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Villa Rufolo (1270) is located in Ravello on the Amalfi coast in Italy. This is one of the most popular view's in the area. Built by Nicola Rufolo, one of the richest Patricians of Ravello, on a ledge and it has become a famous attraction for thousands of visitors. The villa was mentioned by Giovanni Boccaccio in his Decameron and it is the place where Richard Wagner in 1880 was inspired for the stage design of his opera Parsifal.
All rights reserved - Copyright © Henri Hirschfeld
All images are exclusive property and may not be copied, downloaded, reproduced, transmitted, manipulated or used in any way without expressed, written permission of the photographer.
TAO:Drum Heart directed by Amon Miyanmoto, Costumes by Junko Koshino, and Stage Design by Rumi Matsui.
(2016 Taiko Drum-0762-2)
This was our semi Thanksgiving series artwork we wanted to make it busy but readable, also our stage design matched the busy words background as we blew up about 30 noticeable and significant word boxes and put them along the back wall to help us brand the series in. It was sweet!
Edition 2022 - Bright Brussels
HYDRA - Module / Nicolas Paolozzi
The symbolism of the snake through abstract and minimal aesthetics.
From Greek mythology to the Chinese culture, the snake is present in the imagination of cultures worldwide. Benevolent, protective, intimidating and sometimes evil, the chimeric animal has a range of temperaments. This interpretation highlights the ambivalent feelings of humans towards the animal: its fluid, winding and undulating body is hypnotic and enchanting, while its metallic structure and thorny articulations evoke a feeling of hostility or fear. The flows of light, which set the animal's skeleton in motion at the whim of its instincts, strengthen this dual perception. As you near it, you can hear its murmurs, part of a soothing atmosphere of sound.
Module produces works at a point where architecture, design and new technologies intersect. The Lyon agency, created by the artist-architect ?Nicolas?Paolozzi, produces sculptural, light, sound and interactive installations that revamp public spaces.
Nicolas?Paolozzi?a designed his first artistic installations with the RDV collective, which he founded in 2011. Bringing together skills from different backgrounds, the project evolved towards the transversal practice of architecture. In a process of continual experimentation, the collective explored the possibilities provided by images and sound through numerous projects: stage design, exhibitions, performances, ephemeral micro-architecture.
With the creation of Module in 2017, Nicolas has gone further by developing the concept of large-scale architecture in his works. Considering space as a set of interactions, he designs hybrid structures oscillating between tangible and intangible materials. As living creatures, his installations are given rhythm by the sound creations of the composer Baptiste Martineau. They evolve over time and provide the spectator with an immersive and singular experience of reality.
Copyright:
Sound design: Baptiste Martineau
Associate production: Module
Co-production: Festival of Lights 2020/2021
The festival of lights in Brussels
Bright Brussels, the festival of lights returns to brighten up the capital this winter!
Four evenings and three routes will take you on a journey to discover of some twenty immersive and poetic artistic works. From 10 to 13 February, the Royal Quarter, the European Quarter and the Flagey neighborhood will be illuminated by enchanting light installations. The festival will also feature a fringe programme, including evening events in the museums.
It's become a tradition for the lights of Bright Brussels to warm us up in the dead of winter and, best of all, it's completely free!
( Bright Brussels is a light festival, a fascinating route through the city consisting of a dozen light installations that are artistic, interactive, playful,... and simply captivating. )
Bartabas: Golgota
Acclaimed equestrian theatre artist Bartabas returns to the Sadler’s Wells stage accompanied by contemporary flamenco dancer Andrés Marín, four horses and a donkey, to present the UK Premiere of Golgota. 14-21 March.
Credits:
Creation, stage design, direction: Bartabas
Choreography, performance: Andrés Marín & Bartabas
Horses: Horizonte, Le Tintoret, Soutine, Champagne & Lautrec the donkey
Music: Tomás Luis de Victoria, motets for solo voice
Countertenor: Christophe Baska
Cornet: Adrien Mabire
Lute: Marc Wolff
Actor: William Panza
Costumes: Sophie Manach & Yannick Laisné
Props: Sébastien Puech
Scenery: Les Ateliers Jipanco
Lights: Laurent Matignon
photo - © Foteini Christofilopoulou | All rights reserved | For all usage/licensing enquiries please contact www.foteini.com
Kecak dance is the most popular show on Bali and is always full of spectators at the show every day at Uluwatu.The Kecak dance is performed at various places and events on Bali.
The show (originally) all male, is sung and danced without musical instruments. At Uluwatu the seated outdoor Theatre stands on solid rock with a height of many tens of meters, Performances are stage designed in such a way that it has the majestic Indian Ocean as its backdrop and timed for the unmissable,captivating and breathtaking Sunset views.
For video, please visit youtu.be/LYhx6JYGJCQ
Where the Wild Things Are: Last year we carved up a storm of stories and this went down a treat. Everyone loved it including the sculptyures. After reviewind the list of stories of stories covered we chose this.
Michela chose to reate her own version of the popular book. Last year it was created by Jan.
Michela Ciappini graduated with a degree in stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. For several years she devoted herself to creation of scenes for Opera, prose and experimental theatre.
In 2004 Michela started to sculpture in sand and 2010 she started to do sculptures working on ice-snow festival and competitons around the World.
Now Michela is travelling the world making sand and ice sculptures.
Known for Painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, stage design, writing
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.
Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.
Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso
Born in Plaza de la Merced 15, Málaga, Spain
Orginal photo Franz-Hubmann + Picasso's "The Accordionist Painting" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accordionist#/media/File:The_Ac...
Artwork by TudioJepegii
atelier ying, nyc.
You may see some of the elements in the tablescape behind the drawing: water glass as optical prism (the obscura version) which would then entertain the idea of a Film Camera as a city plaza which might pose the idea of a Morandi tablescape as a composition of the elements. It's the scale of the design variants (and the optical paths) that allows one to muse on architecture and is the most interesting facet; whether a human scale is important in the realm of cameras as it is in architecture. Yes for camera obscura, no for a camera that shifts the viewer's perceptions (vistas) of reality irregardless of dimension. Which brings the question of whether a camera's function is as a portable window (vista) or a creator of space (experience)?
A lot of black gauze holds the stage pieces to each other as one unit which covers a light-tight enclosure that may shift in form. The front stage table centers the subject as a default sighting device. The closest cousin to this camera is a Speed Graphic. For this reason I categorize it with my other designs for Weegee the photographer.
Design, concepts, text, photograph & drawing are copyright 2016 by David Lo
Luigi Manini, Count of Fagagna (1848 – 1936) was a European set designer and architect. He was born in Crema, Italy, and studied at the Brera Academy before becoming an assistant to Carlo Ferrario, the professor of stage design at La Scala. Manini then moved to Portugal to work for the Real Teatro de São Carlos (nowadays the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos) in 1879.
Today, Manini is best remembered for his neo-Manueline architecture designs, especially the last palace of the kings of Portugal, the Buçaco Palace, begun in 1888 and today a prestigious hotel.
yeah, I'm pretty sure that you can still remember the project I'v been working(pegs and elfs and what not. Well I have remade the stage design. You can propably still see some of pegs at there. Since I'll have also accordeon on the stage, I wanted to explore that theme more and this is where we are now. Idea is that you can quite quickly make big or small forms and transform that from one theme to another. And you can also empty that space quickly.
Located in the heart of downtown San Antonio, Texas, the Majestic Theatre was built in 1929 and was designed in a Spanish Mediterranean style by John Eberson for Karl Hoblitzelle's Interstate Theatres. At the time, it was the largest theater in Texas and the first to be air conditioned. The 2,264 seat Majestic Theatre is a National Historic Landmark, and is currently home to the Broadway in San Antonio series, along with a wide variety of concerts and performing arts attractions.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.606, 1966. Photo: Arno Fischer.
Annekathrin Bürger (1937) is a German stage, film, and television actress. Bürger was a prominent actress in East Germany appearing in a number of films made by the state-run DEFA film studios as well as in television series such as Wolf Among Wolves (1965) set in 1920s Berlin. In 1972 she played the female lead in the Ostern Tecumseh (1972).
Annekathrin Bürger was born Annekathrin Rammelt in 1937 in
Berlin-Charlottenburg, Nazi Germany. Her father was the animal draftsman and illustrator Heinz Rammelt. She grew up in Hornhausen, trained as an advertising designer in Bernburg, and worked as a stage design assistant, prop master, and extra at the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Theater there. She failed the entrance exam for the State Drama School in Berlin. In the summer of 1955, she met Czech film people in Berlin and played her first small role as a pioneer leader in the Czech-German short film Gebirge und Meer/Mountains and sea (Wolfgang Bartsch, Bohumil Vosahlik, 1955). A year later she appeared in the East German neo-realist romantic drama Eine Berliner Romanze/A Berlin Romance (Gerhard Klein, 1956), a film about youth urban life in the divided city of Berlin. It was produced by the DEFA, the state-owned East German studio. Annekathrin Bürger's co-stars were Ulrich Thein and Uwe-Jens Pape. It is still amongst DEFA's best-known films. Bürger studied acting at the Potsdam Film and Television Academy from 1957 to 1960. From 1959 to 1960 she was engaged at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. She also starred in another youth film, Reportage 57 (János Veiczi, 1959), and the romantic comedy Verwirrung der Liebe/Love's Confusion (Slátan Dudow, 1959), both with Willi Schrade. Love's Confusion was Dudow's last film and the screen debut of Angelica Domröse. Influenced by the relaxed political climate ushered with the Khrushchev Thaw, the picture was unprecedentedly libertine in regards to sexuality. It became a huge hit.
During the early 1960s, Annekathrin Bürger appeared in a series of DEFA productions, such as Septemberliebe/September Love (Kurt Maetzig, 1961) with Doris Abesser and Ulrich Thein. She also starred in the first joint Soviet–East German film, Pyat Dney, Pyat Nochei/Fünf Tage, Fünf Nächte/Five Days, Five Nights ( Lev Arnshtam, Heinz Thiel, 1961) with Wilhelm Koch-Hooge. The picture's plot was inspired by the recovery of the art of the Old Masters Picture Gallery through the hands of Soviet troops in 1945. The art collection was then taken to the USSR, where it was kept until being returned to the Dresden Gallery in 1960. Five Days, Five Nights sold more than two million tickets in the German Democratic Republic. Then she starred in the romantic war drama Königskinder/Star-Crossed Lovers (Frank Beyer, 1962) with Armin Mueller-Stahl, and in the drama Das zweite Gleis/The Second Track (Joachim Kunert, 1962), as the daughter of Albert Hetterle. It is the only DEFA film looking at Nazi Germany history in East Germany. From 1963 to 1965 she was a member of the DFF, from 1965 to 2003 a member of the ensemble of the Volksbühne Berlin. Since 1968 she has only seldom been used in supporting roles in the theatre.
Bürger played numerous roles in DEFA and DFF films including the Ostern (Red Western) Tecumseh (Hans Kratzert, 1972) opposite Gojko Mitić and Rolf Römer. It is part of a popular string of films starring the Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić which, in line with the policies of Communist East Germany, attempted to present a more critical, but also more realistic, view of American expansion to the West than was characterised by Hollywood. The film, along with others, was also made partly in response to the successful series of Karl May films made in West Germany. The film depicts the life of the Native American leader Tecumseh (1768–1813), including his role in Tecumseh's War and his later death in the War of 1812 while fighting with the British against the United States. On television, she played a supporting role as a laundromat and bar manager in the popular series Tatort Leipzig with Peter Sodann, until 2005. She was also involved in cultural policy and protested against Wolf Biermann's expatriation and was committed to maintaining Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's Wilhelminian-style museum. From 1990 to 1997 Bürger was chairman of the Congress of the National Citizens Movement. In 1993 she and her husband founded the orphans on the Don association. In the same year, the documentary film Children of the Don was made about it. Annekathrin Bürger was first married to the actor and director Ulrich Thein and was married to her colleague Rolf Römer from 1966 until his death in 2000. Annekathrin Bürger lives in Berlin-Köpenick.
Sources: Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Canon EOS R6 Mark II, Canon RF 50mm f/1.8 STM, bearbeitet in Lightroom und Photoshop.
The cleanliness is real, my only Photoshop work was to remove one paper tissue on the platform and a small graffito on the train.
Day and Night / The Stars are Bright / Deep in the Heart / of Berlin (apologies . . )
Wikipedia: "Die Gestaltung von Max Dudler wurde vom berühmten Schinkelschen Bühnenbild zur Oper Die Zauberflöte aus dem Jahr 1816 inspiriert und sieht über den Gleisen als dessen Sternenhimmel ein aquamarinblaues Tonnengewölbe mit 6662 Lichtpunkten vor. Die Wände wurden in Anlehnung an die klassizistische Architektur der umliegenden Gebäude mit hellem Naturstein verkleidet, hierfür kam Granit aus dem Fichtelgebirge zum Einsatz."
Wikipedia: "The design by Max Dudler was inspired by a stage design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for the opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) from 1816 and features a starry sky on a dark blue barrel vault with points of light over the tracks."
This stage design is also echoed in a ceiling in the nearby Alte Nationalgalerie.
www.maxdudler.de/de/projekte/u-bahnstation-museumsinsel/
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Bahnhof_Museumsinsel
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museumsinsel_(Berlin_U-Bahn)
Update for the Infantry Assault Division “Roach” Desert Camo R89 Mk IV, Lately I focus my attention to the upper torso design area especially the cockpit which includes some knob, slopes and other details. I look at MS-18E Kempfer as a reference to it. I wanna make the torso area more smooth and clean but with a hint of mechanical parts within. Meanwhil the back pack however isn't finish yet but it will eventually :) .
As for the head is still a prototype stage design as well. Meanwhile the bottom half leg is heavily modify beyond recognition from the very first version. With extra slopes, plates and support to make it more posable and bendable knee joint which I’d admitted it lack off for my previous MOC mecha. Added on is the booster behind the hip area. Normally I added on within but this time it’s outside detachment. Something new you might say.
The Venetian Casino Hotel Resort, Las Vegas. An indoor copy of the Venetian atmosphere. The Venetian has 4.049 suites and a casino of 11.148 m². The ceiling is painted with clouds that seem to move with the visitor. Visitors can experience a gondola trip, which partly takes place indoors.
To me it looks like a stage design for an opera........
HFF
.. kurze Umbau-Pause .. das Bühnenbild wurde verändert, die Techniker wechselten Equipment und richteten die neuen Instrumente ein. Laut Plan waren die SILIKON HATERS aus Norwegen dran ..
.. short break for renovations .. the stage design was changed, the technicians changed equipment and set up the new instruments. According to the plan, it was the SILIKON HATERS from Norway...
Bartabas: Golgota
Acclaimed equestrian theatre artist Bartabas returns to the Sadler’s Wells stage accompanied by contemporary flamenco dancer Andrés Marín, four horses and a donkey, to present the UK Premiere of Golgota. 14-21 March.
Credits:
Creation, stage design, direction: Bartabas
Choreography, performance: Andrés Marín & Bartabas
Horses: Horizonte, Le Tintoret, Soutine, Champagne & Lautrec the donkey
Music: Tomás Luis de Victoria, motets for solo voice
Countertenor: Christophe Baska
Cornet: Adrien Mabire
Lute: Marc Wolff
Actor: William Panza
Costumes: Sophie Manach & Yannick Laisné
Props: Sébastien Puech
Scenery: Les Ateliers Jipanco
Lights: Laurent Matignon
photo - © Foteini Christofilopoulou | All rights reserved | For all usage/licensing enquiries please contact www.foteini.com
Goal: Sermon series branding for Faith & Luck Series
Audience: Our regular weekend crowd
Direction: I went with a carnival theme since the sermon content was going to be pretty heavy and they wanted the branded to be light to balance it all out.
Project: The project consisted of several key elements. The worship guide, key art and promo poster are what are shown above. We extended the brand to video and stage design, which you can check out here:
www.joecavazos.com/home/2010/7/9/faith-luck-series.html
Other important info: This is a finished project.
For me, our [Heathens] SIM is such a unique experience because of the felicitous blend of people!
Builders, creators, creative technologists, and artists from different fields who are united by common ideas in a brotherly team spirit. Looking forward to the things to come... feel free to join!
Pablo Picasso
I INTRODUCTION
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish painter, who is widely acknowledged to be the most important artist of the 20th century. A long-lived and highly prolific artist, he experimented with a wide range of styles and themes throughout his career. Among Picasso’s many contributions to the history of art, his most important include pioneering the modern art movement called cubism, inventing collage as an artistic technique, and developing assemblage (constructions of various materials) in sculpture.
Picasso was born Pablo Ruiz in Málaga, Spain. He later adopted his mother’s more distinguished maiden name—Picasso—as his own. Though Spanish by birth, Picasso lived most of his life in France.
II FORMATIVE WORK (1893-1900)
Picasso’s father, who was an art teacher, quickly recognized that his child Pablo was a prodigy. Picasso studied art first privately with his father and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in La Coruña, Spain, where his father taught. Picasso’s early drawings, such as Study of a Torso, After a Plaster Cast (1894-1895, Musée Picasso, Paris, France), demonstrate the high level of technical proficiency he had achieved by 14 years of age. In 1895 his family moved to Barcelona, Spain, after his father obtained a teaching post at that city’s Academy of Fine Arts. Picasso was admitted to advanced classes at the academy after he completed in a single day the entrance examination that applicants traditionally were given a month to finish. In 1897 Picasso left Barcelona to study at the Madrid Academy in the Spanish capital. Dissatisfied with the training, he quit and returned to Barcelona.
After Picasso visited Paris in October 1900, he moved back and forth between France and Spain until 1904, when he settled in the French capital. In Paris he encountered, and experimented with, a number of modern artistic styles. Picasso’s painting Le Moulin de la Galette (1900, Guggenheim Museum, New York City) revealed his interest in the subject matter of Parisian nightlife and in the style of French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a style that verged on caricature. In addition to café scenes, Picasso painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of friends and performers.
III BLUE PERIOD (1901-1903)
From 1901 to 1903 Picasso initiated his first truly original style, which is known as the blue period. Restricting his color scheme to blue, Picasso depicted emaciated and forlorn figures whose body language and clothing bespeak the lowliness of their social status. In The Old Guitarist (1903, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois), Picasso emphasized the guitarist’s poverty and position as a social outcast, which he reinforced by surrounding the figure with a black outline, as if to cut him off from his environment. The guitarist is compressed within the canvas (no room is left in the painting for the guitarist to raise his lowered head), suggesting his helplessness: The guitarist is trapped within the frame just as he is trapped by his poverty. Although Picasso underscored the squalor of his figures during this period, neither their clothing nor their environment conveys a specific time or place. This lack of specificity suggests that Picasso intended to make a general statement about human alienation rather than a particular statement about the lower class in Paris.
Why blue dominated Picasso’s paintings during this period remains unexplained. Possible influences include photographs with a bluish tinge popular at the time, poetry that stressed the color blue in its imagery, or the paintings of French artists such as Eugène Carrière or Claude Monet, who based many of their works around this time on variations on a single color. Another explanation is that Picasso found blue particularly appropriate for his subject matter because it is a color associated with melancholy.
IV ROSE PERIOD (1904-1905)
In 1904 Picasso’s style shifted, inaugurating the rose period, sometimes referred to as the circus period. Although Picasso still focused on social outcasts—especially circus performers—his color scheme lightened, featuring warmer, reddish hues, and the thick outlines of the blue period disappeared. Picasso maintained his interest in the theme of alienation, however. In Two Acrobats and a Dog (1905, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), he represented two young acrobats before an undefined, barren landscape. Although the acrobats are physically close, they gaze in different directions and do not interact, and the reason for their presence is not made clear. Differences in the acrobats’ height also exaggerate their disconnection from each other and from the empty landscape. The dog was a frequent presence in Picasso’s work and may have been a reference to death as dogs appear at the feet of figures in many Spanish funerary monuments.
Picasso may have felt an especially deep sympathy for circus performers. Like artists, they were paid to entertain society, but their itinerant lifestyle and status as outsiders prevented them from becoming an integral part of the social fabric. It was this situation that made the sad clown an important figure in the popular imagination: Paid to make people laugh, he must keep hidden his real existence and true feelings. Living a life of financial insecurity himself, Picasso no doubt empathized with these performers. During this period Picasso met Fernande Olivier, the first of several women who shared his life and provided inspiration for his art. Olivier’s features appear in many of the female figures in his paintings over the next several years.
V CLASSICAL PERIOD (1905) AND IBERIAN PERIOD (1906)
Experimentation and rapid style changes mark the years from late 1905 on. Picasso’s paintings from late 1905 are more emotionally detached than those of the blue or rose periods. The color scheme lightens—beiges and light browns predominate—and melancholy and alienation give way to a more reasoned approach. Picasso’s increasing interest in form is apparent in his references to classical sculpture. The figure of a seated boy in Two Youths (1905, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), for example, recalls an ancient Greek sculpture of a boy removing a thorn from his foot.
By 1906 Picasso had become interested in sculptures from the Iberian peninsula dating from about the 6th to the 3rd century bc. Picasso must have found them of particular interest both because they are native to Spain and because they display remarkable simplification of form. The Iberian influence is immediately visible in Self-Portrait (1906, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania), in which Picasso reduced the image of his head to an oval and his eyes to almond shapes, thus revealing his increasing fascination with geometric simplification of form.
VI AFRICAN PERIOD (1907)
Picasso’s predilection for experimentation and for drawing inspiration from outside the accepted artistic sources led to his most radical and revolutionary painting yet in 1907: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907, Museum of Modern Art). The painting’s theme—the female nude—could not be more traditional, but Picasso’s treatment of it is revolutionary. Picasso took even greater liberties here with human anatomy than in his 1906 Self-Portrait . The figures on the left in the painting look flat, as if they have no skeletal or muscular structure. Faces seen from the front have noses in profile. The eyes are asymmetrical and radically simplified. Contour lines are incomplete. Color juxtapositions—between blue and orange, for instance—are intentionally strident and unharmonious. The representation of space is fragmented and discontinuous.
While the left side of the canvas is largely Iberian-influenced, the right side is inspired by African masks, especially in its striped patterns and oval forms. Such borrowings, which led to great simplification, distortion, and visual incongruities, were considered extremely daring in 1907. The head of the figure at the bottom right, for example, turns in an anatomically impossible way. These discrepancies proved so shocking that even Picasso’s fellow painters reacted negatively to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. French painter Henri Matisse allegedly told Picasso that he was trying to ridicule the modern movement.
VII CUBISM (1908-1917)
For many scholars, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon—with its fragmented planes, flattened figures, and borrowings from African masks—marks the beginning of the new visual language, known as cubism. Other scholars believe that French painter Paul Cézanne provided the primary catalyst for this change in style. Cézanne’s work of the 1890s and early 1900s was noted both for its simplification and flattening of form and for the introduction of what art historians call passage, the interpenetration of one physical object by another. For example, in Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902-1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), Cézanne left the outer edge of the mountain open, allowing the blue area of the sky and the gray area of the mountain to merge. This innovation—air and rock interpenetrating—was a crucial precedent for Picasso’s invention of cubism. First, it defied the laws of our physical experience, and second, it indicated that artists were viewing paintings as having a logic of their own that functioned independently of, or even contrary to, the logic of everyday experience.
Scholars generally divide the cubist innovations of Picasso and French painter Georges Braque into two stages. In the first stage, analytical cubism, the artists fragmented three-dimensional shapes into multiple geometric planes. In the second stage, synthetic cubism, they reversed the process, putting abstract planes together to represent human figures, still lifes, and other recognizable shapes.
A Analytical Cubism (1908-1912)
Profoundly influenced by Cézanne's later work, Picasso and Braque initiated a series of landscape paintings in 1908. These paintings approximated Cézanne’s both in their color scheme (dark greens and light browns) and in their drastic simplification of nature to geometric shapes. Upon seeing these paintings, French critic Louis Vauxelles coined the term cubism. In Picasso’s Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro (1909, Museum of Modern Art), he gave architectural structures a three-dimensional, cubic quality, but he abandoned conventional three-dimensional perspective: Instead of being depicted one behind the other, buildings appear one on top of the other. Moreover, he simplified every aspect of the painting according to a vocabulary of cubic shapes—not just the houses but the sky as well. By neutralizing differences between earth and sky, Picasso made the canvas appear more unified, but he also introduced ambiguity by not differentiating solid from void. In addition, Picasso often used inconsistent light sources. In some parts of a painting, light appears to come from the left; in other parts, it comes from the right, the top, or even the bottom. Spatial planes intersect in ways that leave the spectator guessing whether angles are concave or convex. Delight in confusing the viewer is a regular feature of cubism.
By 1910, it had become evident that cubism no longer had any cubes and that the illusion of three-dimensional space, or volume, was gone. Picasso seemed to have dismantled the very idea of solid form, not only by fragmenting the human figure and other shapes, but also by using Cézanne’s concept of passage to merge figure and environment, solid and void, background and foreground. In this way he created a visually consistent painting, yet the consistency does not conform to the physical consistency of the natural world as we experience it. Picasso’s decision to limit his color scheme to dark browns and grays also suggests that his paintings have initiated a radical departure from nature, rather than attempted to copy it.
The year 1912 marks another major development in the cubist language: the invention of collage. In Still Life with Chair Caning (1912, Musée Picasso), Picasso attached a piece of oilcloth (that depicts woven caning) to his work. With this action Picasso not only violated the integrity of the medium—oil painting on canvas—but also included a material that had no previous connection with high art. Art could now be created, Picasso seems to imply, with scissors and glue as well as with paint and canvas. By including pieces of cloth, newspaper, wallpaper, advertising, and other materials in his work, Picasso opened the door for any object or material, however ordinary, to be included in (or even replace) a work of art. This innovation had important consequences for later 20th-century art. Another innovation was including the letters JOU in the painting, possibly referring to the beginning of the word journal (French for “newspaper”) or to the French word jouer, meaning “to play,” as Picasso is playing with forms. These combinations reveal that cubism includes both visual and verbal references, and merges high art with popular culture.
B Synthetic Cubism (1912-1917)
By inventing collage and by introducing elements from the real world in his canvases, Picasso avoided taking cubism to the level of complete abstraction and remained in the domain of tangible objects. Collage also initiated the synthetic phase of cubism. Whereas analytical cubism fragmented figures into geometric planes, synthetic cubism synthesized (combined) near-abstract shapes to create representational forms, such as a human figure or still life. Synthetic cubism also tended toward multiplicity. In Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass (1912, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas), for instance, Picasso combined a drawing of a glass, several spots of color, sheet music, newspaper, a wallpaper pattern, and a cloth that has a wood–grain pattern. Synthetic cubism may also combine different textures, such as wood grain, sand, and printed matter. Sometimes Picasso applied these textures as collage, by gluing textured papers on the canvas. In other cases the artist painted an area to look like wood or wallpaper, fooling the spectator by means of visual puns.
VIII CONSTRUCTION AND AFTER (1912-1920)
In 1912 Picasso instigated another important innovation: construction, or assemblage, in sculpture. Before this innovation, sculpture, at least in the West, was primarily created in one of two ways: by carving a block of stone or wood or by modeling—shaping a form in clay and casting that form in a more durable material, such as bronze. In Guitar (1912, Museum of Modern Art), Picasso used a new additive process. He cut various shapes out of sheet metal and wire, and then reassembled those materials into a cubist construction. In other constructions, Picasso used wood, cardboard, string, and other everyday objects, not only inventing a new technique for sculpture but also expanding the definition of art by blurring the distinction between artistic and nonartistic materials.
From World War I (1914-1918) onward, Picasso moved from style to style. In 1915, for instance, Picasso painted the highly abstract Harlequin (Museum of Modern Art) and drew the highly realistic portrait of Ambroise Vollard (Metropolitan Museum of Art). During and after the war he also worked on stage design and costume design for the Ballets Russes, a modern Russian ballet company launched by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev. Inspired by his direct experience of the theater, Picasso also produced representations of performers, such as French clowns called Pierrot and Harlequin, and scenes of ballerinas.
Picasso separated from Olivier in 1912, after meeting Eva Gouel. Gouel died in 1915, and in 1918 Picasso married Olga Koklova, one of the dancers in Diaghilev’s company. Picasso created a number of portraits of her, and their son, Paulo, appears in works such as Paulo as Harlequin (1924, Musée Picasso).
IX CLASSICAL PERIOD (1920-1925)
After World War I, a strain of conservatism spread through a number of art forms. A motto popular among traditionalists was “the return to order.” For Picasso the years 1920 to 1925 were marked by close attention to three-dimensional form and to classical themes: bathers, centaurs (mythical creatures half-man and half horse), and women in classical drapery. He depicted many of these figures as massive, dense, and weighty, an effect intensified by strong contrasts of light and dark. But even as he moved toward greater realism, Picasso continued to play games with the viewer. In the classical and carefully composed The Pipes of Pan (1923, Musée Picasso), for example, he painted an area of the architectural framework in the foreground (which should be grayish) with the same color as the sea in the background, revealing again his pleasure in ambiguity.
X CUBISM AND SURREALISM (1925-1936)
From 1925 to 1936 Picasso again worked in a number of styles. He composed some paintings of tightly structured geometric shapes, limiting his color scheme to primary colors (red, blue, yellow), as in The Studio (1928, Museum of Modern Art). In other paintings, such as Nude in an Armchair (1929, Musée Picasso), he depicted contorted female figures whose open mouths and menacing teeth reveal a more emotional, less reasoned attitude. Picasso’s marriage broke up during this time, and some of the menacing female figures in his art of this period may represent Koklova.
The same diversity is visible in Picasso’s sculpture during this period. Bather (Metamorphosis II) (1928, Musée Picasso) represents the human body as a massive spherical shape with protruding limbs, whereas Wire Construction (1928, Musée Picasso) depicts it as a rigid, geometric configuration of thin wires. Picasso also experimented with welding in sculpture of this period and explored a variety of themes, including the female head, the sleeping woman, and the Crucifixion. The model for many of his sleeping women was Marie Thérèse Walter, a new love who had entered his life. Their daughter, Maia, was born in 1935.
In the early 1930s Picasso had increasing contact with the members of the surrealist movement (see Surrealism) and became fascinated with the classical myth of the Minotaur. This creature, which has the head of a man and the body of a bull, appears in a study by Picasso for the cover of the surrealist journal Minotaure (1933, Museum of Modern Art). Here Picasso affixed a classical drawing of a Minotaur to a collage of abstracted forms and debris. The Minotaur has numerous incarnations in Picasso’s work, both as an aggressor and a victim, as a violent character and a friendly one. It may represent the artist himself and frequently appears in the context of a bullfight, a typically Spanish scene close to Picasso’s heart.
XI GUERNICA (1937)
In 1937 the Spanish government commissioned Picasso to create a mural for Spain’s pavilion at an international exposition in Paris. Unsure about the subject, Picasso procrastinated. But he set to work almost immediately after hearing that the Spanish town of Guernica had been bombed by Nazi warplanes in support of Spanish general Francisco Franco’s plot to overthrow the Spanish republic. Guernica (1937, Prado, Madrid) was Picasso's response to, and condemnation of, that event. He executed the painting in black and white—in keeping with the seriousness of the subject—and transfigured the event according to his fascination with the bullfight theme.
At the extreme left is a bull, which symbolizes brutality and darkness, according to Picasso. At the center, a horse wounded by a spear most likely represents the Spanish people. At the center on top, an exploding light bulb possibly refers to air warfare or to evil coming from above (and putting out the light of reason). Corpses and dying figures fill the foreground: a woman with a dead child at the left, a dead warrior with a broken sword (from which a flower sprouts) at the center, a weeping woman and a figure falling through a burning building at the right. The distortion of these figures expresses the inhumanity of the event. To suggest the screaming of the horse and of the mother with the dead child, Picasso transformed their tongues into daggers. In the upper center, a tormented female figure holds an oil lamp that sheds light upon the scene, possibly symbolizing the light of truth revealing the brutality of the event to the outside world. In 1936 Picasso met Dora Maar, an artist who photographed Guernica as he painted it. She soon became his companion and the subject of his paintings, although he remained involved with Walter.
XII WORLD WAR II (1939-1945)
Picasso, unlike many artists, stayed in Paris during the German occupation of World War II. Some of his paintings from this time reveal the anxiety of the war years, as does the menacing Still Life with Steer's Skull (1942, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany). Other works, such as his sculpture Head of a Bull (1943, Musée Picasso), are more playful and whimsical. In this sculpture Picasso combined a bicycle seat and handlebars to represent the bull’s head. Upon receiving news of the Nazi death camps, Picasso also painted, although he did not finish, an homage to the victims of the Holocaust (mass murder of European Jews during the war). In this painting, called The Charnel House (1945, Museum of Modern Art), he restricted the color scheme to black and white (as in Guernica) and depicted an accumulation of distorted, mangled bodies. During the war Picasso joined the Communist Party, and after the war he attended several peace conferences.
XIII LATE WORK (1945-1973)
Picasso remained a prolific artist until late in his life, although this later period has not received universal acclaim from historians or critics. He made variations on motifs that had fascinated him throughout his career, such as the bullfight and the painter and his model, the latter a theme that celebrated creativity. And he continued to paint portraits and landscapes. Picasso also experimented with ceramics, creating figurines, plates, and jugs, and he thereby blurred an existing distinction between fine art and craft.
Picasso’s emotional life became more complicated after he met French painter Françoise Gilot in the 1940s, while he was still involved with Maar. He and Gilot had a son, Claude, and a daughter, Paloma, and both appear in many of his late works. Picasso and Gilot parted in 1953. Jacqueline Roque, whom Picasso married in 1961, became his next companion. They spent most of their time in the south of France.
Another new direction in Picasso’s work came from variations on well-known works by older artists that he recast in his own style. Among these works are Women on the Banks of the Seine, after Courbet (1950, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland) and Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe after Manet (1960, Musée Picasso). What makes these works particularly significant is that they run counter to a basic premise of modern art, Picasso’s included: namely, originality. Although many modern painters were influenced by earlier artists, they rarely made such direct and obvious references to each other’s work because they deemed such references unoriginal. In the postmodern period, which began in the 1970s, artists and critics began to question the modernist directive to be original. In acts of deliberate defiance, many postmodern artists have appropriated (taken for their own use) well-known images from their predecessors or contemporaries. Seen against this context, Picasso’s later variations on paintings by earlier masters hardly seem out of place; on the contrary, they anticipate a key aspect of art in the 1980s.
One of Picasso’s late works, Head of a Woman (1967), was a gift to the city of Chicago. This sculpture of welded steel, 15 m (50 ft) tall, stands in front of Chicago’s Civic Center. Although its semiabstract form proved controversial at first, the sculpture soon became a city landmark.
Because of his many innovations, Picasso is widely considered to be the most influential artist of the 20th century. The cubist movement, which he and Braque inspired, had a number of followers. Its innovations gave rise to a host of other 20th-century art movements, including futurism in Italy, suprematism and constructivism in Russia, de Stijl in the Netherlands, and vorticism in England. Cubism also influenced German expressionism, dada, and other movements as well as early work of the surrealists (see Surrealism) and abstract expressionists (see Abstract Expressionism). In addition, collage and construction became key aspects of 20th-century art.
Contributed By:
Claude Cernuschi
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
from disney's aladdin - a music spectacular. this was really well done from the singing and dancing, to stage design and production... especially the comedy which included pop culture references as recent as american idol's most recent reject sanjaya being mentioned by the genie less than a week after it happened.
Ink and essence on paper; 58.4 x 43.2 cm.
Pablo Picasso
I INTRODUCTION
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish painter, who is widely acknowledged to be the most important artist of the 20th century. A long-lived and highly prolific artist, he experimented with a wide range of styles and themes throughout his career. Among Picasso’s many contributions to the history of art, his most important include pioneering the modern art movement called cubism, inventing collage as an artistic technique, and developing assemblage (constructions of various materials) in sculpture.
Picasso was born Pablo Ruiz in Málaga, Spain. He later adopted his mother’s more distinguished maiden name—Picasso—as his own. Though Spanish by birth, Picasso lived most of his life in France.
II FORMATIVE WORK (1893-1900)
Picasso’s father, who was an art teacher, quickly recognized that his child Pablo was a prodigy. Picasso studied art first privately with his father and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in La Coruña, Spain, where his father taught. Picasso’s early drawings, such as Study of a Torso, After a Plaster Cast (1894-1895, Musée Picasso, Paris, France), demonstrate the high level of technical proficiency he had achieved by 14 years of age. In 1895 his family moved to Barcelona, Spain, after his father obtained a teaching post at that city’s Academy of Fine Arts. Picasso was admitted to advanced classes at the academy after he completed in a single day the entrance examination that applicants traditionally were given a month to finish. In 1897 Picasso left Barcelona to study at the Madrid Academy in the Spanish capital. Dissatisfied with the training, he quit and returned to Barcelona.
After Picasso visited Paris in October 1900, he moved back and forth between France and Spain until 1904, when he settled in the French capital. In Paris he encountered, and experimented with, a number of modern artistic styles. Picasso’s painting Le Moulin de la Galette (1900, Guggenheim Museum, New York City) revealed his interest in the subject matter of Parisian nightlife and in the style of French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a style that verged on caricature. In addition to café scenes, Picasso painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of friends and performers.
III BLUE PERIOD (1901-1903)
From 1901 to 1903 Picasso initiated his first truly original style, which is known as the blue period. Restricting his color scheme to blue, Picasso depicted emaciated and forlorn figures whose body language and clothing bespeak the lowliness of their social status. In The Old Guitarist (1903, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois), Picasso emphasized the guitarist’s poverty and position as a social outcast, which he reinforced by surrounding the figure with a black outline, as if to cut him off from his environment. The guitarist is compressed within the canvas (no room is left in the painting for the guitarist to raise his lowered head), suggesting his helplessness: The guitarist is trapped within the frame just as he is trapped by his poverty. Although Picasso underscored the squalor of his figures during this period, neither their clothing nor their environment conveys a specific time or place. This lack of specificity suggests that Picasso intended to make a general statement about human alienation rather than a particular statement about the lower class in Paris.
Why blue dominated Picasso’s paintings during this period remains unexplained. Possible influences include photographs with a bluish tinge popular at the time, poetry that stressed the color blue in its imagery, or the paintings of French artists such as Eugène Carrière or Claude Monet, who based many of their works around this time on variations on a single color. Another explanation is that Picasso found blue particularly appropriate for his subject matter because it is a color associated with melancholy.
IV ROSE PERIOD (1904-1905)
In 1904 Picasso’s style shifted, inaugurating the rose period, sometimes referred to as the circus period. Although Picasso still focused on social outcasts—especially circus performers—his color scheme lightened, featuring warmer, reddish hues, and the thick outlines of the blue period disappeared. Picasso maintained his interest in the theme of alienation, however. In Two Acrobats and a Dog (1905, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), he represented two young acrobats before an undefined, barren landscape. Although the acrobats are physically close, they gaze in different directions and do not interact, and the reason for their presence is not made clear. Differences in the acrobats’ height also exaggerate their disconnection from each other and from the empty landscape. The dog was a frequent presence in Picasso’s work and may have been a reference to death as dogs appear at the feet of figures in many Spanish funerary monuments.
Picasso may have felt an especially deep sympathy for circus performers. Like artists, they were paid to entertain society, but their itinerant lifestyle and status as outsiders prevented them from becoming an integral part of the social fabric. It was this situation that made the sad clown an important figure in the popular imagination: Paid to make people laugh, he must keep hidden his real existence and true feelings. Living a life of financial insecurity himself, Picasso no doubt empathized with these performers. During this period Picasso met Fernande Olivier, the first of several women who shared his life and provided inspiration for his art. Olivier’s features appear in many of the female figures in his paintings over the next several years.
V CLASSICAL PERIOD (1905) AND IBERIAN PERIOD (1906)
Experimentation and rapid style changes mark the years from late 1905 on. Picasso’s paintings from late 1905 are more emotionally detached than those of the blue or rose periods. The color scheme lightens—beiges and light browns predominate—and melancholy and alienation give way to a more reasoned approach. Picasso’s increasing interest in form is apparent in his references to classical sculpture. The figure of a seated boy in Two Youths (1905, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), for example, recalls an ancient Greek sculpture of a boy removing a thorn from his foot.
By 1906 Picasso had become interested in sculptures from the Iberian peninsula dating from about the 6th to the 3rd century bc. Picasso must have found them of particular interest both because they are native to Spain and because they display remarkable simplification of form. The Iberian influence is immediately visible in Self-Portrait (1906, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania), in which Picasso reduced the image of his head to an oval and his eyes to almond shapes, thus revealing his increasing fascination with geometric simplification of form.
VI AFRICAN PERIOD (1907)
Picasso’s predilection for experimentation and for drawing inspiration from outside the accepted artistic sources led to his most radical and revolutionary painting yet in 1907: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907, Museum of Modern Art). The painting’s theme—the female nude—could not be more traditional, but Picasso’s treatment of it is revolutionary. Picasso took even greater liberties here with human anatomy than in his 1906 Self-Portrait . The figures on the left in the painting look flat, as if they have no skeletal or muscular structure. Faces seen from the front have noses in profile. The eyes are asymmetrical and radically simplified. Contour lines are incomplete. Color juxtapositions—between blue and orange, for instance—are intentionally strident and unharmonious. The representation of space is fragmented and discontinuous.
While the left side of the canvas is largely Iberian-influenced, the right side is inspired by African masks, especially in its striped patterns and oval forms. Such borrowings, which led to great simplification, distortion, and visual incongruities, were considered extremely daring in 1907. The head of the figure at the bottom right, for example, turns in an anatomically impossible way. These discrepancies proved so shocking that even Picasso’s fellow painters reacted negatively to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. French painter Henri Matisse allegedly told Picasso that he was trying to ridicule the modern movement.
VII CUBISM (1908-1917)
For many scholars, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon—with its fragmented planes, flattened figures, and borrowings from African masks—marks the beginning of the new visual language, known as cubism. Other scholars believe that French painter Paul Cézanne provided the primary catalyst for this change in style. Cézanne’s work of the 1890s and early 1900s was noted both for its simplification and flattening of form and for the introduction of what art historians call passage, the interpenetration of one physical object by another. For example, in Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902-1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), Cézanne left the outer edge of the mountain open, allowing the blue area of the sky and the gray area of the mountain to merge. This innovation—air and rock interpenetrating—was a crucial precedent for Picasso’s invention of cubism. First, it defied the laws of our physical experience, and second, it indicated that artists were viewing paintings as having a logic of their own that functioned independently of, or even contrary to, the logic of everyday experience.
Scholars generally divide the cubist innovations of Picasso and French painter Georges Braque into two stages. In the first stage, analytical cubism, the artists fragmented three-dimensional shapes into multiple geometric planes. In the second stage, synthetic cubism, they reversed the process, putting abstract planes together to represent human figures, still lifes, and other recognizable shapes.
A Analytical Cubism (1908-1912)
Profoundly influenced by Cézanne's later work, Picasso and Braque initiated a series of landscape paintings in 1908. These paintings approximated Cézanne’s both in their color scheme (dark greens and light browns) and in their drastic simplification of nature to geometric shapes. Upon seeing these paintings, French critic Louis Vauxelles coined the term cubism. In Picasso’s Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro (1909, Museum of Modern Art), he gave architectural structures a three-dimensional, cubic quality, but he abandoned conventional three-dimensional perspective: Instead of being depicted one behind the other, buildings appear one on top of the other. Moreover, he simplified every aspect of the painting according to a vocabulary of cubic shapes—not just the houses but the sky as well. By neutralizing differences between earth and sky, Picasso made the canvas appear more unified, but he also introduced ambiguity by not differentiating solid from void. In addition, Picasso often used inconsistent light sources. In some parts of a painting, light appears to come from the left; in other parts, it comes from the right, the top, or even the bottom. Spatial planes intersect in ways that leave the spectator guessing whether angles are concave or convex. Delight in confusing the viewer is a regular feature of cubism.
By 1910, it had become evident that cubism no longer had any cubes and that the illusion of three-dimensional space, or volume, was gone. Picasso seemed to have dismantled the very idea of solid form, not only by fragmenting the human figure and other shapes, but also by using Cézanne’s concept of passage to merge figure and environment, solid and void, background and foreground. In this way he created a visually consistent painting, yet the consistency does not conform to the physical consistency of the natural world as we experience it. Picasso’s decision to limit his color scheme to dark browns and grays also suggests that his paintings have initiated a radical departure from nature, rather than attempted to copy it.
The year 1912 marks another major development in the cubist language: the invention of collage. In Still Life with Chair Caning (1912, Musée Picasso), Picasso attached a piece of oilcloth (that depicts woven caning) to his work. With this action Picasso not only violated the integrity of the medium—oil painting on canvas—but also included a material that had no previous connection with high art. Art could now be created, Picasso seems to imply, with scissors and glue as well as with paint and canvas. By including pieces of cloth, newspaper, wallpaper, advertising, and other materials in his work, Picasso opened the door for any object or material, however ordinary, to be included in (or even replace) a work of art. This innovation had important consequences for later 20th-century art. Another innovation was including the letters JOU in the painting, possibly referring to the beginning of the word journal (French for “newspaper”) or to the French word jouer, meaning “to play,” as Picasso is playing with forms. These combinations reveal that cubism includes both visual and verbal references, and merges high art with popular culture.
B Synthetic Cubism (1912-1917)
By inventing collage and by introducing elements from the real world in his canvases, Picasso avoided taking cubism to the level of complete abstraction and remained in the domain of tangible objects. Collage also initiated the synthetic phase of cubism. Whereas analytical cubism fragmented figures into geometric planes, synthetic cubism synthesized (combined) near-abstract shapes to create representational forms, such as a human figure or still life. Synthetic cubism also tended toward multiplicity. In Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass (1912, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas), for instance, Picasso combined a drawing of a glass, several spots of color, sheet music, newspaper, a wallpaper pattern, and a cloth that has a wood–grain pattern. Synthetic cubism may also combine different textures, such as wood grain, sand, and printed matter. Sometimes Picasso applied these textures as collage, by gluing textured papers on the canvas. In other cases the artist painted an area to look like wood or wallpaper, fooling the spectator by means of visual puns.
VIII CONSTRUCTION AND AFTER (1912-1920)
In 1912 Picasso instigated another important innovation: construction, or assemblage, in sculpture. Before this innovation, sculpture, at least in the West, was primarily created in one of two ways: by carving a block of stone or wood or by modeling—shaping a form in clay and casting that form in a more durable material, such as bronze. In Guitar (1912, Museum of Modern Art), Picasso used a new additive process. He cut various shapes out of sheet metal and wire, and then reassembled those materials into a cubist construction. In other constructions, Picasso used wood, cardboard, string, and other everyday objects, not only inventing a new technique for sculpture but also expanding the definition of art by blurring the distinction between artistic and nonartistic materials.
From World War I (1914-1918) onward, Picasso moved from style to style. In 1915, for instance, Picasso painted the highly abstract Harlequin (Museum of Modern Art) and drew the highly realistic portrait of Ambroise Vollard (Metropolitan Museum of Art). During and after the war he also worked on stage design and costume design for the Ballets Russes, a modern Russian ballet company launched by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev. Inspired by his direct experience of the theater, Picasso also produced representations of performers, such as French clowns called Pierrot and Harlequin, and scenes of ballerinas.
Picasso separated from Olivier in 1912, after meeting Eva Gouel. Gouel died in 1915, and in 1918 Picasso married Olga Koklova, one of the dancers in Diaghilev’s company. Picasso created a number of portraits of her, and their son, Paulo, appears in works such as Paulo as Harlequin (1924, Musée Picasso).
IX CLASSICAL PERIOD (1920-1925)
After World War I, a strain of conservatism spread through a number of art forms. A motto popular among traditionalists was “the return to order.” For Picasso the years 1920 to 1925 were marked by close attention to three-dimensional form and to classical themes: bathers, centaurs (mythical creatures half-man and half horse), and women in classical drapery. He depicted many of these figures as massive, dense, and weighty, an effect intensified by strong contrasts of light and dark. But even as he moved toward greater realism, Picasso continued to play games with the viewer. In the classical and carefully composed The Pipes of Pan (1923, Musée Picasso), for example, he painted an area of the architectural framework in the foreground (which should be grayish) with the same color as the sea in the background, revealing again his pleasure in ambiguity.
X CUBISM AND SURREALISM (1925-1936)
From 1925 to 1936 Picasso again worked in a number of styles. He composed some paintings of tightly structured geometric shapes, limiting his color scheme to primary colors (red, blue, yellow), as in The Studio (1928, Museum of Modern Art). In other paintings, such as Nude in an Armchair (1929, Musée Picasso), he depicted contorted female figures whose open mouths and menacing teeth reveal a more emotional, less reasoned attitude. Picasso’s marriage broke up during this time, and some of the menacing female figures in his art of this period may represent Koklova.
The same diversity is visible in Picasso’s sculpture during this period. Bather (Metamorphosis II) (1928, Musée Picasso) represents the human body as a massive spherical shape with protruding limbs, whereas Wire Construction (1928, Musée Picasso) depicts it as a rigid, geometric configuration of thin wires. Picasso also experimented with welding in sculpture of this period and explored a variety of themes, including the female head, the sleeping woman, and the Crucifixion. The model for many of his sleeping women was Marie Thérèse Walter, a new love who had entered his life. Their daughter, Maia, was born in 1935.
In the early 1930s Picasso had increasing contact with the members of the surrealist movement (see Surrealism) and became fascinated with the classical myth of the Minotaur. This creature, which has the head of a man and the body of a bull, appears in a study by Picasso for the cover of the surrealist journal Minotaure (1933, Museum of Modern Art). Here Picasso affixed a classical drawing of a Minotaur to a collage of abstracted forms and debris. The Minotaur has numerous incarnations in Picasso’s work, both as an aggressor and a victim, as a violent character and a friendly one. It may represent the artist himself and frequently appears in the context of a bullfight, a typically Spanish scene close to Picasso’s heart.
XI GUERNICA (1937)
In 1937 the Spanish government commissioned Picasso to create a mural for Spain’s pavilion at an international exposition in Paris. Unsure about the subject, Picasso procrastinated. But he set to work almost immediately after hearing that the Spanish town of Guernica had been bombed by Nazi warplanes in support of Spanish general Francisco Franco’s plot to overthrow the Spanish republic. Guernica (1937, Prado, Madrid) was Picasso's response to, and condemnation of, that event. He executed the painting in black and white—in keeping with the seriousness of the subject—and transfigured the event according to his fascination with the bullfight theme.
At the extreme left is a bull, which symbolizes brutality and darkness, according to Picasso. At the center, a horse wounded by a spear most likely represents the Spanish people. At the center on top, an exploding light bulb possibly refers to air warfare or to evil coming from above (and putting out the light of reason). Corpses and dying figures fill the foreground: a woman with a dead child at the left, a dead warrior with a broken sword (from which a flower sprouts) at the center, a weeping woman and a figure falling through a burning building at the right. The distortion of these figures expresses the inhumanity of the event. To suggest the screaming of the horse and of the mother with the dead child, Picasso transformed their tongues into daggers. In the upper center, a tormented female figure holds an oil lamp that sheds light upon the scene, possibly symbolizing the light of truth revealing the brutality of the event to the outside world. In 1936 Picasso met Dora Maar, an artist who photographed Guernica as he painted it. She soon became his companion and the subject of his paintings, although he remained involved with Walter.
XII WORLD WAR II (1939-1945)
Picasso, unlike many artists, stayed in Paris during the German occupation of World War II. Some of his paintings from this time reveal the anxiety of the war years, as does the menacing Still Life with Steer's Skull (1942, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany). Other works, such as his sculpture Head of a Bull (1943, Musée Picasso), are more playful and whimsical. In this sculpture Picasso combined a bicycle seat and handlebars to represent the bull’s head. Upon receiving news of the Nazi death camps, Picasso also painted, although he did not finish, an homage to the victims of the Holocaust (mass murder of European Jews during the war). In this painting, called The Charnel House (1945, Museum of Modern Art), he restricted the color scheme to black and white (as in Guernica) and depicted an accumulation of distorted, mangled bodies. During the war Picasso joined the Communist Party, and after the war he attended several peace conferences.
XIII LATE WORK (1945-1973)
Picasso remained a prolific artist until late in his life, although this later period has not received universal acclaim from historians or critics. He made variations on motifs that had fascinated him throughout his career, such as the bullfight and the painter and his model, the latter a theme that celebrated creativity. And he continued to paint portraits and landscapes. Picasso also experimented with ceramics, creating figurines, plates, and jugs, and he thereby blurred an existing distinction between fine art and craft.
Picasso’s emotional life became more complicated after he met French painter Françoise Gilot in the 1940s, while he was still involved with Maar. He and Gilot had a son, Claude, and a daughter, Paloma, and both appear in many of his late works. Picasso and Gilot parted in 1953. Jacqueline Roque, whom Picasso married in 1961, became his next companion. They spent most of their time in the south of France.
Another new direction in Picasso’s work came from variations on well-known works by older artists that he recast in his own style. Among these works are Women on the Banks of the Seine, after Courbet (1950, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland) and Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe after Manet (1960, Musée Picasso). What makes these works particularly significant is that they run counter to a basic premise of modern art, Picasso’s included: namely, originality. Although many modern painters were influenced by earlier artists, they rarely made such direct and obvious references to each other’s work because they deemed such references unoriginal. In the postmodern period, which began in the 1970s, artists and critics began to question the modernist directive to be original. In acts of deliberate defiance, many postmodern artists have appropriated (taken for their own use) well-known images from their predecessors or contemporaries. Seen against this context, Picasso’s later variations on paintings by earlier masters hardly seem out of place; on the contrary, they anticipate a key aspect of art in the 1980s.
One of Picasso’s late works, Head of a Woman (1967), was a gift to the city of Chicago. This sculpture of welded steel, 15 m (50 ft) tall, stands in front of Chicago’s Civic Center. Although its semiabstract form proved controversial at first, the sculpture soon became a city landmark.
Because of his many innovations, Picasso is widely considered to be the most influential artist of the 20th century. The cubist movement, which he and Braque inspired, had a number of followers. Its innovations gave rise to a host of other 20th-century art movements, including futurism in Italy, suprematism and constructivism in Russia, de Stijl in the Netherlands, and vorticism in England. Cubism also influenced German expressionism, dada, and other movements as well as early work of the surrealists (see Surrealism) and abstract expressionists (see Abstract Expressionism). In addition, collage and construction became key aspects of 20th-century art.
Contributed By:
Claude Cernuschi
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Archaeological Area, the Roman Theater, view towards North-West from the stage left corner.
The Roman theatre was built between the late first century BC and early AD following the Greek model, with the characteristic semicircular shape set on a hill.
In the foreground the foundation of the “scaena frons” (an architectural stage design), and the “proscenium” floor, stage. In lower position there is the semicircular space of the “orchestra”. Marble decorations of the stage are visible inside the Museum. A space immediately adjacent to the orchestra, but separated from the cavea, housed the honorific marble chairs reserved for people and illustrious guests of the city. Beyond a narrow passage, the huge half-round “cavea”, was created directly in the rock of the hill; narrow stairs created in order to let people find their seat more easily, divide the “cavea” in four zones. The survived decorations housed in the Museum attest the Theatre was used until the 3rd century AD.
Roman theater
Late 1st century BC
Archaeological Area of Fiesole, Florence
Frank Eugene (19 September 1865 – 16 December 1936) was an American-born photographer who was a founding member of the Photo-Secession and one of the first university-level professors of photography in the world.
Eugene was born in New York City as Frank Eugene Smith. His father was Frederick Smith, a German baker who changed his last name from Schmid after moving to America in the late 1850s. His mother was Hermine Selinger Smith, a singer who performed in local German beer halls and theaters.[1]
About 1880 Eugene began to photograph for amusement, possibly while he was attending the City College of New York.
In 1886 he moved to Munich in order to attends the Bayrische Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts). He studied drawing and stage design. After he graduated he started a career as a theatrical portraitist, drawing portraits of actors and actresses. He continued his interest in photography, although little is known of his teachers or influences.
He returned to the United States, and in 1899 he exhibited photographs at the Camera Club in New York under name Frank Eugene. The critic Sadakichi Hartmann wrote a review of the show, saying “It is the first time that a truly artistic temperament, a painter of generally recognized accomplishments and ability asserts itself in American photography.”[2]
A year later he was elected to The Linked Ring, and fourteen of his prints were shown that year in a major London exhibition. Already at this stage in his career he had developed a highly distinctive style that was influenced by his training as a painter. He assertively manipulated his negatives with both scratches and brush strokes, creating prints that had the appearance of a blend between painting and photography. When his prints were shown at the Camera Club in New York, one reviewer commented that his work was "unphotographic photography."[3]
In the summer of 1900 an entire issue of Camera Notes was devoted to his art, an honor accorded only a few other photographers.
In early 1901 he traveled to Egypt. He returned a few months later and met with photographer F. Holland Day in Narragansett, R.I., during the summer.
In late 1902 Eugene becomes a Founder of the Photo-Secession and a member of its governing Council.
In 1904 one gravure published in Camera Work, No. 5 (January).
In 1906 Eugene moved permanently to Germany. He was recognized there both as a painter and a photographer, but initially he worked primarily with prominent painters such as Fritz von Uhde, Hendrik Heyligers, Willi Geiger, and Franz Roh. He photographed many of these and other artists at the same time. He also designed tapestries that he used as backgrounds in his photographs.[4]
A year later he became a lecturer on pictorial photography at Munich’s Lehr-und Versuchs-anstalt fur Photo graphie und Reproduktions-technik (Teaching and Research Institute for Photography and the Reproductive Processes). At this point, photography rather than painting became his primary interest. He experimented with the new color process of Autochromes, and three of his color prints are exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession Galleries in New York.
In 1909 two more of his gravures were published in Camera Work, No. 25 (January).
In 1910 twenty-seven of his photographs were exhibited at a major exhibition in Buffalo, New York. The catalog for this show described Eugene as the first photographer to make successful platinum prints on Japan tissue. Ten more of his gravures published in Camera Work, No.30 (April), and fourteen additional images appear in No.31 (July).
More than any other photographer of the early 20th century, Eugene was recognized as the master of the manipulated image. Photographic historian Weston Naef described his style this way:
"The very boldness with which Eugene manipulated the negative by scratching and painting forced even those with strong sympathy for the purist line of thinking like White, Day and Stieglitz to admire Eugene's particular touch...[he] created a new syntax for the photographic vocabularity, for no one before him had hand-worked negatives with such painterly intentions and a skill unsurpassed by his successors."[4]
In 1913 he was appointed Royal Professor of Pictorial Photography by the Royal Academy of the Graphic Arts of Leipzig. This professorship, created especially for Eugene, is the first chair for pictorial photography anywhere in the world.[4]
Two years later Eugene gave up his American citizenship and became a citizen of Germany. He continued teaching for many years and was head of the photography department at the Royal Academy until it closed in 1927.[1]
Eugene died of heart failure in Munich in 1936.
Anonymous - Stage Design, Interior of Papal Palace (1777)
artsandculture.google.com/asset/stage-design-interior-of-...
I do not have the date on this. She was extensively involved in theater design work in Russia and the Ukraine during the years before the revolution.....she left her home city of Kiev in 1920, then lived in Moscow until 1924 and moved to Paris never to return to Russia.
Cloud Gate 2: Beckoning
Cloud Gate 2 presents 'Beckoning', part of their Triple Bill at Sadler's Wells Theatre on 21-23 November 2016. The show is part of Sadler's Wells Out of Asia 2 season.
Artistic Director & choreographer: Cheng Tsung-lung
Lighting Design: Shen Po-hung
Stage Design: He Jia-sing
Costume Design: Lin Bin-hao
Dancers: Tsou Ying-lin, Chan Hing-chung, Lin I-hsuan, Wu Jui-ying, Lee Yin-ying, Luo Sih-wei, Su I-chieh, Chen Yi-en, Liao Chin-ting, Hsu Chih-hen
photo - © Foteini Christofilopoulou | All rights reserved | For all usage/licensing enquiries please contact www.foteini.com
Endlich waren WIR die nächsten .. aber vorher eine kurze Pause, denn das Bühnenbild musste noch geändert werden ..
Finally WE were next.. but before that there was a short break because the stage design still had to be changed..
10 Likes on Instagram
5 Comments on Instagram:
fsutil: Va muy tapado!!!
enricarchivell: @fsutil era antes de empezar, yo durante la representación apago el móvil :-/
enricarchivell: #sauna #saunaparadise #play #stagedesign #guy
enricarchivell: #gay
fsutil: Y haces muy bien! 😏
The Artist: Lotte Ranft
Large Coffee Bean (2008, Bronze)
Große Kaffeebohne
Coffee Plaza, Am Sandtorpark 4, 20457 Hamburg (HafenCity), Germany
Description
The approximately five-metre-high bronze sculpture in the shape of a large coffee bean by Lotte Ranft stands on the Coffee Plaza in Hamburg's HafenCity. The surface of the sculpture is covered with numerous reliefs and inscriptions dealing with coffee production and processing as well as enjoyment. Coffee is still one of the most important trade goods in the Speicherstadt today.
Person
Lotte Ranft was born in Berlin in 1938. She studied stage design at the then Mozarteum University in Innsbruck until 1976. She also studied nude art with Prof. Herbert Boeckl and Prof. Claus Pack at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, art history at the University of Innsbruck, mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Vienna, painting with Oskar Kokoschka and Prof. Claus Pack and sculpture with Prof. Wander Bertoni and Francesco Somaini at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg. She attended a stone sculpture seminar with Prof. Toni Schneider-Manell in St. Margarethen. From 1973-81 she was a lecturer at the Bundesoberstufen-Realgymnasium Salzburg and from 1975-91 a lecturer at the Kunstuniversität Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 1969 she was awarded the recognition prize of the Salzburg International Summer Academy, in 1972 the honorary prize for sculpture of the Salzburg Art Association and in 1976 the appreciation prize of the Federal Ministry of Science and Research in Austria for "Special Artistic Achievement". Lotte Ranft lives and works in Salzburg.
Beschreibung
Auf der Coffee Plaza in der HafenCity in Hamburg steht die rund fünf Meter hohe Bronzeplastik in Form einer Großen Kaffeebohne von Lotte Ranft. Die Oberfläche der Plastik ist mit zahlreichen Reliefs und Inschriften versehen, die sich mit der Kaffeeproduktion und Verarbeitung sowie dem Genuss befassen. Der Kaffee ist bis heute eine der wichtigsten Handelswaren in der Speicherstadt.
Person
Lotte Ranft wurde 1938 in Berlin geboren. Sie studierte bis 1976 Bühnenbild an der damaligen Hochschule Mozarteum in Innsbruck. Darüber hinaus studierte sie Akt bei Prof. Herbert Boeckl und Prof. Claus Pack an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Wien, Kunstgeschichte an der Universität Innsbruck, Maschinenbau an der Technischen Universität Wien, Malerei bei Oskar Kokoschka u. Prof. Claus Pack und Plastik bei Prof. Wander Bertoni und Francesco Somaini an der Internationalen Sommerakademie Salzburg. Sie belegte ein Steinbildhauerseminar bei Prof. Toni Schneider-Manell in St. Margarethen. 1973–81 war sie Lehrbeauftragte am Bundesoberstufen-Realgymnasium Salzburg und 1975–91 Lehrbeauftragte an der Kunstuniversität Mozarteum in Salzburg. 1969 erhielt sie den Anerkennungspreis der Internationalen Sommerakademie Salzburg, 1972 den Ehrenpreis für Plastik des Salzburger Kunstvereins und 1976 den Würdigungspreis des Bundesministeriums für Wissenschaft und Forschung in Österreich für „Besondere künstlerische Leistung“. Lotte Ranft lebt und arbeitet in Salzburg.
from: Kunst@SH – Schleswig-Holstein & Hamburg
Cuffin Rite @ Daniela Ayala.
stage design: Gomitta & Neska
I went to a concert yesterday dedicated to Pink Floyd, was organized by one of my friends, & i help with the stage design & some other stuff, wasreally great, and i had tons of fun helping and enjoying the show.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1901, 1963. Photo: Ludwig Schirmer.
Annekathrin Bürger (1937) is a German stage, film, and television actress. Bürger was a prominent actress in East Germany appearing in a number of films made by the state-run DEFA film studios as well as in television series such as Wolf Among Wolves (1965) set in 1920s Berlin. In 1972 she played the female lead in the Ostern Tecumseh (1972).
Annekathrin Bürger was born Annekathrin Rammelt in 1937 in
Berlin-Charlottenburg, Nazi Germany. Her father was the animal draftsman and illustrator Heinz Rammelt. She grew up in Hornhausen, trained as an advertising designer in Bernburg, and worked as a stage design assistant, prop master, and extra at the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Theater there. She failed the entrance exam for the State Drama School in Berlin. In the summer of 1955, she met Czech film people in Berlin and played her first small role as a pioneer leader in the Czech-German short film Gebirge und Meer/Mountains and sea (Wolfgang Bartsch, Bohumil Vosahlik, 1955). A year later she appeared in the East German neo-realist romantic drama Eine Berliner Romanze/A Berlin Romance (Gerhard Klein, 1956), a film about youth urban life in the divided city of Berlin. It was produced by the DEFA, the state-owned East German studio. Annekathrin Bürger's co-stars were Ulrich Thein and Uwe-Jens Pape. It is still amongst DEFA's best-known films. Bürger studied acting at the Potsdam Film and Television Academy from 1957 to 1960. From 1959 to 1960 she was engaged at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. She also starred in another youth film, Reportage 57 (János Veiczi, 1959), and the romantic comedy Verwirrung der Liebe/Love's Confusion (Slátan Dudow, 1959), both with Willi Schrade. Love's Confusion was Dudow's last film and the screen debut of Angelica Domröse. Influenced by the relaxed political climate ushered with the Khrushchev Thaw, the picture was unprecedentedly libertine in regards to sexuality. It became a huge hit.
During the early 1960s, Annekathrin Bürger appeared in a series of DEFA productions, such as Septemberliebe/September Love (Kurt Maetzig, 1961) with Doris Abesser and Ulrich Thein. She also starred in the first joint Soviet–East German film, Pyat Dney, Pyat Nochei/Fünf Tage, Fünf Nächte/Five Days, Five Nights ( Lev Arnshtam, Heinz Thiel, 1961) with Wilhelm Koch-Hooge. The picture's plot was inspired by the recovery of the art of the Old Masters Picture Gallery through the hands of Soviet troops in 1945. The art collection was then taken to the USSR, where it was kept until being returned to the Dresden Gallery in 1960. Five Days, Five Nights sold more than two million tickets in the German Democratic Republic. Then she starred in the romantic war drama Königskinder/Star-Crossed Lovers (Frank Beyer, 1962) with Armin Mueller-Stahl, and in the drama Das zweite Gleis/The Second Track (Joachim Kunert, 1962), as the daughter of Albert Hetterle. It is the only DEFA film looking at Nazi Germany history in East Germany. From 1963 to 1965 she was a member of the DFF, from 1965 to 2003 a member of the ensemble of the Volksbühne Berlin. Since 1968 she has only seldom been used in supporting roles in the theatre.
Bürger played numerous roles in DEFA and DFF films including the Ostern (Red Western) Tecumseh (Hans Kratzert, 1972) opposite Gojko Mitić and Rolf Römer. It is part of a popular string of films starring the Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić which, in line with the policies of Communist East Germany, attempted to present a more critical, but also more realistic, view of American expansion to the West than was characterised by Hollywood. The film, along with others, was also made partly in response to the successful series of Karl May films made in West Germany. The film depicts the life of the Native American leader Tecumseh (1768–1813), including his role in Tecumseh's War and his later death in the War of 1812 while fighting with the British against the United States. On television, she played a supporting role as a laundromat and bar manager in the popular series Tatort Leipzig with Peter Sodann, until 2005. She was also involved in cultural policy and protested against Wolf Biermann's expatriation and was committed to maintaining Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's Wilhelminian-style museum. From 1990 to 1997 Bürger was chairman of the Congress of the National Citizens Movement. In 1993 she and her husband founded the orphans on the Don association. In the same year, the documentary film Children of the Don was made about it. Annekathrin Bürger was first married to the actor and director Ulrich Thein and was married to her colleague Rolf Römer from 1966 until his death in 2000. Annekathrin Bürger lives in Berlin-Köpenick.
Sources: Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
nstallation at the Residency Schauspiel Leipzig
size: 9 m x 5 m x 3m
material : cellular plastic sheets / Kapa
the Installation „Skeleton“ was produced as a stage design for the dance-performance „Spacekraft“ at the Residency Schauspiel Leipzig . The focus of thiss culpture is the investigation of unique movable structures by the arrangement of several splitter and square or polygonal edged shapes. The interdisciplinary cast of Spacekraft explores a hyper-real world drawn from futuristic fantasies of our architectural environment.
„Spacekraft“ a collaboration between Choreographer Melanie Lane / Musician Chris Clark / Me.
Frank Eugene (19 September 1865 – 16 December 1936) was an American-born photographer who was a founding member of the Photo-Secession and one of the first university-level professors of photography in the world.
Eugene was born in New York City as Frank Eugene Smith. His father was Frederick Smith, a German baker who changed his last name from Schmid after moving to America in the late 1850s. His mother was Hermine Selinger Smith, a singer who performed in local German beer halls and theaters.[1]
About 1880 Eugene began to photograph for amusement, possibly while he was attending the City College of New York.
In 1886 he moved to Munich in order to attends the Bayrische Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts). He studied drawing and stage design. After he graduated he started a career as a theatrical portraitist, drawing portraits of actors and actresses. He continued his interest in photography, although little is known of his teachers or influences.
He returned to the United States, and in 1899 he exhibited photographs at the Camera Club in New York under name Frank Eugene. The critic Sadakichi Hartmann wrote a review of the show, saying “It is the first time that a truly artistic temperament, a painter of generally recognized accomplishments and ability asserts itself in American photography.”[2]
A year later he was elected to The Linked Ring, and fourteen of his prints were shown that year in a major London exhibition. Already at this stage in his career he had developed a highly distinctive style that was influenced by his training as a painter. He assertively manipulated his negatives with both scratches and brush strokes, creating prints that had the appearance of a blend between painting and photography. When his prints were shown at the Camera Club in New York, one reviewer commented that his work was "unphotographic photography."[3]
In the summer of 1900 an entire issue of Camera Notes was devoted to his art, an honor accorded only a few other photographers.
In early 1901 he traveled to Egypt. He returned a few months later and met with photographer F. Holland Day in Narragansett, R.I., during the summer.
In late 1902 Eugene becomes a Founder of the Photo-Secession and a member of its governing Council.
In 1904 one gravure published in Camera Work, No. 5 (January).
In 1906 Eugene moved permanently to Germany. He was recognized there both as a painter and a photographer, but initially he worked primarily with prominent painters such as Fritz von Uhde, Hendrik Heyligers, Willi Geiger, and Franz Roh. He photographed many of these and other artists at the same time. He also designed tapestries that he used as backgrounds in his photographs.[4]
A year later he became a lecturer on pictorial photography at Munich’s Lehr-und Versuchs-anstalt fur Photo graphie und Reproduktions-technik (Teaching and Research Institute for Photography and the Reproductive Processes). At this point, photography rather than painting became his primary interest. He experimented with the new color process of Autochromes, and three of his color prints are exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession Galleries in New York.
In 1909 two more of his gravures were published in Camera Work, No. 25 (January).
In 1910 twenty-seven of his photographs were exhibited at a major exhibition in Buffalo, New York. The catalog for this show described Eugene as the first photographer to make successful platinum prints on Japan tissue. Ten more of his gravures published in Camera Work, No.30 (April), and fourteen additional images appear in No.31 (July).
More than any other photographer of the early 20th century, Eugene was recognized as the master of the manipulated image. Photographic historian Weston Naef described his style this way:
"The very boldness with which Eugene manipulated the negative by scratching and painting forced even those with strong sympathy for the purist line of thinking like White, Day and Stieglitz to admire Eugene's particular touch...[he] created a new syntax for the photographic vocabularity, for no one before him had hand-worked negatives with such painterly intentions and a skill unsurpassed by his successors."[4]
In 1913 he was appointed Royal Professor of Pictorial Photography by the Royal Academy of the Graphic Arts of Leipzig. This professorship, created especially for Eugene, is the first chair for pictorial photography anywhere in the world.[4]
Two years later Eugene gave up his American citizenship and became a citizen of Germany. He continued teaching for many years and was head of the photography department at the Royal Academy until it closed in 1927.[1]
Eugene died of heart failure in Munich in 1936.