Ming Vases

If you had asked me before this class to explain what a Ming vase is you wouldn’t have gotten much.  I knew they were from the Ming Dynasty in China, but I didn’t know if it was during the 1200’s, 1800’s, or somewhere in between.  You usually see rich people on TV talking about them and pronouncing it like vaaahse.  Now I know the time period is from 1368-1644.  During this time, which roughly corresponds to the Renaissance in Europe, there were great advances in kilns, paints, and designs.

     This particular vase is pear shaped and has a copper-red colored design on it.  The color is rare because it was so hard to reproduce using copper.  It usually ended up as a gray color after firing in the kiln.  This one is also the most expensive vase in the world. Steve Wynn, the casino magnate, paid over ten million dollars for it in 2006.  The funny thing is that it’s former owners, a couple from Scotland, had inherited it and didn’t initially know its value. They had used it as a base for a lamp.

     I do like the pear shaped vases more than the tall narrow ones. Maybe subconsciously I figure they’re less likely to tip over.  It doesn’t have a title, and probably as most are from this era, is by an unknown artist.

Bob Marley-Jamming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WlCdiU9IzA

     Bob Marley was a Jamaican born musician and singer-songwriter.  His is the name you think of when you hear the term “reggae”.  He was born on Feb 6, 1945 in Jamaica.  He started playing at age 14 and in 1962 he recorded his first song.  His biggest musical successes came in the 1970’s.  In 1977 he developed a melanoma type skin cancer.  It got worse in 1980 and he tried a new treatment in Europe.  Realizing that he was going to die he started to travel back home to Jamaica.  He got as far as Miami before he had to be readmitted to a hospital.  He died there on May 11, 1981 at the way too young age of 36.

     With the band The Wailers, and as Bob Marley and the Wailers, he has sold millions of albums and cds.  His posthumously released compilation album sold over 20 million copies and is the biggest selling reggae album of all time.  Jamming is from the album Exodus. It was released in 1977 and in 1999 Time magazine named it the album of the century.

     I’ve always liked reggae and Caribbean/Island type music. Whether from Hawaii or Jamaica it just has a great rhythm. This song especially has a great feel to it.

Virtual Exhibit

ABC’s (Alaska’s Baldwin, Craig) Wide World of Sports… I Mean Sports Art.

    So when I first glanced at this assignment I thought “water” would be a good theme.  I’ve always loved Renoir’s The Skiff and through our studies I’ve seen plenty of other great techniques that show water in different ways.  But then I read the fine print and saw that it had to be from 1975 or newer.  Well, so much for that idea.  I had always liked Peter Max’s 60’s style pop art and I was pleasantly surprised upon researching him that he’s alive and well and still putting out art.  After looking at his gallery I got the new theme figured out; Sports Art.  I knew I liked LeRoy Neiman’s work, so I already had two artists to draw inspiration from.

     Peter Max was born in Berlin in 1937 to German-Jewish parents.  They fled to China in 1938 and lived there for 10 years.  After that they moved to Israel for two years where he became interested in art and astronomy.  They stopped in Paris for a few months before they finally ended up settling in New York City in 1953.  He opened up his first studio in 1962 and his career took off from there.  He’s painted everything from posters to postage stamps and even a Continental Airlines 777 aircraft.  He’s been the official artist of many events including the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

     LeRoy Neiman was born in 1921 in St Paul, Minnesota.  He started drawing in elementary school and as a teenager drew fruits, vegetables, meat, and other food for grocery store sale posters.  While a cook in World War II, he painted murals on the walls of kitchens and dining halls.  After the war he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he also later taught for 10 years.  In the early 1950’s he was freelancing as an illustrator at a department store where he met a fellow employee named Hugh Hefner.  Hefner started Playboy in 1953 and featured Neiman’s artwork in several issues.  This was the start of a personal/business collaboration that continues to this day.  Neiman has painted everything from landscapes, popular pastimes, and sporting events, to athletes, politicians, and celebrities.  He continues to live and work in New York City which has been his base for over 30 years.

     What all these pictures have in common is a lot of color.  I love all the bright primary colors of red, blue, and yellow.  Like Steve Martin used to say, you can’t play a sad song on a banjo, and I say you won’t paint a sad picture with these colors.  When looking at them you can’t help but feel alive and ready for action.

     I can’t get the images to copy for some reason. Maybe a copyright thing? Or probably operator error.  Here’s the link to Peter Max’s art.  http://www.petermax.com/collections/sports-posters 

Ok, I got the pictures to show up (thanks Kevin) but check out the websites anyway. They look a lot better there.

Now I give up. The pictures show up, but the captions don’t line up.  Look around, you’ll figure out what goes where.

Peter Max, NYC Marathon 1995, 1995  This one and the Olympics one remind me of the style of the Beatle’s animated movie Yellow Submarine.

Peter Max, Dale Earnhardt NASCAR, 2000  This is a poster, but the actual car was painted like this too. The checkerboard flag on the floor is a great little touch. I wonder how many times they had to repaint it due to crashes and fender-benders?

Peter Max, The Olympics: Torino 2006, 2005  It’s fairly simple, but it has a great feel to it.

Peter Max, Super Bowl XXX: The Player, 1995  I love this one. It has darker shades than his usual work, but the red and yellow of the sky contrast great with the blue and white of the player. 

LeRoy Neiman’s art link.  http://www.leroyneiman.com/merchant.ihtml?id=1&step=2  This brings up his sports prints and you can just click on each different sport to find the appropriate print.  I don’t want to assume everyone knows who Cal Ripkin is, so he’s under baseball, The Catch is under football, and Aspen is under skiing.

LeRoy Neiman, Cal Ripkin, 2000  This one commemorates his breaking Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games played. He went on for an astounding total of 2,632 games, which was over 17 seasons.

LeRoy Neiman, Olympic Basketball, 1976  This is great with all the reds and yellows and the flags in the background.

LeRoy Neiman, The Catch, 1991  This one shows Dwight Clark of the 49ers making a great game-winning catch thrown by Joe Montana in 1982.

LeRoy Neiman, Aspen Mountain Rendevous, 2002  I like the contrast between the colorfully dressed people  and vertical skis at the bottom of the picture and the whites and blues of the mountain above.

Dorothea Lange

     Dorothea Lange was an American photographer.  She was a second generation American, the granddaughter of German immigrants who came to the U.S. in the mid 1800s.  She was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1895 and died in San Francisco in 1965.  When she was seven she contracted polio and after recovering she walked with a limp the rest of her life. 

     Upon graduating from high school in 1914 she decided she wanted to be a photographer.  She was able to get a job with Arnold Genthe in New York City who was famous for his pictures of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.  Within five years she had moved to San Francisco and had opened her own portrait studio.  During the next 10 years she got married, had two sons, and kept operating her successful studio.

     At the beginning of the depression she started taking pictures of all the homeless, hungry people she saw outside the windows of her studio.  She was reminded of all the poor people she had seen during her time in New York.  After that experience she made the decision to become a documentary photographer.

     California’s State Emergency Relief Administration was doing federally funded research on rural poverty.  The feds wanted to know why so many people were coming to their state.  Lange did some of her work for that agency and that’s where an official of the Resettlement Administration saw her photographs.  She started working for them in 1935.  They would later become known as the Farm Security Administration, or FSA.

     This is who she was working for when she took her best known photograph, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936.  Nipomo is about 70 miles north of Santa Barbara.  The story about that photo is that she was on her way back home after another day of capturing different scenes of the migrant’s living and working conditions.  She saw a sign that said “Pea Picker’s Camp”, but she didn’t stop at first.  Finally, 20 miles later, she decided to turn around for one more shoot.  She took six pictures of Florence Owens and her family and this is the one that is the most famous.  The rain had ruined the pea crop and Owens, a widow, had just sold the tires on her car to buy food. There were thousands of other people in that camp that were all in the same predicament.

     Lange knew she had a great photo and rushed back to the city to get it developed. Within a few days it was published in the San Francisco News.  Her picture helped arouse the conscience of the nation.  The public’s response was quick and powerful.  Within days the federal government got moving and they shipped tons of food immediately to California.  Her photo came to symbolize the despair of the Great Depression.

     To me, the photo shows many things.  In the picture you see despair, hunger and misery, but there’s also a determined look about her.  She was 32 years old when the picture was taken but she looks over 40.  You can tell that a few years earlier she could have been pretty.  There is still a hint of beauty there.  The happy ending of the story is that she lived a full life and died at age 80.

 Partridge, Elizabeth. Restless Spirit, The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange. 1^st ed. New York, New York: Viking, 1998. Print.

Impressionism-Love it, or hate it?

     It’s my favorite style of the Romantic Era.  Realism is nice and there are some very beautiful works, but they seem too plain.  I guess that’s one of the hallmarks of Realism, having ordinary subject matter.  That’s almost the complete opposite of Impressionism which, for subject matter, uses favorite pastimes and pleasant moments in life.      

     One of the paintings at the beginning of one of the videos in this chapter looked familiar.  I had remembered seeing it before and I wanted to find out who did it.  It was Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s The Seine at Asnieres (The Skiff), painted in 1879 in Paris.  It is just really mesmerizing the way the blues in the water are.  I love how the reflections of the skiff and the buildings dance off the water.  It just draws you in.  Without being able to see it in real life you can still see the various textures from the brush strokes.  The texture of the water is different from the landscape and the sky and it has a shimmering quality about it.  I see that same quality in a lot of Claude Monet’s boat paintings at Argenteuil.

Classical

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Symphony No. 40 in G minor

     Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor was written in 1788 while living in Vienna, Austria.  It was written in the typical classical style of symphonies with four movements. The first movement is the most recognized.   

     This time frame was right after the American Revolution and right before the French Revolution. During this period the middle class wanted to experience different styles of music that before then, only the kings and queens and other upper class types got to listen to. There were more public concerts at that time and there is some circumstantial evidence that Mozart himself was able to premier this piece before he died in 1791.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mChJmHWLpII

Baroque

     I chose the “Hallelujah” chorus from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah.  It’s a piece that was sort of familiar during the holidays, but recently, I’ve heard it live by my son and daughter’s high school choir.  It’s just such a vocally powerful song that it gives me goose bumps whenever I listen to it.  Some baroque or classical music I consider “elevator music” because it’s just background music, but this is one where I crank up the volume.  The low and high voices just mesh so beautifully.

     Handel was born in Germany in 1685. He had his initial training there and also traveled and studied in Italy over a four year span. In 1710 he moved to England where he lived for nearly 50 years.

     His influence from royalty began when he arrived in Hanover, Germany in 1710 where he was appointed Kapellmeister to Georg Ludwig, the Elector of Hanover.  Kapellmeister is a German word meaning a person in charge of music making. He took the position with the condition that he could go to London for a 12 month leave of absence.  Over the next few years he keeps returning to London. He wrote Birthday Ode for Queen Anne in 1713 and later that year she grants him a pension of 200 pounds sterling.

     Queen Anne died in 1714 and the new ruler is King George I, who was the former Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover.  Although he continues to visit friends and family over the years in Germany, London is now his home.  He applied for, and received, English citizenship in 1727.  In 1723 he is appointed the “Composer of Musick for His Majesty’s Chappel Royal” and receives an annual royal pension.

     In 1741 he composed Messiah in just 24 days and it was first performed in Dublin, Ireland in 1742.  In 1750 he arranged a performance of Messiah as a benefit for a hospital.  That’s when the popularity of it really took off.

     Here’s a link to a performance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fu8YIG8uyQ&feature=related

“George Frideric Handel.” gfhandel.org. Web. 20 Feb 2010.

“George Frideric Handel.” Wikipedia. 2010. Web.

Filippo Brunelleschi’s Dome

Filippo Brunelleschi’s Dome

     The foundation stone for the new cathedral for Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, was laid in 1296.  It wouldn’t be finished until 1436, one hundred and forty years later.  It took 16 years for the dome to be completed.  During the first 100 years, work was delayed due to many reason including deaths of key designers and architects, poor economic times, war, and even plague.  In 1347 a fleet of ships returning from India brought back not only spices, but rats that were carriers of the Black Death.  As much as 80 percent of the population died over the next year.

     In 1418 with the main part of the cathedral nearing completion the city of Florence announced a competition to build the dome.  This was the most complex part of the project.  A dome of that size had never been built before.  It would be the largest dome in the world at 143 feet in diameter.  The most amazing fact about the dome is that it is still the largest brick dome in the world.

     Filippo Brunelleschi was a finalist with his old adversary, Lorenzo Ghiberti.  He had lost to Ghiberti in 1401 in a competition to cast the doors for the Baptistery of San Giovanni.  He was very secretive about his plans and didn’t want to divulge them for fear of having them stolen or copied.  Legend has it that he suggested that anyone that can stand an egg on its end should win.  When the others, of course couldn’t do it, he cracked the end and it stayed up.  Protests followed, and they all said they could have done the same thing.  Brunelleschi replied that if he showed them his plans, they could build it too.

     What is amazing about his story is how he was able to devise ingenious hoists and cranes to lift an estimated 70 million pounds of material hundreds of feet into the air.  He had so many aspects planned out that only one worker died during construction of the dome.  It also had to be built without scaffolding since there was a shortage of lumber, and in any case there weren’t timbers large enough for the scale of the project.  The dome was octagonal shaped and had a double wall construction. 

     What I found interesting about the cathedral was how they were able to put millions of bricks together without any of the modern technology we take for granted.  Brunelleschi came up with a hoist powered by a pair of oxen that actually had different gearing for three different speeds and it was also able to reverse itself.  That saved time because the oxen couldn’t walk backwards and to unhitch them and turn them around would take more time.

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Proud brand new grandpa. New Year's Eve 2008.

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