Ordinary finds

Today we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first publication of Shake-speare’s Sonnets!

A favourite - the anti-sonnet, no. 130:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,—
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
  And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
  As any she belied with false compare.

(Facsimile on Lumpy Pudding - here)

Wolfgang Borchert (May 20, 1921 – 1947) was a German author and playwright whose work was affected by his experience of dictatorship and his service in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.

After struggling to avoid enlisting in the Hitler Jugend, being arrested in 1940 by Gestapo, conscribed into the army and stationed at the Eastern front, Borchert caught hepatitis from an untreated wound. His superiors accused him of self-mutilation to avoid further combat, arrested him and placed him in isolation. Soon he was returned to the front ‘to prove himself’ - but while there he suffered frost bite and was, finally granted medical leave… 

The young actor and playwright was relatively undeterred and while on medical leave gave a scathing parody of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in a Hamburg theater - which landed him a nine month stint in military jail and restationing at the front, this time in France. When his unit surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Borchert escaped en route to the POW camp and walked to his home in Hamburg.

He never regained his health after the war, and his doctors gave him only a year to live. He continued writing at a furious pace, producing his manifesto against war Dann gibt es nur eins! (Then there is only one thing to do!) shortly before his death in a hepatitic sanatorium in Schwitzerland…

(Borchert poem on Lumpy Pudding)

You.  Man at the machine and man in the workshop.  If they order you tomorrow to stop making water pipes and cook pots - and start making helmets and machine guns, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!

You.  Girl behind the counter and girl at the office.  If they order you tomorrow to fill hand grenades and mount scopes on sniper rifles, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!

You.  Factory owner.  If they order you tomorrow, to sell gun powder instead of talcum powder and cocoa, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!

You.  Researcher in the laboratory.  If they order you tomorrow, to invent a new death to do away with old life, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!

You.  Poet in your room.  If they order you tomorrow not to sing love songs, but songs of hate, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!

From Then There’s Only One Thing To Do! (Dann Gibt Es Nur Eins!) by Wolfgang Borchert (Translated from the German into English by Ryan Wilcox)

Sigrid Undset (May 20, 1882 – 1949) was a (Danish-born) Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, “principially for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages”.

“Undset is best-known for her novels about life in the Scandinavian countries during the Middle Ages. Her early fiction dealt with contemporary subjects, problems of city women. Often her heroines face tragic consequences when they are unfaithful for their true inner self or idealistically challenge traditional gender roles.

Among Undset’s first masterworks from the 1920s is the trilogy Kristin Lavransdotter (1920-22). It re-created a woman’s life in the devout Catholic Norway of the 13th and 14th centuries. In the first volume, The Bridal Wreath, Undset depicted Kristin’s passage to adulthood. Kristin is the proud and beautiful daughter of a prosperous landowner, who marries a basically unworthy man, Erlend. “She understood not herself why she was not glad - it was as though she had lain and wept beneath a warm covering, and now must get up in the cold. A month went by - then two, now she was sure that she had been spared this ill-hap - and, empty and chill of soul, she felt yet unhappier than before. In her heart there dawned a little bitterness toward Erlend. Advent drew near, and she had heard neither from or of him; she knew not where he was.” The Mistress of Husaby and The Cross deal with Kristin’s marriage, the love and hate relationship with her husband, and her final reckoning with God and succumbing to the Black Death. The novel was followed by a tetralogy, translated into English as The Master of Hestviken (1924-27), also a medieval tale, which earned her the Nobel prize. The protagonist, proud and unyielding Olav, has committed murder - he kills the lover of his fiancée - which he chooses not to confess. In both novel series “the first sin” shadows the protagonist’s life.” (Source)

French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 - 1850) produced a massive, connected body of work - a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.

In the era of blogs and other fast media, Balzac is of course known almost exclusively for his anti-coffee rant:

“The state coffee puts one in when it is drunk on an empty stomach under these magisterial conditions produces a kind of vivacity that looks like anger: one’s voice rises, one’s gestures suggest unhealthy impatience: one wants everything to proceed with the speed of ideas; one becomes brusque and ill-tempered for no apparent reason. One actually becomes that mercurial character, the poet, condemned by grocers and their like. One assumes that everyone is equally lucid. A man of spirit must therefore avoid going out in public. I discovered this singular state through a series of accidents that made me lose, without any effort, the ecstasy I had been feeling. Some friends, with whom I had gone out to the country, witnessed me arguing about everything, haranguing with monumental bad faith. The following day I recognized my wrongdoing and we searched the cause. My friends were wise men of the best sort, and together we came upon the problem soon enough: coffee had wanted its victim.” – Honoré de Balzac, Traité des excitants modernes, ch. iii, Du café, p. 17 (1838)(S.H. transl.)

Photo: Balzac, hand on heart, 1838

John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806 - 1873) seems to have been a bit camera shy, but at least we have this very proper photo of the very eminent Victorian together with his step-daughter Helen Taylor. Helen’s mother Harriet Taylor (who married Mill in 1851 after 21 years of friendship) collaborated with Mill on some of his most radical, proto-feminist writings, and Helen took over her mother’s role as Mill’s collaborator after Harriet died of tuberculosis in 1858. Mill wrote of his two collaborators: “Whoever, either now or hereafter, may think of me and my work I have done, must never forget that it is the product not of one intellect and conscience but of three, the least considerable of whom, and above all the least original, is the one whose name is attached to it.”

“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.”

Judith Golden (b. May 20, 1934): Pele Sleeping, 1987 12”x15”x2” color photograph/ mixed media

“For three decades, Judith Golden has been a committed and accomplished artist. Her work has helped define the history of women exploring self and society through visual media since the 1970s when she was first recognized as a distinctive creative voice. With the medium of photography as her foundation, Golden innovatively explores the intersections between reality and illusion by combining traditional techniques and contemporary cultural references, handwork and technology, rational discovery and uncharted flights of fantasy. Working in series, Golden inventories the myths and methods of human consciousness while revealing the powers of nature and the mysteries of time. Her work continues to evolve with rich new subjects, returning iconic themes, and unending questions and answers to the experience of life.” - Trudy Wilner Stack (Source)

Judith Golden: People (Goldie Hawn), 1976-78 photo/mixed media

The Chameleon Series, People, and Magazine Make-Overs are unique painted photographs from 1974 - 1979. Issues of gender, identity, popular culture and the influence of the media are explored in these series.

More on Golden’s work between 1975 - 1985 can be viewed in Cycles: A Decade of Photographs by Judith Golden, published by Friends of Photography in 1986.

Joe Cocker, 65 today, gets by with a little help from his friends…

(Photo: Robert Altman)

Israel “Bruddah Iz” Kamakawiwoʻole (May 20, 1959 – 1997) was a Hawaiʻian musician. He became famous outside Hawaiʻi when his album Facing Future was released in 1993 with his medley of “Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World”, which was subsequently featured in several films, television programs, and commercials.

Iz was a beamer and as big as the world itself:

Jane Weidlin (b. May 20, 1958), of energetic L.A. girl punk band, The Go-Go’s, turns 51 today.

Jane was originally known as ‘Jane Drano’ and was deeply into the scene as a clothes designer, but like everybody else she wanted to form a band… The Go-Go’s 1981 debut album, Beauty and the Beat, quickly rose in the charts and its poppy tunes helped usher in the New Wave derivation of punk.

The Go-Go’s first broke up in 1985, but have reunited frequently since. Jane has been active as an actress in B-films, plus as a solo artist. The Go-Go’s have started touring again in their old incarnation, but have not released new material…

Lily Furedi (May 20, 1896 - 1969): Subway, 1934 - oil on canvas (Smithsonian)

“In this painting Lily Furedi boldly did something that few dare to do: she looked at people on the subway. She took the viewpoint of a seated rider gazing down the car at her fellow passengers. The Hungarian-born artist knew of the subway riders’ customary avoidance of staring at one’s fellow riders; most people in her painting keep to themselves by hiding behind a magazine or newspaper, or by sleeping. Those who violate the unwritten rule do so furtively. A woman takes a quiet sidelong glance at the newspaper read by the man next to her, while a man steals a peek at a young woman applying lipstick. Only two women in the foreground, who obviously know each other, dare to look directly at each other as they talk companionably.

Furedi takes a friendly interest in her fellow subway riders, portraying them sympathetically. She focuses particularly on a musician who has fallen asleep in his formal working clothes, holding his violin case. The artist would have identified with such a New York musician because her father, Samuel Furedi, was a professional cellist.” - 1934: A New Deal for Artists exhibition label

John McClellan (May 20, 1908 - 1986): Entrapped, 1936 - lithograph on paper (Smithsonian)

“John McClelland was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia. He studied art at Auburn University and in New York, pursuing a goal of becoming a magazine illustrator, and started his illustration career in Atlanta and St. Louis. His new career was interrupted by WW II, when he used his talent to illustrate pilot training manuals in San Antonio. After the war, he used his G.I. bill to study portrait painting with Jerry Farnsworth.

McClelland returned to magazine illustration, working more than twenty years in New York for publications such as McCall’s, Ladies Home Journal, Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. His portraits of Caroline Kennedy as a child appeared on the covers of Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Day magazine.” (Source) 

Edward F. D’Arms (b. May 20, 1937): Ice Form, n.d. - gelatin silver print
(Smithsonian)

Ethel Schwabacher (May 20, 1903 - 1984): Sunday, 1955 - oil on canvas (Smithsonian)

“Schwabacher was a protege of Arshile Gorky, his first biographer, and herself a well-known abstract expressionist painter. She attended Horace Mann School and at age 15 enrolled at the Art Students League of New York. She also studied sculpture at the National Academy of Design until 1921. During 1921, Arnold Genthe took several photographs of her. After her apprenticeship in stone carving with the sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, in 1927 Schwabacher abandoned sculpture and enrolled in Max Weber’s painting class at the Art Students League.

That year she met Arshile Gorky, with whom she developed a life lasting friendship. She lived in Europe from 1928 to 1934. She and Gorky took independent studies together between 1934 and 1936. Gorky introduced her to automatism. She was inspired by Gorky’s surrealistic-inspired imaginary, biomorphic abstractions and erotic forms. Synchronously, her cousin George Oppen was in New York City where he became a central member of the Objectivist group of poets that flourished there in the 1930s. Decades later, Oppen won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

In 1934, she married the prominent entertainment lawyer Wolf Schwabacher. She began to explore her own sub-conscious, combining automatism with abstract forms, referring to nature. Schwabacher often interconnected themes of womanhood, childbirth and children. Following the death of her husband, she expressed her personal traumas through the Greek myths.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Rockefeller University in New York City are homes for some of her work.” (Source)

This image of Ethel Kremer comes from George Grantham Bain Collection, United States Library of Congress

Keith Morrison (b. May 20, 1942): Zombie Jamboree, 1988 - oil on canvas (Smithsonian)

“I wrestle with ideological tensions between African and European values in my work (as I do as a person).” The artist, quoted in Keith Morrison: Recent Painting, March 10-April 28, 1990, Alternative Museum, New York City

“In Zombie Jamboree, Keith Morrison combines imagery taken from both African and European sources. The strange creatures in the foreground recall stories of voodoo rituals that the artist heard while growing up in Jamaica. Many of these tales involved creatures or spirits rising from the water, and here a floating figure eerily emerges from the pond behind the animals. The fantastical ghosts dancing in the background were inspired by Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw, and the floating figure conjures the tragic character of Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Zombie Jamboree contains many symbols of birth, death, and resurrection, themes that recur in much of Morrison’s work.” (Smthsonian label text)

“As phantasmagorical as Zombie Jamboree appears, it is a highly structured work in which the syncopation of color, shadow, line, and mass is as important as its imagery derived from diverse sources. Jamaican-born Morrison has conjured his memories of elderly people telling African stories about evil spirits emerging from ponds at dusk, while also recalling the drowning of a close family friend. Inspirational also was Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Benjamin Britten’s opera, The Turn of the Screw, in which ghosts dance across a pond. From this ambitious melange of references emerges a forceful synthesis of visual narrative and cultural metaphor.” - Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. African-American Art: 19th and 20th-Century Selections (brochure. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art)