Friedrich Schlegel (March 10, 1772 - 1829) was a German poet, critic and scholar.
Schlegel’s theory of the fragment is an essential part of the Romantic critical ideal, which praises the ruin, the incomplete and the infinite as sides of the same figure.
Aphorisms and paradoxes:
“It is equally fatal for the spirit, to have a system and not to have.”
“Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.”
“The historian is a reversed prophet.”
Pablo de Sarasate (March 10, 1844 – 1908, was a Spanish violinist and composer of the Romantic period.
Sarasate was a flamboyant virtuoso on the violin, and often adapted other compositions into show pieces that illustrated his fabulous technical ability. Famous works include The Carmen Fantasy, a destillation of themes from Bizet’s opera, and Zigeunerweisen, beloved by virtuosi ever since for its passion and rhythm…
Here is Perlman’s version:
Swiss (French-born) composer Arthur Honegger was born March 10, 1892 (d. 1955)…
A member of Les Six, Honegger differed a bit from his 5 Montparnasse fellows: while sharing their anti-Wagnerian, anti-Impressionist stance in theory, he leaned more and more toward a late-Romantic inspiration in his later career.
His best known work is his so-called symphonic movement from 1923, Pacific 231 which imitates the sounds of a steam locomotive… “I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.” - Honegger
Bix Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – 1931, alcoholic seizure) was an American jazz cornetist and composer, as well as a skilled classical and jazz pianist.
Bix was the only jazz cornetist whose popularity rivaled Armstrong’s in the 1920s (where he actually scored more hits than Satchmo). Beiderbecke’s subtle compositions such as “In a Mist” have become classic early jazz standards, covered again and again in a multitude of roots styles. My intro to them was through Ry Cooder’s wonderfully eclectic 1978 album, simply entitled Jazz.
More Bix on OF: 1
Speaking of roots: check out Joe Bussard, record collector extraordinaire in the documentary film: Desperate Man Blues…
Another musical birthday, French multi-genius Boris Vian was born March 10, 1920 (d. 1959, heart attack)…
Vian was a writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their release. Vian’s other fiction, published under his real name, featured a highly individual writing style with numerous madeup words, subtle wordplay and surrealistic plots.
Vian was also an important influence on the French jazz scene. He served as liaison for Duke Ellington and Miles Davis in Paris, wrote for several French jazz-reviews (Le Jazz Hot, Paris Jazz) and published numerous articles dealing with jazz both in the United States and in France. His own music and songs enjoyed popularity during his lifetime, particularly the anti-war song Le Déserteur.
Here is a little whimsy on the Mozzani harp guitar by Vian: “I have never been to Italy, so I had to write a song about it to get to know it…”
Vian, every bit the French intellectual, w. Jean-Paul Sartre, Michelle Vian and Simone de Beauvoir…
Boris Vian, “Le chapeau Maître” - Paris 1955
Photo by Claude Azoulay
Anecdote on Vian’s death:
On the morning of June 23, 1959, Boris Vian was at the Cinema Marbeuf for the screening of the film version of his novel J’irai cracher sur vos tombes. He had already fought with the producers over their interpretation of his work and he publicly denounced the film stating that he wished to have his name removed from the credits. A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: “These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!” He then collapsed into his seat and died from sudden cardiac death en route to the hospital.
Sudzuki Shinjiro Yama (March 10, 1884 - ?): Untitled (Syracuse, New York), 1934 - woodcut (Smithsonian)
Jimmy Lee Sudduth (March 10, 1910 - 2007): Self-Portrait with Banjo, 1986
mixed media: mud, paint, and vegetable matter on board (Smithsonian) - I dig this cat’s choice of materials (although he didn’t use Coca Cola in this work!)
“Jimmy Lee Sudduth’s fertile imagination has led him to paint self-portraits, dogs, television personalities, and the architecture and landscape near his home in Fayette, Alabama, as well as views of New York and other cities. In Big City Skyline, rows of people filing across a bridge toward a crowded mass of towering skyscrapers emphasize the anonymity of life in America’s large cities. Sudduth’s materials—mud mixed with sugar water and color extracted from weeds and vegetables—are no less inventive than his themes. He rarely uses canvases or brushes, preferring to use his fingers to paint with clay, mud, sand, and soot on plywood.” - Lynda Hartigan. Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).
“This is somethin’ new. This is somethin’ the art people ain’t got—-in the whole world.” Jimmy Lee Sudduth, quoted in Nancy Callahan, “Plywood for his canvas, turnip greens for paint, old houses as subject,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 1980
“Jimmy Lee Sudduth starts his mud paintings by drawing the outline with a “dye-rock,” a soft stone sometimes used by Native Americans to paint their skin. He then fills in the shapes with a mixture of mud, sugar, and paint, and rubs leaves and berries over the top for more color. (Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia, 1990) Sudduth uses the sugar so that the mud will harden, and sometimes even adds honey or Coca Cola to the mixture. (Nancy Callahan, “Plywood for his canvas, turnip greens for paint, old houses as subject,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 1980) In this image, he applied only three colors to create a vibrant self-portrait. The deep blue of the background and the bright white of the figure’s clothing emphasize the rich, earthy tones of the mud he used to “paint” his skin.”
Ezra Winter (March 10, 1886 - 1949, the Hemingway method): Mural from the Birmingham Public Library - Fairy Godmother and Rapunzel, year unknown
Winter was born in Traverse City, Michigan, trained at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1908, and the American Academy in Rome in 1914. Winter became extremely successful and commanded high prices for his work. In 1924 he taught at the Grand Central School of Art.
Winter killed himself with a double-barreled shotgun near his Connecticut studio at the age of 63.
His work includes:
Fountain of Youth mural at the Radio City Music Hall in Rockefeller Center
The George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Vincennes, Indiana
A spectacular six-story banking hall mural for the Guardian Building, and work for the Buhl Building, both in Detroit and both for architect Wirt C. Rowland
Canterbury Tales Mural, Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C.
Robert Broner (b. March 10, 1922): Night Stones, 1963-1967 - color intaglio on paper (Smithsonian)
“After studying with S.W. Hayter at the experimental print workshop Atelier 17, Robert Broner continued to use a wide range of innovative techniques during his years as a printmaker. Besides using the traditional techiques of engraving, etching, aquatint, lithography and photo-lithography, silkscreen and woodcut, he developed several new techniques. In the 1950’s he invented the texture imprint, an intaglio process created by cutting and inking fabrics that are then collaged on a metal plate and printed as a monotype. This innovation led Broner to use other found objects in his printmaking. In the late sixties and early seventies he printed directly from electrical circuit boards, using them like intaglio plates. Broner also cast paper pulp in the image of electrical circuits, and vacuum-formed them. He later began using three-dimensional found objects, such as crushed tin cans, inking and collaging the objects to create printed landscapes. The technique of metal collage prints was initiated by the experimental printmaking of German Expresionist Rolf Nesch. Broner also made early use of the photocopying process to create mail-art images.” (Source)
Sign of the Fish, Jonah in the Whale Electronic Kiss Spectrum of the Sun and the Moon
Harry Bertoia (March 10, 1915 - 1978): #1117, ca. 1954-1956 - monotype on paper (Smithsonian)
“Best known as a sculptor and furniture designer, Harry Bertoia was born in San Lorenzo, Udine, Italy. In 1928 he began taking drawing classes in Italy before immigrating first to Canada, then to Detroit in 1930. He received a scholarship to the School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts in 1936 and a year later was awarded a teaching scholarship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. There he taught metalworking from 1937 to 1942 and then graphics for one year. In 1943 Bertoia moved to Los Angeles to work as a furniture designer. He also took welding classes at Santa Monica City College and in 1947 created his first welded sculptures. During this period Bertoia became an American citizen. His employer, Knoll Associates, introduced the Bertoia Collection of furniture in 1952. The following year he received his first commission for a large-scale sculpture for the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. Bertoia subsequently resigned from Knoll Associates to concentrate on his sculpture. His distinguished work brought him other major commissions for the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Chapel, Lambert Airport in St. Louis, Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Virginia. Beginning in the 1940s, Bertoia exhibited extensively. Among his many awards were the Gold Medal given by the Architectural League of New York (1955–56), the Fine Arts Medal from the Pennsylvania Association of the American Institute of Architects (1963), and an honorary doctorate from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1976).” - Joann Moser. Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1997).
The Harry Bertoia Diamond Lounge Chair by Knoll
David Hare (March 10, 1917 - 1992): House of the Moon - Executed 1987, Wood and steel, 29 inches high
David Hare, a sculptor and photographer, was born in New York City. From 1936 to 1937 he studied biology and chemistry at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. He had no formal training in art but began by experimenting. He took up photography in the 1930s, and by the end of the decade was working in color. The Walker Galleries in New York exhibited these photographs in 1939.
During the early 1940s, a time when he was closely involved with the emigré Surrealists in New York, Hare made his first sculpture, using wire and feathers. Experimenting with plaster, wax, cast bronze and stone, Hare developed forms that were visual analogues to portmanteau words. Taking two or three objects, one of which was usually a human form, Hare combined them into a hybrid entity that revealed characteristics of all its component parts (“Suicide,” 1946, Chicago National Bank). (Source)
David Hare: House of the Sun, 1987 - Wood and steel, 36 inches high
From 1941 to 1944 Hare founded and edited the surrealist magazine vvv with Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst. Peggy Guggenheim presented solo shows of Hare’s work in her Art of This Century Gallery from 1944 to 1947. In 1948 he was a founding member, together with William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko, of The Subjects of the Artist school in New York and he became friendly with Jean Paul Sartre.
This same year he moved to Paris, where he met Balthus, Victor Brauner, Alberto Giacometti, and Pablo Picasso. He returned to New York in 1953 but spent the next two summers in Paris. Upon his return to the United States, Hare began to use steel rods melted and poured into plaster molds, and to make sculptures incorporating metal sprayed with a gun, as in “Sunrise” (1955, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York). Hare intensified the experimental approach, inventively devising multi-media combinations such as steel with alabaster. There, he also began his figure and landscape series, in which many materials interpenetrate to create connected images of rocks, plants, sky and celestial bodies.
A mythological series begun in the late 1950s developed into the “Chronos” series of drawings, collages, paintings, and sculpture, which was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1977. Hare’s sculpture began to combine metal, Plexiglas, sand and polyurethane. (Source)
David Hare: Cloud and Rain, ca. 1950 - welded and painted bronze and steel
(Smithsonian)
“The artist continually translates the world of matter into the world of human understanding and emotion … From the terrifying and unfriendly world of nature he makes warm charms to be carried in the pocket.” David Hare, Magazine of Art, January 1950
David Hare believed that art should have some relation to the physical world and not be entirely abstract. During the 1950s, he built sculptures that depicted elements of the natural landscape. Inspired by the dramatic changes in the sky caused by different weather patterns, he manipulated metal and stone to evoke rain, sunshine, lightning, or wind. This piece is welded from rough fragments of bronze and steel to suggest a dark, threatening cloud and lines of falling rain. (Source)
