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ART “4” “2”-DAY 29 January v.9.10

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DEATHS: 1632 PORCELLIS — 1888 LEAR — 1968 FUJITA — 1943 CACHOUD — 1923 VEDDER — 1899 SISLEY

BIRTHS: 1936 CAULFIELD — 1637 SIBERECHTS — 1767 GIRODET — 1905 NEWMAN

^ >Born on 29 January 1936: Patrick Caulfield [–29 Sep 2005], London English Pop artist.
— Born in London, he studied at the Chelsea School of Art between 1956 and 1960, and from 1960 to 1963 at the Royal College of Art, London. In 1963 he was included in the Young Contemporaries exhibition, London. From 1963 to 1971 he taught at the Chelsea School of Art. He worked briefly with wooden grids which he laid across his canvas, and then later destroyed; this method led to his first black-and-white paintings. He had his first one-man exhibition at the Robert Frazer Gallery, London. He exhibited at the Robert Elkon Gallery, New York, in 1966. In 1965 he was represented at the Biennale des Jeunes, Paris, in 1967 at the international Exhibition of Graphic Art, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. In 1973 he illustrated the poems of Jules Laforgue for the Petersburg Press. In 1977 he exhibited at Santa Monica, California, in 1978 at the Tate Gallery and was given retrospective exhibitions at the Tate Gallery and the Walker Gallery, Liverpool, in 1981. His pictures combine levels of illustrative expression found in comics with a naive pictorial language, in which personal, social, political and artistic images meet. He has a predilection for referring to work by the Old Masters.

— LINKS
— Freud's Smoke (1997, 61x51cm)
–- Lunch Time (1985, 206x244cm; 892x1030pix, 64kb) _ Having graduated from Chelsea School of Art in 1959, Patrick Caulfield took up a place on the painting course at the Royal College of Art where his use of bombastic colors, inexpensive enamel paints and hardboard supports quickly suggested an allegiance to the growing Pop Art movement. In fact, though like Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton, his paintings ostensibly depict a world typified by consumer objects and decoration, Caulfield's output continues to uniquely reflect a tradition of pre-war European artists whose work he began seeing in the late 1950s. This influence is superbly illustrated in Lunch-time painted in 1985, which represents one of Caulfield's most structurally mature and darkly powerful canvases.
      At the time of the completion of Lunch Time, it was the largest painting Caulfield had made in ten years. Its epic scale invites the viewer to physically enter the composition, an enticing and challenging Cubist-inspired pictorial living space. However, in a marked departure from the Cubist subversion of space, Caulfield here punctures the impression with minutely observed, Hyper-real representations of a decorative plate and a bunch of flowers. So sharply are these objects rendered that conventional observed reality is made to exist all the more uncertainly.
      Throughout the composition, flat jagged shapes lap together, demarcated by strong black outlines that recall the early influence of Piet Mondrian and crucially operate to scaffold the shallow picture plane. Consequently we are hurried into making immediate sense of what ought to be recognizable as a dining room or restaurant interior. Dominating this montage is the central, dark and forbidding shape that cleaves the composition in two. Mischievously, Caulfield leads us circuitously around this void, starting at the base of the composition with a string of exuberant pink planes before drawing attention to four bright spherical forms located in the upper half of the canvas as though balls circling above a juggler's head.
      Each circular motif possesses its own material identity but it is the yellow element to the right of the composition which demands closest analysis. Seemingly enmeshed in foliage, we are asked to decide not only whether the bauble is solid or illusory but also whether the background it stands against represents a view through a window or merely a fragment of bamboo-print wallpaper. This continuing ambiguity ensures that we can never take the disjointed perspective of Caulfield's extraordinary world for granted.
–- Pipe and Book (892x712pix, 23kb) perhaps, if Caulfield had been French, he would have titled this: Ceci n'est pas une pipe et cela n'est pas un livre. But, while the painting does include the picture of a pipe, the rest of the painting looks not like a book, but at most a bookstand. To make up for Caulfied's shortcomings, the pseudonymous Patrich Coalmine has put together
_ None Of This Is What You Think It Is, There Is No Pipe, Nor Book, Nor Anything Else You Think You See aka Nonesuch (2006; 707x1000pix, 57kb). This inspired Coalmine's friend, the equally pseudonymous Hattrick Minefield, to try to go further with Not Knot, Not Nut (2006; 707x1000pix, 55kb). If you like fun pictures, Minefield recommends Knots in Art, but cautions that, despite the titles of the pictures, those are NOT knots. And, of course, there is the famous painting by Magritte
_ Ceci n'est pas une pomme (1964, 142x100 cm; 759x518, 19kb).
— Registry Office (400xpix, 27kb)
—(080929)

^ Died on 29 January 1632: Jan Porcellis (or Parcellis, Persellis, Pourchelles), Flemish-born painter and etcher specialized in Maritime Scenes, born in 1584.
— Porcellis was active in Holland. His parents moved to the northern Netherlands before he was one year old. His teacher was probably Hendrick Vroom. Porcellis worked in many places. He is first traceable in Rotterdam where he went bankrupt by 1615. He then moved to Antwerp. By 1622 he returned north and settled for a few years in Haarlem, then in Amsterdam, next in Voorburg near The Hague, and finally in Zoeterwoude in the environs of Leiden. The properties he amassed before his death in 1632 indicate that he had accumulated a considerable fortune during his last years. Porcellis was regarded as the greatest marine painter of his day and his works mark the transition from the busy and brightly colored seascapes of the early 17th century, with their emphasis upon the representation of ships, to monochromatic paintings which are essentially studies of sea, sky, and atmospheric effects. His favorite theme was a modest fishing-boat making its way through a choppy sea near the shore. Rembrandt and Jan van de Capelle collected his works. His son Julius (1609-1645) was also a marine painter.

— LINKS
— Shipwreck on a Beach (1631; 665x1226pix, 135kb) _ Rather than large, historical portraits of great ships that trumpet the power of the new nation's navy (as painted later, for example, by the van de Veldes), Porcellis and his younger contemporaries painted cabinet-size pictures of anonymous boats under high skies in unidentifiable seas, rivers, and inland waters. Most of them were probably not commissioned but done for the open market. Porcellis's shore scenes are equally remarkable. He painted the Shipwreck on a Beach only a few months before his death. Few later landscapes match the naturalism of its sombre mood broken by burst of sunlight indicating that the storm has broken and the spaciousness created by the extensive stretch of beach and huge breakers, low horizon, and huge dunes running obliquely into the far distance.
— Ships in a Strong Wind (1630)
— Single-Masted Damlooper and Rowboat in a Light Breeze (23x21cm; 750x668pix, 128kb)
–- Seascape with a Rainbow on the Horizon (667x792pix, 35kb, .ZOOM to 1168x1386pix, 74kb) on a choppy sea thare are sailing vessels and fishermen in a rowboat.
–- Coastal Scene (21x29cm; 510x703pix, 44kb) A fishing pink is hauled up on the beach, and a small sailing vessel is running before the breeze offshore.
–- Ships in Stormy Seas (555x1004cm; 793x1440pix, 108kb) almost monochrome
—(070127)

^ Born on 29 January 1627: Jan Siberechts (or Sibrechts), Flemish landscape painter, active in England, who died in 1703.
— He was the son of the sculptor of the same name and became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp by 1648. He married in 1652. Siberechts settled in England sometime between 1672 and 1674. About 100 landscape paintings by him are known, 65 of them dated. His landscapes are somewhat Rubensian, but he is best known for his "portraits" of English country houses, done in a simple, rather archaic manner; two views of Longleat, Wiltshire (1675 and 1676), are still preserved in the house. He was the first professional exponent of the genre.

—LINKS
— Cattle and Sheep with Two Sleeping Shepherdesses (108x84cm; 599x459pix, 82kb _ ZOOM to 2643x2024pix, 701kb)
— Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames (1690, 82x103cm; 756x945pix, 126kb _ ZOOM to 1134x1422pix, 125kb _ ZOOM+ to 2268x2835pix, 1106kb) _ The dark clouds at the top right-hand side throw the rainbow into relief, with its bright colors standing out against the sky. Siberechts’s was clearly fascinated by the complex light effects during a passing storm, and he carefully matched the light and dark areas of the sky to the shadows and highlights on the landscape. The looser, sketchier technique used to paint the rainbow suggests its delicate, intangible form and its inclusion, like the shifting shadows on the land, implies a fleeting moment captured.
— Crossing a Creek (1669, 94x116cm) _ In Flemish genre painting the representation of country life remained somewhat conventional. The exceptionally vigorous naturalism with which Jan Siberechts rendered landscapes and peasants makes one think of Courbet.
— The Market Garden (1664, 158x241cm) _ A farmyard in front of a well-appointed farmhouse, which rises up centrally in the background, with to the right a well and a small barn, and to the left in the distance a vegetable garden and a rural hamlet around a church, all set the scene for the busy occupations of the countryfolk in the foreground. Three women are preparing their vegetable harvest for market, assisted in the right background by a waggoner and watched on the left by a friendly-looking dog and a maid with a milking pail on her head and a pot with a handle in her hand. Behind her a peasant woman is letting cattle out of the barn whilst a lad is driving towards the herd a couple of sheep that have strayed into this attractive tableau, producing a light-hearted anecdote that links the various planes. The motif of the poster announcing the sale of the farm introduces a hint of uncertainty and of impending doom.
Even so, the general impression of Siberechts' composition is that of an undisturbable natural order and rural calm. In doing so he touches a sensitive chord with the modern city-dweller. Country life already exercised a particular attraction on the painter's contemporaries, leading to the building of many country houses away from the cities. The dignity with which the country-folk are depicted is typical of Siberechts. There is no longer any hint of "boorish" behavior - a proverbial term for the low appreciation in which a “civilized” bourgeoisie held country people and which expressed its dislike in many a vituperative tableau. Siberechts' noble peasants are often compared with those of France's brothers Antoine Le Nain [1600-1648], Louis Le Nain [1603-1648], and Mathieu Le Nain “le Chevalier” [1607- 20 Apr 1677].
Possibly Siberechts drew inspiration for his noble portrayal from Brussels painter Michael Sweerts. For the motifs, such as the milkmaid carrying her heavy pail on her head, the reader is referred to her counterpart in Rubens' late landscapes. When it comes to the sculptural stateliness of Siberecht's figures, we should not forget that his father was a sculptor. This painting, the theme of which departs from his more usual "Landscapes with Fords", came into being in his Antwerp period, before the artist entered the service of the English aristocracy. An analogous work, the Farmyard, dated from 1662, is also conserved in the Brussels museum.
— Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames (1690, 82x103cm) _ Even in its later period, Flemish landscape painting retains the main distinguishing characteristics that emerged as early· as the 16th century in the works of such atrists as Pieter Brueghel and Momper. This painting shows a sweeping view from a slightly elevated position, sloping down over the cattle pastures in the foreground towards a river plied by a cargo boat on the left and with a village on its banks to the right. Towards the background, the terrain slopes upwards again, with fields under changing sunlight and clouds, and a double rainbow in the sky. On the left, the view broadens out into the background towards the hills on the horizon. A Dutch landscape painting, for example by Ruisdael, could hardly be described in this manner. Unlike Flemish landscape paintings. their Dutch counterparts rarely include so many different and contrasting elements. Here, we have proximity and distance, hill and plain, animals, people, boats and houses. While Flemish landscapes frequently have a universal theme, Dutch landscapes tend to concentrate on a single aspect. This painting is typical of the later work of Sibcrechts, who emigrated to England in1672. Whereas his Flemish landscapes generally portray a small detail, his later work is topographically more precise; on the right we can recognize the village of Henley-on-Thames.
— The Wager (1665, 120x160cm) _ The dynamic, cosmic vision in the tradition of Rubens is absent from Jan Siberechts' The Wager. The artist was seduced by Dutch landscape art with its lightness of touch, and clear, impressionistic atmosphere. Siberechts' paintings have, however, a certain solidity of form and evenness of execution.
—(060128)

^ Died on 29 January 1888: Edward Lear, England, landscape painter, writer of nonsense verse, born on 12 May 1812.
Here is an example of his limericks:

There was an Old Man of Madras,
Who rode on a cream-colored ass;
But the length of its ears,
So promoted his fears,
That it killed that Old Man of Madras.

Lear was an English landscape painter who is more widely known as the writer of an original kind of nonsense verse and as the popularizer of the limerick. His true genius is apparent in his nonsense poems, which portray a world of fantastic creatures in nonsense words and show a Tennysonian feeling for word color, variety of rhythm, and often a deep underlying sense of melancholy. Their quality is matched, especially in the limericks, by that of his engaging pen-and-ink drawings [here is one which I colored >].

ILLUSTRATED WRITINGS BY LEAR ONLINE: A Book of Nonsense — Laughable Lyrics: A Fourth Book of Nonsense Poems, Songs, Botany, Music, Etc. — More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, Etc. — Queery Leary Nonsense: A Lear Nonsense Book. — not illustrated: A Book of Nonsense

ARTWORK BY LEAR ONLINE: — LINKS
–- The Pyramids Road, Ghizeh
–- Civita Castellana
–- Masada

^ Born on 29 January 1767: Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, French painter who died on 08 (09?) December 1824.
— A student of Jacques-Louis David, Girodet received rigorous neoclassical, artistic instruction at the Royal Academy. However, during the reign of Napoléon, he achieved fame as a painter of pre-Romantic battle scenes and apotheoses of the Imperial army.
— Girodet was named ‘de Roussy’ after a forest near the family home, Château du Verger, Montargis. He took the name Trioson in 1806, when he was adopted by Dr. Benoît-François Trioson [–1815], his tutor and guardian and almost certainly his natural father. Girodet took lessons from a local drawing-master in 1773 and by 1780 was studying architecture in Paris, where he became a student of the visionary Neo-classical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. Boullée persuaded Girodet to study painting under Jacques-Louis David, and Girodet joined David’s atelier in late 1783 or early 1784. He belonged to the highly successful first generation of David’s school, which included Jean-Germain Drouais, François-Xavier Fabre, François Gérard, Antoine-Jean Gros and Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Wicar. David’s students showed great stylistic uniformity, based on a close emulation of his elevated Neo-classicism, and Girodet’s early compositions are distinguishable from those of his contemporaries only by their slight quirkiness and excessive attention to detail.
— The students of Girodet included Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte, Édouard Bertin, Antoni Brodowski, Eugène Devéria, Théodore Gudin, Mathieu Kessels, Charles Langlois, Antonin-Marie Moine, Henry Monnier, Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, Philippe Jacques Van Brée.

— LINKS
— Self-Portrait
— Hortense de Beauharnais (1808)
— Mlle. Lange as Danae (1799, oval in ornate large 65x54cm rectangular frame, half-size; ZOOM to full size, 4000kb) _ Miss Lange was a talented actress known for her beauty and wealthy lovers. Girodet had painted an earlier portrait of her that she found unflattering. When she refused to pay the agreed-upon price and insisted that the painting be removed from public view at the Paris Salon, the enraged Girodet sought revenge with this second, satirical portrait. Eighteenth-century artists sometimes portrayed people as mythological characters to highlight their virtues. Girodet inverted this convention to defame Miss Lange. Danae was one of the mortals loved by the Greek god Zeus, who transformed himself into a shower of gold and fell upon her. Girodet shows Miss Lange greedily catching the gold coins. All of the painting's details are scathingly symbolic. For example, the turkey wearing a wedding ring represents a man the actress married for his fortune. The cracked mirror denotes her inability to see herself as Girodet saw her — a vain, adulterous, and avaricious woman.
— Academic Study of a Male Head (1817 drawing, 19x18cm; full size, 534kb) _ This drawing reflects the artist's Romantic sensibilities. Although Napoléon was in exile when Girodet made this drawing in 1817, the model sports a type of Gallic mustache that was popular with the Emperor's corps of body guards; he is not a typical studio model. Girodet was highly influenced by the treatise Physiognomical Fragments (1775-1778) by Johann Kasper Lavater, who claimed that the human face is a mirror of a psycho-spiritual reality. The dramatic, three-quarter profile perspective, which emphasizes the cyclopean eye, heightens the Romantic impact of this head of a fierce and defiant soul.
— L'Enterrement d'Atala (1808 _ ZOOM to 1400x1792pix)
— Le Citoyen Jean-Baptiste Belley, ex-Représentant des Colonies (ZOOM to 1400x980pix).
— A Woman in a Turban
— Endymion Asleep (1793)

^ Died on 29 January 1968: Tsuguharu (or Tsugouharu, Tsuguji) Leonard Fujita (or Foujita), Japanese French painter born on 27 November 1886.
— A friend of Modigliani and of Soutine, Fujita was one of the best-known figures in Montparnasse. He very quickly acquired notoriety in fashionable circles, who enjoyed his nudes with their discreet eroticism. He is still considered one of the great draftsmen of his generation. After graduating from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1910, he went to France in 1913. Though associated with the École de Paris he developed an individual style. He became an annual member of the Salon d’Automne in 1919 and a permanent member in the following year. Subsequently his reputation in Parisian artistic circles rose, established by such works as My Studio (1921) and Five Nudes (1923), where he used a thin, delicate line on a background of milk-white material, like the surface of porcelain; this style was particularly impressive in his cool, complaisant nudes. In 1929 he briefly returned to Japan, holding a successful one-man show in Tokyo.
He left Paris in 1931 and traveled through South, Central and North America before returning to Japan in 1933. He was made a member of the Nikakai (Second Division Society) in the following year and painted several murals in Japan, including Annual Events of Akita, Festivals of Miyoshi Shrine of Mount Taihei, commissioned by Hirano Masakichi of Akita. He visited Paris in 1939 to 1940, painting Still-life with Cat and Cats (Fighting). In 1941 he left the Nikakai and was appointed to the Imperial Art Academy. He was also attached to the Navy and Army Ministries and used his excellent descriptive and compositional skills to depict war zones in China and South-East Asia. He was awarded the Asahi Culture Prize for The Last Day of Singapore (1942) and other works.
He went to the US in 1949 and to Paris in the following year, taking French nationality in 1955 and becoming a Catholic convert, with the baptismal name of Léonard, in 1959. In 1966 he had the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix built in Reims, and he devoted his last years to its design and its stained glass and murals.
— Born in Tokyo, he was a 1910 graduate of what is now Tokyo University. He lived primarily in France from 1913 to World War II, though he made frequent trips to Japan. Friend of the Paris school of painters between the wars. He returned to Japan during World War II, leaving in 1949 and settling in France in 1950. French citizen in 1955. Adopted name of Leonard at time of his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1966. Died in Zürich. Adapted Japanese brush techniques to his use of western oil paints, speciualizing in images of cats and women. Japanese-born painter who settled in France; died of cancer in Zurich. Foujita reached Paris in 1913 and hobnobed with the brilliant and the bizarre in the Montmartre of the 20s. He painted cats by the thousands and almost as many catlike women, achieving the first real fusion of Oriental brushwork and Western oils.

— LINKS
— Self-Portrait (1931, 100x65cm; 405x250pix, 16kb)
— Autoportrait Huile sur toile 100 x 80,5 1921 , 380x304pix, 25kb) Inscription en japonais, signature et date dans le bas à droite : [Tsugouharu 35 ans] / T. Foujita / 1921 ; signature, date et titre au revers Artiste(s) Tsugouharu Foujita [Edogawa / Tokyo (Japon) 1886 - Zurich (Suisse) 1968] Classification [peinture (Dept. Art Moderne)] Type [tableau (toile)] Iconographie figure (homme : assis : de face) ; coiffure ; lunettes ; montre de poche ; pipe ; tabac ; assiette : céramique / portrait ; autoportrait (Foujita : artiste : peintre ; Japon) Interprétation Foujita avait un style vestimentaire et une coiffure bien à lui. Cet autoportrait permet de se faire une idée précise non seulement de ses petites lunettes caractéristiques, de sa moustache finement taillée en "M" mais également de sa coiffure, associée à son personnage dès son arrivée à Paris (1913). Cette coiffure à longue frange, que portait aussi Zadkine (1890-1967), plaisait beaucoup à Foujita, il l'a gardée toute sa vie. Pour cet artiste d'origine japonaise, cette coupe de cheveux avait pour particularité de n'exiger aucun cosmétique et de n'être l'imitation d'aucune coiffure occidentale. Deux pipes et une assiette de céramique sur un mur, de même qu'un pot à tabac, allumettes et un oignon sur une console à pieds droits, constituent un arrière-plan, témoignant d'un grand soucis du détail par l'artiste.
— Jean Rostand (1955; 600x481pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1122pix, 438kb) monochrome, complete painting with cluttered background featuring skeletons, the sitter holds a frog in each hand.
–- Edmond Rostand (lithograph with yellow, 50x33cm; 1176x830pix, 114kb) with no background and unfinished at the bottom where there are six loose frogs, but it is the same sitter, in the same pose as the previous: they are both Jean Rostand [30 Oct 1894 – 04 Sep 1977] or both his father Edmond Rostand [01 Apr 1868 – 02 Dec 1918], but which? In 1955 Edmond had been dead 36 years, and a posthumous portrait seems very unlikely. But what clinches it, is that, while both were writers (of plays the father, of science and philosophy the son), only the son was a biologist who, especially at the time of the portrait, had a special interest in frogs: among his many works are: La Génétique des Batraciens (1951), Ce que nous apprennent les crapauds et les grenouilles (1953), Les Crapauds, les grenouilles et quelques problèmes biologiques (1955), Anomalies des Amphibiens anoures (1958). So it is this lithograph which is incorrectly labeled.
–- Child in Hood in the Snow (1930 color woodcut, 37x29cm; 1068x814pix, 64kb)
— Enfant Devant une Maison (1931, 27x35cm; 480x626pix, 34kb)
— Les Deux Soeurs (1964, 42x30cm; 480x349pix, 63kb)
— Untitled (20x24cm; 480x579pix, 35kb) 2 horses
— Fillette à la Croix (1949, 33x23cm; 480x329pix, 17kb)
—(070127)

^ >Born on 29 January 1905: Barnett Newman, US Abstract Expressionist and Minimalist painter and sculptor, who died on 04 July 1970.
— Born in New York, he attended classes at the Art Students League while studying at the City College of New York, then worked from 1927 to 1937 for his father's company manufacturing men's clothing; also as a substitute art teacher in high schools. Painted in the 1930s in a US Expressionist style, but destroyed his early work and, in 1940, stopped painting. In 1944-1945 he made a new start with swiftly-executed drawings in chalks and oil crayon of plant and seed growth, and images of fertilization. He was active from 1944 to 1949 as a champion of the new US painting and as an authority on primitive art; wrote catalogue forewords for Gottlieb, Stamos and Ferber, articles for Tiger's Eye, etc. In 1948 he began to work with fields of color interrupted by one or more vertical stripes (or 'zips'), and in 1949 painted his first wall-sized pictures. First one-man exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1950. Painted from 1958-1962 in black and white; in the late 1960s with colors of exceptional purity and saturation. His late work from 1965 included a small number of steel sculptures. Newman died in New York.
— The following is an example of the kind of drivel that is written to ensnare the wealthy but either foolish or believers in the Greater Fool Theory: Newman's paintings are among the most challenging works of art of the Twentieth Century. Sometimes regarded as philosophic statements made without artistic skill, or conversely, as pure painting devoid of a subject, his paintings, in truth {... real truth: pure waste of paint and canvas...}, involve both: spirit and matter. The artist sought to instill in the viewer a profound sense of the spiritual; this did not imply that Newman had religious, but rather that he sought a profound faith in the role of the artist at the highest realm to which a man could aspire, indeed capable of provoking in the viewer an existential sense of awe and wonderment for the sublime miracle of existence. To pioneer an art that was both uncompromisingly abstract and powerfully emotive, Newman forged a language of expansive spatial effects and richly evocative color. The Europeans had totems and taboos –do’s and don’t’s – about color. Newman used paints as if they has been invented especially for him that same morning.
Newman’s paintings require us to stand before them, close enough to experience all their nuances of color and structure. So adamant was Newman about the way his art should be viewed that he once typed a statement and stuck it to the gallery wall instructing people to stand at only a 'short distance' from his canvases. Seen in proximity, Newman believed that his work could engender feelings of heightened self-awareness in the viewer, who would immerse himself in the field of color. The chromatic experience is interrupted, or better, enhanced, by the ‘zip’, the vertical strip of color that, from 1948, became Newman’s landmark signature. The ‘zip’ divides and yet at the same time adds a striking dynamic presence; it is a line of vitality and energy that seems to assert the mystery of existence and the dynamism of life, sparking a mystical connection with the verticality of the viewer standing in front of the painting. The zips are "an act of division, a gesture of separation, as God separates light from darkness, with a line drawn in the void… Newman’s first move is an act of division, straight down creating an image. The image not only re-enacts God’s primal gesture, it also presents the gesture itself, the zip, as the independent shape - man - the only animal who walks upright, Adam, virile, erect.

— LINKS
— Who's afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue? (1966, 191x122cm)
— Who's afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue? IV (1970; 600x1318pix, 136kb) _ The pseudonymous Pubgros Oldman provides the answer in his full screen-width
_ Dats Hoo ! (2005; 12kb).
To save you the trouble of clicking on links to images of worthless non-art, Oldman has also created for you a series of images, starting with the one shown below, Death of Red, Yellow, and Blue, which, though almost as worthless as Newman's, shows a bit more imagination, and is only 7kb. Mort de Rouge, Jaune, Bleu

//— With the following images, each offered in several versions (all of which make full use of the size of your monitor screen), Oldman has desperately tried, but not quite succeeded to surpass the worthlessness of Newman's non-art, to which a link (using much more bandwidth for a much smaller image) is given in each case:
_ not hear >>> THERE aka Ere Here (2005; full screen, 2kb) almost as worthless as Newman's Not There - Here (1962, 198x89cm; 700x315pix, 80kb)
_ Mulier Pusillanimis Humilis aka Rivi Vir (2005; full screen, 2kb) almost as worthless as Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1951; 60kb)
_ No Way 1, No Way 2 , and No Way 3 aka Way Yaw 1, Way Yaw 2, and Way Yaw 3 (2005; full screen, 2kb) almost as worthless as Newman's The Way II (1968; 700x553pix, 61kb)
_ S'effondre l'obscurité (pas pour un buisson) (2005; 636x469pix, 6kb _ ZOOM to 954x703pix, 6kb _ ZOOM+ to 1908x1406pix, 6kb) almost as worthless as Newman's Shining Forth (to George) (1968; 463x700pix, 108kb)
_ Ten Meant 9+1, aka Tenement 10 (2005; 636x469pix, 8kb _ ZOOM to 954x703pix, 8kb _ ZOOM+ to 1908x1406pix, 8kb) almost as worthless as Newman's Onement I (1968; 636x378pix, 67kb), not to be confused with
_ Tenement in Glen Street (53kb) by Marie Hay.
_ Black Ice (2005; 672x837pix, 10kb _ ZOOM to 1344x1674pix, 10kb) almost as worthless as its opposite, Newman's White Fire I (next)

BLACK FUMES MMV

–- White Fire I (1954, 122x152cm; 1124x1400pix, 51kb) _ This is the first of a series of four White Fire paintings, referring to the mystical fire out of which the Torah was originally made. Newman's deep blue paintings of 1951-1953 gave way in 1954 to a series of works in pale aqua and turquoise that fully reveal Newman’s idiotic color insensibility. Newman randomly created unique colors, whether by mixing hues of his palette or by layering them on the canvas. In White Fire there is no pure white, just as there is no fire. Instead, a pallid aqua dominates, punctuated by two zips: a wide, pale beige band on the left and a softly bleeding blue stripe on the right. On White Fire I Newman managed to get such ridiculous comments as: “there is a translucent sense of brightness. The pale field of color is made to seem brighter, but far from a radiant white, by the effects of the two "zips", which also, through their contrasting colors is claimed by brainwashers to suggest a constantly shifting sense of space against the seemingly infinite expanse of brightness. The overall effect on the brainwashed is one of a mystical light, a light that inspired the work’s allegedly mystical title. The fool who first paid good money for this worthless piece of non-art was not such a fool after all, because a series of greater and greater fools was found to buy it and resell it until 12 November 2003, when someone, who since then probably got anxious as to whether a yet greater fool will show up, paid $3'704'000 for White Fire I at a Sotheby's auction in New York. So that you can appreciate this kind of art without copyright worries or even clicking on the link of White Fire I, Oldman's friendly rival the pseudonymous Pépé Raizo de Barre has created and graciously put into the public domain Black Fumes MMV, similar and almost as bad, The MMV in Black Fumes MMV does not stand for any of the 27 abbreviations listed by http://www.acronymattic.com/results.aspx?q=MMV; but just for the fact that, if PPRB had been foolish enough to make a series of Black Fumes, the previous one would have been Black Fumes MMIV (try that in acronymattic!). You can admire Black Fumes MMV here [>>>] in the size that would also be more than large enough to appreciate White Fire I. However, if you insist on large images, there is the instantly loading
_ Black Fumes MMV (2007; 692x500'000pix, 1kb) and, if you want something more colorful, click on
_ Tricolor Fumes MMV (2007; 692x500'000pix, 1kb) _ But De Barre, a maximalist at heart, only does minimalism as spoofs. So, to show the colorful and intricately detailed compositions of which he is capable, he produced
_ Multicolor Super Fumigation (2007; 692x555'000pix, 189kb)

–- Note XI, State II (Sparks 37) (1968; 1198x834pix, 31kb) a small dark gray rectangle with an extremely wide off-white margin in which is handwritten in pencil “Note XI - State II 1968 H.C. 1/2”. _ This has provoked De Barre into making a picture of many wonderfully detailed colorful rectangles:
_ Not Estate, Not Parks aka La Note Étonne aka Note Ton (2006; screen filling, 226kb _ ZOOM to 1864x2636pix, 1251kb) and, just to prove that he can also outminimalize any minimalist, Not Notable, shown full size here at left [<<<] and almost as worthless as Newman's non-art..
— Untitled (1961 lithograph, 58x41cm; 1069x768pix, 97kb) grayscale; tire and skid marks?
—(080128)

Died on a 29 January:

2004 Mary Margaret “Molly” Kaye [21 August 1908–], British watercolorist and writer. —(090208)

^ 2007 Michael Hurson [1941–], US painter and modelist, dies of a heart attack. He was born in Youngstown, Ohio. He undertook his BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago, from 1959 to 1963, which included independent study with the 'postminimalist' art critic Robert Pincus-Witten. Hurson then assisted the celebrated puppeteer Burr Tilstrom, undertook military service, and after a brief period in New York returned to Chicago in 1969. In the 1970s Hurson attracted critical attention for his finely crafted small-scale model rooms and interiors. Through the 1970s Hurson was also active as a painter. In the 1980s he relocated to New York
— Hotel Chelsea, Room 331 (2002; 480x371pix, 58kb) 2-color sketch.
— Daniel Weinberg (1980, 74x58cm; 460x373, 41kb) an abstract sketch. . —(070214)

1989 Federico Cantu, Mexican artist born on 03 March 1908. —(060126)

1946 Il'ya Yevgrafovich Bondarenko, Russian artist born in 1870. —(060126)

1943 François Charles Cachoud, French painter born (full coverage) on 23 October 1866.

1923 Elihu Vedder, US painter born (full coverage) on 26 February 1923. —(070225)

1919 Sven Richard Bergh, _Swedish artist born on 28 December 1858. —(060126)

1899 Alfred Sisley, French painter born (full coverage) on 30 October 1839. —(051018)

1678 Giulio Carpioni, Venitian artist born in 1613. —(060126)

1614 Ambroise Bosschaert (?) Dubois, French (or Flemish?) artist born in 1543. — Related? to Ambrosius Bosschaert I [bap. 18 Nov 1573 – 1621] and to his son Ambrosius Bosschaert II [1609 – 19 May 1645 bur.]?

Born on a 29 January:

1933 Mario Calvit, Panamanian artist. —(060126)

^ 1931 Wilson Bigaud, Haitian naive painter. He is one of the most important Haitian artists. Born in Port-au-Prince, he started as a sculptor in clay before turning to painting. He enrolled at the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince and painted under Maurice Borno. However he paints as if he had no training: his proportions are wrong. His painting Paradise won second prize at an International Exhibition in Washington in 1950. In the same year he painted his masterpiece The Wedding of Cana, a mural in the Episcopal Cathedral in Port-au-Prince.
— Wilson Bigaud est né à Port-au-Prince. En 1945, âgé de dix-sept ans, il est l'un des premiers à s'inscrire au Centre d'Art qui vient d'ouvrir et il commence à peindre sous la direction du professeur Borno. Tout de suite, il devient un chef de file de cette jeune peinture haïtienne qui s'affirme et, à l'égal de Hector Hyppolite, Philomé et Sénèque Obin, Préfète Duffaut, Castera Bazile, etc..., il contribue au renom croissant de l'art haïtien à l'étranger. Il obtient trois premiers prix dans le cadre d'expositions organisées par le Centre d'Art et le Foyer des Arts Plastiques. Sa toile intitulée Paradis remporte le deuxième prix en 1950 lors d'une exposition internationale à Washington. Ce tableau est actuellement la propriété du Modern Art Museum de New York. Pour des raisons de santé, il cesse néanmoins de peindre pendant plus de dix ans, jusqu'en 1962.
     Pour certains, Wilson Bigaud n'est qu'un passé que l'on retrouve sur les murs de l'Église Épiscopale de Port-au-Prince, au Musée de l'Art Moderne à New York, au Musée de l'Art Haïtien du Champ de Mars et dans les grandes collections étrangères; passé jonché de "paradis terrestres", "d'enfers", de "jardins merveilleux" et d'autres sujets considérés comme typiques de l'art naïf pictural haïtien. Si dans ce domaine, Bigaud n'a rien à envier à un Jasmin Joseph, Philippe Auguste, André Normil, c'est pourtant grâce à ses peintures décrivant la vie de tous les jours qu'il passera à la postérité, à sa chaleur aussi, à son humour et à son exubérance qui font qu'Haïti est unique dans la Caraïbe. On sent chez Bigaud l'amour charnel de sa patrie et de ses frères. Il est aussi cet observateur impartial à qui ne peuvent échapper l'ironie et la saveur des tribulations de la vie quotidienne.
     Dans une cinquantaine d'années, c'est très certainement dans les toiles de Bigaud que l'on retrouvera l'Haïti de notre époque. Son oeuvre est une fresque magistrale et saisissante, une chronique savoureuse qui évoque tour à tour la campagne et la ville. C'est le témoignage attentif et sincère d'un artiste lucide qui regarde vivre en laissant vivre, qui nous raconte son pays, tantôt en paysan, tantôt en citadin, mais toujours en toute simplicité. Jamais, il ne cherche à atténuer la férocité des contrastes et inégalités qui sont monnaie courante en cette terre de soleil, de sourires et de soupirs.
      Bigaud, c'est une encyclopédie de la vie haïtienne. Tout est passé en revue:
· la végétation tropicale, la faune, la culture des champs, le déboisement, la coumbite et le repas en commun;
· la caille du paysan, les villages, les villes, la marchande d'oranges, de griots, le spéculateur en café, le boutiquier, le cireur de souliers;
· les ravages du transistor en province, les installations électriques et hydrauliques dans les rues, dans les maisons;
· les bienfaits du ventilateur électrique, du réfrigérateur à kérosène, de la lampe à gaz, les têtes bobêche et les lampes à huile;
· la pêche, la chasse, la plage, l'étal du boucher, l'abattoir, le dispensaire, l'Église, les bars, les bals, les bagarres, l'hôpital, les bordels, les parties de dés, de cartes, les fêtes paroissiales;
· le curé, le gendarme, le houngan, l'autorité, les protestants, les francs-maçons, les trembleurs, le humfort, les Témoins de Jéhova, l'initiation des hounsis, le baptême, la première communion, le mariage, le mariage gâté, le mariage en voiture, à pied, à cheval;
· les lavandières, les tafiateurs, les amis, les bourgeois, les mendiants, les chiens, les avions, le port;
· les ânes, le carnaval, le Palais National, les rues, la danse, les marchés, les jeux des enfants, les cabris, les tchoules, les maoulés;
· la Fête-Dieu, la visite au Houngan, le débit de clairin, l'arrestation des voleurs, la veillée funèbre, l'enterrement, le chant du coq, la gaguère, le joueur de banjo, les souris et les rats;
· les petits matins, la préparation de la cassave, les raras, les tambours et les vaccines;
· la souffrance, la laideur, la misère, les richesses, la vanité et la vanité des choses, la beauté et la joie.
      Bigaud aime à se promener dans la campagne, son bâton à la main, son chapeau de paille sur la tête, allant par les sentiers escarpés, d'un village à un hameau, d'une commère à un compère, palabrant gentiment, faisant provision d'oxygène et d'images, d'attitudes et de gestes, d'anecdotes et de tripotages. De retour chez lui, soucieux de ne rien oublier, il fait des croquis, dessine et peint, avide de fixer sur la toile à jamais, l'expérience toute fraîche d'un jour qui s'efface...
— (outdoor polenta meal?) (61x51cm; 768x638pix, 253kb) damaged in the lower left corner.
— (girl holding paintbrushes and a vase of flowers) (725x599pix, 259kb)
— Raras (1972; 556x697pix, 490kb)
— (coming out of the wedding?) (500x667pix, 97kb)
— Cockfight (1990, 23x31cm; 377x500pix, 116kb) with a detail (197x400pix, 42kb) on the same page.
— The Fish Seller (1990, 25x20cm; 500x400pix, 103kb)
— Marassa (Twins) (1990, 25x20cm; 583x450pix, 158kb)
— Ring around the Rosy (1970, 71x61cm; 521x500pix, 106kb) with two details (403x360pix, 59kb; and 375x500pix, 83kb) on the same page
–- A Military Parade, Haiti (479x982pix, 66kb) led by a chicken. —(070127)

1904 Mikhail Osipovich Barshch, Moscow Russian artist who died on 08 Nov 1976 — (060126)

^ 1872 Sir William Rothenstein, English painter, printmaker, teacher, and writer, who died on 14 February 1945. He was the son of a German-born Bradford wool merchant and delighted in the grim landscape of his native Yorkshire, which was the subject of some early watercolors. At 16 he left his native Bradford to attend the Slade School of Art in London (1888–1889), where he was a student of Alphonse Legros, and the Académie Julian in Paris (1889–1893). He associated with Toulouse-Lautrec and Camille Pissarro. His talent was recognized as early as 1891, when an exhibition of his work and that of Charles Conder at the Galerie Hadrien Thomas in Paris attracted the attention of many artists including Pissarro and Degas. The latter invited Rothenstein to visit his studio and became a major influence on his development. His best known painting of this period is The Doll's House, which features Augustus John and Rothenstein's wife.
     After an inspiring four years he left Paris for Oxford where he made a number of portrait lithographs — among others of Walter Pater and Max Beerbohm — published as Oxford Characters (1893–1896). It was the first of several such publications, including Paul Verlaine (1898), English Portraits (1898), The French Set: Portraits of Rodin, Fantin-Latour and Alphonse Legros (1898), Twelve Portraits (1929) and Contemporaries (1937). Rothenstein’s ability to capture the character of his sitters is also evident in his other graphic work, notably his chalk drawing of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1895) and his pastel drawing of Charles Conder (1897).
     On the outbreak of First World War, his German name and accent made him unpopular in the Goucestershire village where he lived. As a patriotic Englishman he quickly accepted the offer of Charles Masterman, the head of the government's War Propaganda Bureau (WPB) to become an official war artist. Rothenstein visited the Somme front in December 1917. He stayed with the British Fifth Army in 1918 and during the German Spring Offensive, served as a unofficial medical orderly. He returned to England in March 1918 and his pictures were exhibited in May 1918. Pictures by Rothenstein included The Ypres Salient and Talbot House, Ypres (338x505pix, 40kb). In 1920 Rothenstein became principal of the Royal College of Art. A talented teacher, Rothenstein held the post until 1935. Although sixty-six when the Second World War started, Rothenstein became an artist with the Royal Air Force.
— William Rothenstein was the father of painter and printmaker Michael Rothenstein [19 Mar 1908 – 06 July 1993 ].
— LINKS
— Two Women (1895, 97x77cm; 512x413pix, 27kb)
— Family Group (395x400pix, 25kb) _ Alice Rothenstein and nurse Adkins with baby John in a landscape. —(070127)

^ 1868 Ingenuin Albuin Trojer “Albin Egger-Lienz”, Austrian painter who died on 04 November 1926. He was the illegitimate son of a peasant girl, Maria Trojer, and the Austrian church artist and photographer Georg Egger [1835–1907]. Later he adopted the name of his father and home town. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich from 1884 to 1893. The main subject-matter of his early works, which were painted in a naturalistic style and influenced by Franz von Defregger, was determined by his background: scenes from peasant life and from the Tyrolean freedom battles of 1809 against the French troops of Napoleon, for example Ave Maria after the Battle on the Bergisel (1896). He moved in 1899 to Vienna, where his own style developed: its fresco-like monumentality, as in The Dance of Death of Year Nine (1908), was a contrast to sophisticated metropolitan culture at the turn of the century. His style was characterized by a concentration on the clearly outlined large form and by a linear rhythm in the picture surface. Bulky figures combine to form voluminous masses that appear against the background as silhouettes. Colors are reduced to mainly monochrome earth-colored tones of brown. — LINKS
— Mittagessen (1923, 55x81cm; 450x681pix, 98kb)
— 3 Schnitter (1922, 82x131cm; 398x640pix, 41kb)
— Der Einzug König Etzels in Wien (1908, 54x170cm; 174x550pix, 40kb)

1842 Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli, Zürich Swiss artist who died on 27 July 1930. — (060126)

^ 1817 John Callcott Horsley, London English painter who died on 18 October 1903. A nephew of the landscape painter Augustus Wall Callcott, and later Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s brother-in-law, he was born into the artistic establishment. He was educated at Henry Sass’s Academy and at the Royal Academy. Although he painted two frescoes for the Houses of Parliament (The Spirit of Religion, 1847; Satan Wounded by Ithuriel’s Lance, 1848), his career began with portraiture. Success later came with literary subjects, and in 1843 he designed the first Christmas card, for Henry Cole. — LINKS

There once was a painter named Horsley,
And some said he painted quite coarsely,
But in A Pleasant Corner
Was Coming Down To Dinner,
by that bright John Callcott Horsley.

— Saint Valentine's Day
— A Hunting Morning (1861, 55x65cm)
— Illustrations for poems by Tennyson: The May Queen _ Circumstance _ The Gardener's Daughter. — (060126)

1770 Martinus Schouman, Dutch marine painter who died on 30 October 1848; great-nephew and student of Aert Schouman [04 Mar 1710 – 07 May 1792].

1475 Giuliano Bugiardini di Piero di Simone, Florentine artist who died on 17 February 1554. — (060126)

Happened on a 29 January:
1987 Physician’s Weekly announces that the smile on the face of Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa is caused by a "...facial paralysis resulting from a swollen nerve behind the ear."

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