school district’s new “can-do” superintendent, Roy Romer. Higuchi hoped that Romer would endorse a new union initiative called Lesson Study, a plan to help teachers work collectively to improve classroom lessons. At a breakfast meeting that I attended, Higuchi presented Romer with an invitation to work with the union to develop and spread Lesson Study across the district. When Higuchi finished, Romer flipped over his paper placemat and with a red felt pen drew a box with an S in it. “That’s me,” he said. Beneath he drew 11 boxes with smaller s’s in them, representing the 11 local superintendents, and below that, a number of small boxes with roofs, representing schools and teachers. Then, pulling his face near to Higuchi’s, he drew bold red arrows pointing downward from the top. Romer jabbed his pen in the air to accentuate each word: “You cannot usurp my authority to manage this district!” It was a dumbfounding moment, one that revealed the true underside of the use of power. Here was a chance for a new superintendent to forge a small but significant step with the union, but Romer, who recently announced his resignation, explained that he was “in a hurry.” He clearly had little time for ideas that were at odds with his own. In the end his refusal to work with the union undermined the possibility of creating a broader base of power that could transcend self-interest.
Nor are the unions exempt from self-interest. A few years ago I helped establish a national group of union presidents called TURN (Teacher Union Reform Network) who were dedicated to remaking their unions as forces to improve education. One way was to cooperate with administrators and encourage teachers to use their classroom know-how to redesign teaching at the schoolhouse. But hostility and mistrust run deep. The union leaders became nervous, fearing that fellow unionists would attack them for “collaborating” with the enemy and that if the effort to collaborate failed they would share the blame. Don Watley, president of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees, commented: “It’s like the Normandy landing. We’ve got the best troops in the world. We’ve got the best officers in the world. And we’ve got the best equipment in the world. But at 0800 when we hit the beach half of us are going to get killed!” Sadly, in the years to come, the ingrained mistrust, and the unpredictable dance of union politics, prevented these unionists from becoming a positive force in educational reform. Instead, they have been reduced to stockpiling power, much as the Soviets and Americans stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War, to oppose any hostile moves the other side might make.
So what can be done to break the standoff between teacher unions and districts? How can teachers’ professional authority be restored? How can parents be awakened and brought back into the fold? Experience shows that it can be done. Schools such as Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary, Los Angeles’ Foshay Learning Center, those in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and many others attest to the fact that schools can be made into safe places where children learn. Sustaining them is the hard part.
There is little doubt that trying to build good schools with command-and-control management doesn’t work. School boards, superintendents and union officials need to clear the obstacles—unnecessary bureaucratic requirements and outmoded work rules—to make innovation at the schoolhouse possible. These top-level educational leaders also must make resources available to support new ways of teaching. Jonathan Kozol has it right. Teaching is the only reform that counts and it can be done only at the schoolhouse by teachers, principals, parents and students working together.
Turning school districts upside down will also mean turning a century of top-down management on its head. But where is such bold leadership to be found? One promising place is among big-city mayors. But they must resist trying to take over the schools, as they did in New York, Chicago and Boston with mixed results at best. Instead, popular mayors could use their influence and visibility to tell the truth about the condition of education and to build a popular consensus about how change must occur.
In the next essay I am going to examine what mayors can do. Waiting for the schools to be saved by someone else is nonsense. Only concerted local action offers a chance. Doubters should recall Margaret Mead’s observation: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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This colourful artwork appears it might be partially inspired by a 1918 Soviet Red Army recruitment poster - itself possibly influenced by the still celebrated 1914 British propaganda poster of Kitchener with a pointed finger reminding potential cannon fodder that "Your country needs you!" - a poster which encouraged tens of thousands of young British men to volunteer for the killing fields of Flanders. The Putin-like face and the rats are just some of several notable differences from the original Red Army poster.
I suspect that many academics, while possibly readily agreeing that Putin could easily be classified as a "terrorist" (like many equally brutal authoritarian leaders the West eagerly support), might find it difficult to accept defining him as in any way "Red," especially given Russia's powerful oligarchic system and Putin's own declared belief that communism is "a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization." Whether Putin's ideas of civilisation are somewhat warped is a different question.
I don't know whether there is also any inspiration from Oxford academic Timothy Garton Ash who described Putin as "rat faced," though I'm not sure whether the addition of rat analogies to the debate is helpful.
I post this series of photos of anti-war protests in central London as a neutral observer (more photos will be following soon). I'm no fan of either Russian or Western imperialism and military aggression and I have every sympathy with the Ukrainians who are facing a war of aggression from their more powerful northern neighbour, part of the motive for which seems to be to rebuild the prestige and power of Russia, as a sort of new Russian empire reflecting the former hegemonic influence over Eastern Europe of the Soviet Union. All at an immense cost in lives, and also a clear and grave violation of international law. Putin's decision to escalate the nuclear standoff with the West by publicly placing his nuclear forces on high alert should be another reminder of just how dangerous he is.
However, the West should also share a significant portion of the blame for this war. The Russian invasion is far from "unprovoked" as many media commentators claim. First, we have to remember recent history and how Russia has good reason to fear NATO which was originally set up to combat the threat of the 'Russian hordes.' It is remarkable how in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev, despite his familiarity with Germany's responsibility for having invaded Russia twice during the twentieth century (in 1914 and 1941), agreed to allow East Germany to join West Germany inside a hostile military alliance. There was however a quid pro quo, as promised by President George H. W. Bush (senior) and Secretary of State James Baker that NATO wouldn't move "another inch to the east" but that promise was soon broken as during the Clinton presidency, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined, and then under President George W. Bush, the NATO alliance was further extended to include Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic States, and further still under Obama to Croatia and Albania.
This means that NATO forces are now frequently deployed right around Russia's western borders (except for Ukraine and Belarus). One can imagine, Washington's paranoia, if say in the 1960s or 1970s, Mexico and Canada had declared their intention to join the Warsaw Pact and many people may be familiar with how Cuba's desire to station Soviet missiles on its territory to deter a feared US invasion (and frequent terror attacks), almost led to a nuclear war, though fortunately Khrushchev saw wisdom and backed down in the face of JFK's terrifying brinkmanship and secretly the United States did agree to withdraw some of its older strategic nuclear missiles from Turkey.
At the same time the United States sees Ukraine as occupying a key space on the strategic chessboard, and has ensured that Ukraine has become increasingly dependent on foreign debt and Washington's goodwill, and has continued to plan for Ukraine's eventual incorporation into NATO. That would mean Ukraine, which occupies a vital strategic position on Russia's southern flank and with its border just 350 miles from Moscow, would also become a potential platform for an assault on Russia and even if no assault ever occurred, the mere fact of NATO's enhanced power, would inevitably greatly diminish any remaining influence Russia had to counterbalance US hegemony in Europe. That's why Ukraine's membership of NATO is something which no Russian leader was ever likely to accept. It is of course easy to see a possible compromise - that Ukraine should remain neutral but that in return all countries should respect its territorial integrity, although allowing some autonomy for the Russian speaking areas in Crimea and the Donbass.
Western media has downplayed the suffering of the Russian population in the Donbass region, which for years has been subjected to constant shelling from government forces, and although Ukrainian civilians have also been killed by Russian backed separatists, the UN figures clearly show that year after year, it was the Russian population which suffered a far higher level of fatalities and serious injuries, including the deaths of many children.
ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-relat...
Western media also holds up Ukraine as a beacon of freedom and democracy, but while there have been some important gains for civil society in recent years, Russians have good reason to be unhappy. The Ukraine government has harassed and detained several opposition and pro-Russian journalists and in February 2017 it banned the commercial importation of books from Russia and a new education law made Ukrainian the sole language of instruction in secondary schools, which obviously discriminated against its Russian population. Fascist militias are also growing in number and corruption is endemic while the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture suspects the Ukrainian government of operating secret prisons.
However, it should be noted that the human rights record of the separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk have also received intense criticism from the UN OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) and various NGOs for suspected human rights abuses, while Russia's appalling human rights record and its increasing authoritarianism is well known.
To avoid the enormous risk of a nuclear confrontation the West has to start thinking of a way to allow Putin to climb down, without jeopardising European security or sacrificing the freedoms of the Ukrainian people and the obvious way would be to agree to recognise Ukraine as a neutral sovereign state which would remain outside NATO and with a real democratic autonomy for the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
If the West continues to funnel enormous quantities of high tech military equipment into Ukraine, without any attempt to reach a political compromise (by recognising Russia's legitimate security concerns and autonomy for the Donbass region while still guaranteeing Ukraine's sovereignty) there's a very real risk that an increasingly frustrated Putin will issue an ultimatum for the tactical use of nuclear weapons in order to regain the upper hand on the battlefield, and this will be an incredibly dangerous moment for humankind.
Formation World Tour 2016
Soldier Field
Chicago, IL
May 28th, 2016
All photos © Joshua Mellin per the guidelines listed under "Owner settings" to the right.
Sorry to post and run, but I think I may have caught a very nasty bug... and no, sadly, it's not the kind that one finds in flowers.
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Amedeo Modigliani
Italian, 1884 - 1920
Woman with a Necklace, 1917
Oil on canvas
(closeup)
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was a Jewish-Italian painter and sculptor who pursued his career for the most part in France. Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906. Influenced by the artists in his circle of friends and associates, by a range of genres and movements, and by primitive art, Modigliani's oeuvre was nonetheless unique and idiosyncratic. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis—exacerbated by a lifestyle of excess—at the age of 35.
Early life
Modigliani was born into a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy.
Livorno was still a relatively new city, by Italian standards, in the late nineteenth century. The city on the Tyrrhenian coast dates from around 1600, when it was transformed from a swampy village into a seaport. The Livorno that Modigliani knew was a bustling centre of commerce focused upon seafaring and shipwrighting, but its cultural history lay in being a refuge for those persecuted for their religion. His own maternal great-great-grandfather was one Solomon Garsin, a Jew who had immigrated to Livorno in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee.
Modigliani was the fourth child of Flaminio Modigliani and his wife, Eugenia Garsin. His father was in the money-changing business, but when the business went bankrupt, the family lived in dire poverty. In fact, Amedeo's birth saved the family from certain ruin, as, according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. When bailiffs entered the family home, just as Eugenia went into labour, the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of the expectant mother.
Modigliani had a particularly close relationship with his mother, who taught her son at home until he was ten. Beset with health problems after a bout of typhoid at the age of fourteen, two years later he contracted the tuberculosis which would affect him for the rest of his life. To help him recover from his many childhood illnesses, she took him to Naples in Southern Italy, where the warmer weather was conducive to his convalescence.
His mother was, in many ways, instrumental in his ability to pursue art as a vocation. When he was eleven years of age, she had noted in her diary that:
“The child's character is still so unformed that I cannot say what I think of it. He behaves like a spoiled child, but he does not lack intelligence. We shall have to wait and see what is inside this chrysalis. Perhaps an artist?"
Art student years
Modigliani is known to have drawn and painted from a very early age, and thought himself "already a painter", his mother wrote, even before beginning formal studies. Despite her misgivings that launching him on a course of studying art would impinge upon his other studies, his mother indulged the young Modigliani's passion for the subject.
At the age of fourteen, while sick with the typhoid fever, he raved in his delirium that he wanted, above all else, to see the paintings in the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi in Florence. As Livorno's local museum only housed a sparse few paintings by the Italian Renaissance masters, the tales he had heard about the great works held in Florence intrigued him, and it was a source of considerable despair to him, in his sickened state, that he might never get the chance to view them in person. His mother promised that she would take him to Florence herself, the moment he was recovered. Not only did she fulfil this promise, but she also undertook to enroll him with the best painting master in Livorno, Guglielmo Micheli.
Micheli and the Macchiaioli
Modigliani worked in the studio of Micheli from 1898 to 1900. Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an atmosphere deeply steeped in a study of the styles and themes of nineteenth-century Italian art. In his earliest Parisian work, traces of this influence, and that of his studies of Renaissance art, can still be seen: artists such as Giovanni Boldini figure just as much in this nascent work as do those of Toulouse-Lautrec.
Modigliani showed great promise while with Micheli, and only ceased his studies when he was forced to, by the onset of tuberculosis.
In 1901, whilst in Rome, Modigliani admired the work of Domenico Morelli, a painter of melodramatic Biblical studies and scenes from great literature. It is ironic that he should be so struck by Morelli, as this painter had served as an inspiration for a group of iconoclasts who went by the title, the Macchiaioli (from macchia—"dash of colour", or, more derogatively, "stain"), and Modigliani had already been exposed to the influences of the Macchiaioli. This minor, localised art movement was possessed of a need to react against the bourgeois stylings of the academic genre painters. While sympathetically connected to (and actually pre-dating) the French Impressionists, the Macchiaioli did not make the same impact upon international art culture as did the followers of Monet, and are today largely forgotten outside of Italy.
Modigliani's connection with the movement was through Micheli, his first art teacher. Micheli was not only a Macchiaioli himself, but had been a pupil of the famous Giovanni Fattori, a founder of the movement. Micheli's work, however, was so fashionable and the genre so commonplace that the young Modigliani reacted against it, preferring to ignore the obsession with landscape that, as with French Impressionism, characterised the movement. Micheli also tried to encourage his pupils to paint en plein air, but Modigliani never really got a taste for this style of working, sketching in cafes, but preferring to paint indoors, and especially in his own studio. Even when compelled to paint landscapes (three are known to exist), Modigliani chose a proto-Cubist palette more akin to Cézanne than to the Macchiaioli.
While with Micheli, Modigliani not only studied landscape, but also portraiture, still-life, and the nude. His fellow students recall that the latter was where he displayed his greatest talent, and apparently this was not an entirely academic pursuit for the teenager: when not painting nudes, he was occupied with seducing the household maid.
Despite his rejection of the Macchiaioli approach, Modigliani nonetheless found favour with his teacher, who referred to him as "Superman", a pet name reflecting the fact that Modigliani was not only quite adept at his art, but also that he regularly quoted from Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Fattori himself would often visit the studio, and approved of the young artist's innovations.
In 1902, Modigliani continued what was to be a life-long infatuation with life drawing, enrolling in the Accademia di Belle Arti (Scuola Libera di Nudo, or "Free School of Nude Studies") in Florence. A year later while still suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Venice, where he registered to study at the Istituto di Belle Arti.
It is in Venice that he first smoked hashish and, rather than studying, began to spend time frequenting disreputable parts of the city. The impact of these lifestyle choices upon his developing artistic style is open to conjecture, although these choices do seem to be more than simple teenage rebellion, or the cliched hedonism and bohemianism that was almost expected of artists of the time; his pursuit of the seedier side of life appears to have roots in his appreciation of radical philosophies, such as those of Nietzsche.
Early literary influences
Having been exposed to erudite philosophical literature as a young boy under the tutelage of Isaco Garsin, his maternal grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced through his art studies by the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carduzzi, Comte de Lautréamont, and others, and developed the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder.
Letters that he wrote from his 'sabbatical' in Capri in 1901 clearly indicate that he is being more and more influenced by the thinking of Nietzsche. In these letters, he advised friend Oscar Ghiglia,
“(hold sacred all) which can exalt and excite your intelligence... (and) ... seek to provoke ... and to perpetuate ... these fertile stimuli, because they can push the intelligence to its maximum creative power.”
The work of Lautréamont was equally influential at this time. This doomed poet's Les Chants de Maldoror became the seminal work for the Parisian Surrealists of Modigliani's generation, and the book became Modigliani's favourite to the extent that he learnt it by heart. The poetry of Lautréamont is characterised by the juxtaposition of fantastical elements, and by sadistic imagery; the fact that Modigliani was so taken by this text in his early teens gives a good indication of his developing tastes. Baudelaire and D'Annunzio similarly appealed to the young artist, with their interest in corrupted beauty, and the expression of that insight through Symbolist imagery.
Modigliani wrote to Ghiglia extensively from Capri, where his mother had taken him to assist in his recovery from the tuberculosis. These letters are a sounding board for the developing ideas brewing in Modigliani's mind. Ghiglia was seven years Modigliani's senior, and it is likely that it was he who showed the young man the limits of his horizons in Livorno. Like all precocious teenagers, Modigliani preferred the company of older companions, and Ghiglia's role in his adolescence was to be a sympathetic ear as he worked himself out, principally in the convoluted letters that he regularly sent, and which survive today.
“Dear friend
I write to pour myself out to you and to affirm myself to myself. I am the prey of great powers that surge forth and then disintegrate... A bourgeois told me today - insulted me - that I or at least my brain was lazy. It did me good. I should like such a warning every morning upon awakening: but they cannot understand us nor can they understand life...”
Paris
Arrival
In 1906 Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal point of the avant-garde. In fact, his arrival at the epicentre of artistic experimentation coincided with the arrival of two other foreigners who were also to leave their marks upon the art world: Gino Severini and Juan Gris.
He settled in Le Bateau-Lavoir, a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre, renting himself a studio in Rue Caulaincourt. Even though this artists' quarter of Montmartre was characterised by generalised poverty, Modigliani himself presented - initially, at least - as one would expect the son of a family trying to maintain the appearances of its lost financial standing to present: his wardrobe was dapper without ostentation, and the studio he rented was appointed in a style appropriate to someone with a finely attuned taste in plush drapery and Renaissance reproductions. He soon made efforts to assume the guise of the bohemian artist, but, even in his brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large black hat, he continued to appear as if he were slumming it, having fallen upon harder times.
When he first arrived in Paris, he wrote home regularly to his mother, he sketched his nudes at the Colarossi school, and he drank wine in moderation. He was at that time considered by those who knew him as a bit reserved, verging on the asocial. He is noted to have commented, upon meeting Picasso who, at the time, was wearing his trademark workmen's clothes, that even though the man was a genius, that did not excuse his uncouth appearance.
Transformation
Within a year of arriving in Paris, however, his demeanour and reputation had changed dramatically. He transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.
The poet and journalist Louis Latourette, upon visiting the artist's previously well-appointed studio after his transformation, discovered the place in upheaval, the Renaissance reproductions discarded from the walls, the plush drapes in disarray. Modigliani was already an alcoholic and a drug addict by this time, and his studio reflected this. Modigliani's behaviour at this time sheds some light upon his developing style as an artist, in that the studio had become almost a sacrificial effigy for all that he resented about the academic art that had marked his life and his training up to that point.
Not only did he remove all the trappings of his bourgeois heritage from his studio, but he also set about destroying practically all of his own early work. He explained this extraordinary course of actions to his astonished neighbours thus:
“Childish baubles, done when I was a dirty bourgeois."
The motivation for this violent rejection of his earlier self is the subject of considerable speculation. The self-destructive tendencies may have stemmed from his tuberculosis and the knowledge (or presumption) that the disease had essentially marked him for an early death; within the artists' quarter, many faced the same sentence, and the typical response was to set about enjoying life while it lasted, principally by indulging in self-destructive actions. For Modigliani such behavior may have been a response to a lack of recognition; it is known that he sought the company of other alcoholic artists such as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues.
Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish. While drunk he would sometimes strip himself naked at social gatherings. He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well-known as that of Vincent van Gogh.
During the 1920s, in the wake of Modigliani's career and spurred on by comments by Andre Salmon crediting hashish and absinthe with the genesis of Modigliani's style, many hopefuls tried to emulate his 'success' by embarking on a path of substance abuse and bohemian excess. Salmon claimed—erroneously—that whereas Modigliani was a totally pedestrian artist when sober,
“...from the day that he abandoned himself to certain forms of debauchery, an unexpected light came upon him, transforming his art. From that day on, he became one who must be counted among the masters of living art.”
While this propaganda served as a rallying cry to those with a romantic longing to be a tragic, doomed artist, these strategies did not produce unique artistic insights or techniques in those who did not already have them.
In fact, art historians suggest that it is entirely possible for Modigliani to have achieved even greater artistic heights had he not been immured in, and destroyed by, his own self-indulgences. We can only speculate what he might have accomplished had he emerged intact from his self-destructive explorations.
Output
During his early years in Paris, Modigliani worked at a furious pace. He was constantly sketching, making as many as a hundred drawings a day. However, many of his works were lost - destroyed by him as inferior, left behind in his frequent changes of address, or given to girlfriends who did not keep them.
He was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907 he became fascinated with the work of Paul Cézanne. Eventually he developed his own unique style, one that cannot be adequately categorized with other artists.
He met the first serious love of his life, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in 1910, when he was 26. They had studios in the same building, and although 21-year-old Anna was recently married, they began an affair. Tall (Modigliani was only 5 foot 5 inches) with dark hair (like Modigliani's), pale skin and grey-green eyes, she embodied Modigliani's aesthetic ideal and the pair became engrossed in each other. After a year, however, Anna returned to her husband.
Experiments with sculpture
In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno, sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time renting a studio in Montparnasse. He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, he abruptly abandoned sculpting and focused solely on his painting.
Question of influences
In Modigliani's art, there is evidence of the influence of primitive art from Africa and Cambodia which he may have seen in the Musée de l'Homme, but his stylisations are just as likely to have been the result of his being surrounded by Mediaeval sculpture during his studies in Northern Italy (there is no recorded information from Modigliani himself, as there is with Picasso and others, to confirm the contention that he was influenced by either ethnic or any other kind of sculpture). A possible interest in African tribal masks seems to be evident in his portraits. In both his painting and sculpture, the sitters' faces resemble ancient Egyptian painting in their flat and masklike appearance, with distinctive almond eyes, pursed mouths, twisted noses, and elongated necks. However these same chacteristics are shared by Medieval European sculpture and painting.
Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim Soutine, Moise Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie "Marevna" Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.
At the outset of World War I, Modigliani tried to enlist in the army but was refused because of his poor health.
The war years
Known as Modì, which roughly translates as 'morbid' or 'moribund', by many Parisians, but as Dedo to his family and friends, Modigliani was a handsome man, and attracted much female attention.
Women came and went until Beatrice Hastings entered his life. She stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject for several of his portraits, including Madame Pompadour, and the object of much of his drunken wrath.
When the British painter Nina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse in 1914, on her first evening there the smiling man at the next table in the café introduced himself as Modigliani; painter and Jew. They became great friends.
In 1916, Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art dealer Leopold Zborovski and his wife Anna.
Jeanne Hébuterne
The following summer, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with the painter, whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict, and, worse yet, a Jew. Despite her family's objections, soon they were living together, and although Hébuterne was the love of his life, their public scenes became more renowned than Modigliani's individual drunken exhibitions.
On December 3, 1917, Modigliani's first one-man exhibition opened at the Berthe Weill Gallery. The chief of the Paris police was scandalized by Modigliani's nudes and forced him to close the exhibition within a few hours after its opening.
After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice, she became pregnant and on November 29, 1918 gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne (1918-1984).
Nice
During a trip to Nice, conceived and organized by Leopold Zborovski, Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita and other artists tried to sell their works to rich tourists. Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures but only for a few francs each. Despite this, during this time he produced most of the paintings that later became his most popular and valued works.
During his lifetime he sold a number of his works, but never for any great amount of money. What funds he did receive soon vanished for his habits.
In May of 1919 he returned to Paris, where, with Hébuterne and their daughter, he rented an apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière. While there, both Jeanne Hébuterne and Amedeo Modigliani painted portraits of each other, and of themselves.
Last days
Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent.
In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, his downstairs neighbor checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed delirious and holding onto Hébuterne who was nearly nine months pregnant. They summoned a doctor, but little could be done because Modigliani was dying of the then-incurable disease tubercular meningitis.
Modigliani died on January 24, 1920. There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse.
Hébuterne was taken to her parents' home, where, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window two days after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani.
Modigliani died penniless and destitute—managing only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants. Had he lived through the 1920s when American buyers flooded Paris, his fortunes might well have changed. Since his death his reputation has soared. Nine novels, a play, a documentary and three feature films have been devoted to his life.
A massive, spacetime-warping cluster of galaxies is the setting of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy cluster in question is Abell 209, located 2.8 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Whale).
This Hubble image of Abell 209 shows more than a hundred galaxies, but there’s more to this cluster than even Hubble’s discerning eye can see. Abell 209’s galaxies are separated by millions of light-years, and the seemingly empty space between the galaxies is filled with hot, diffuse gas that is visible only at X-ray wavelengths. An even more elusive occupant of this galaxy cluster is dark matter: a form of matter that does not interact with light. Dark matter does not absorb, reflect, or emit light, effectively making it invisible to us. Astronomers detect dark matter by its gravitational influence on normal matter. Astronomers surmise that the universe is comprised of 5% normal matter, 25% dark matter, and 70% dark energy.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Postman, P. Kelly
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