Friday, February 03, 2006

Docent Needed: Thursday, March 23 from 1-5

Can anyone do a docent shift (or trade a shift) on Thursday, March 23 from 1:00 – 5:00 pm?

This is Karin Morris’s regular shift but she will be out of town that week.

 

Due to the expected popularity of Great American Thing, it is important that we try to have docents available for all shifts.

 

We don’t expect you to be in the galleries, on your feet, for the entire four hours! Please feel free to take a break whenever and wherever you need it – in the ARC, the Untitled Café, the Museum Store, or outside the museum. Just let Visitor Services know where you are, and they will find you if someone requests a docent.

And I will always contact you if there is a tour or other event for which you are needed at a specific time. Otherwise, it is completely up to you to decide when you are most needed and how long you can manage in the galleries.

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Docent Needed: Friday, February 10 from 1-5

Can anyone do a docent shift (or trade a shift) on Friday, February 10 from 1:00 – 5:00 pm?

 

This shift is available as a regular shift – every other Friday afternoon. And due to the expected popularity of Great American Thing, it is important that we try to have docents available for all shifts.

 

We don’t expect you to be in the galleries, on your feet, for the entire four hours! Please feel free to take a break whenever and wherever you need it – in the ARC, the Untitled Café, the Museum Store, or outside the museum. Just let Visitor Services know where you are, and they will find you if someone requests a docent.

And I will always contact you if there is a tour or other event for which you are needed at a specific time. Otherwise, it is completely up to you to decide when you are most needed and how long you can manage in the galleries.

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Docent Needed: Thursday, April 6 from 1-5

Can anyone do a docent shift (or trade a shift) on Thursday, April 6 from 1:00 – 5:00 pm?

This is Karin Morris’s regular shift but she will be out of town that week.

 

Due to the expected popularity of Great American Thing, it is important that we try to have docents available for all shifts.

 

We don’t expect you to be in the galleries, on your feet, for the entire four hours! Please feel free to take a break whenever and wherever you need it – in the ARC, the Untitled Café, the Museum Store, or outside the museum. Just let Visitor Services know where you are, and they will find you if someone requests a docent.

And I will always contact you if there is a tour or other event for which you are needed at a specific time. Otherwise, it is completely up to you to decide when you are most needed and how long you can manage in the galleries.

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Docent Needed: Third Thursday, February 16 from 1-5

Can anyone do a docent shift on Third Thursday, February 16 from 1:00 – 5:00 pm? Dick Sears will also be in the galleries as a docent, but it’s the first Third Thursday for Great American Thing so we are expecting it to be very busy!

 

We don’t expect you to be in the galleries, on your feet, for the entire four hours! Please feel free to take a break whenever and wherever you need it – in the ARC, the Untitled Café, the Museum Store, or outside the museum. Just let Visitor Services know where you are, and they will find you if someone requests a docent.

And I will always contact you if there is a tour or other event for which you are needed at a specific time. Otherwise, it is completely up to you to decide when you are most needed and how long you can manage in the galleries.

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Thursday, February 02, 2006

URGENT: Docent Needed: Saturday, February 4 from 10-2

Can anyone do a docent shift (or trade a shift) on Saturday, February 4 from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm? (or later in the day) It will be busy since it’s the opening day for the Great American Thing! Debora Kernan had to cancel due to a last minute trip to visit her son.

 

Penny Grellier will also be in the galleries as a docent.

 

We don’t expect you to be in the galleries, on your feet, for the entire four hours! Please feel free to take a break whenever and wherever you need it – in the ARC, the Untitled Café, the Museum Store, or outside the museum. Just let Visitor Services know where you are, and they will find you if someone requests a docent.

And I will always contact you if there is a tour or other event for which you are needed at a specific time. Otherwise, it is completely up to you to decide when you are most needed and how long you can manage in the galleries.

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

my position


Dear Docents, I want to let you know that I have resigned my position as a
docent. This has been a very difficult decision to make. I will really
miss all of you. I have so enjoyed the opportunity to make new friends
among the docents and the staff. Everyone is so pleasant and so smart and
interesting...

I do look forward to my visits to the museum and discovering what it's like
to be on the "receiving end"!
I hope to see you in the galleries...

Best wishes and thanks for the camaraderie,

Biz

Docent Needed: Tuesday, February 14 from 1-5

Can anyone do a docent shift (or trade a shift) on Tuesday, February 14 from 1:00 – 5:00 pm? Margaret Upshaw can’t make it on that day.

 

We don’t expect you to be in the galleries, on your feet, for the entire four hours! Please feel free to take a break whenever and wherever you need it – in the ARC, the Untitled Café, the Museum Store, or outside the museum. Just let Visitor Services know where you are, and they will find you if someone requests a docent.

And I will always contact you if there is a tour or other event for which you are needed at a specific time. Otherwise, it is completely up to you to decide when you are most needed and how long you can manage in the galleries.

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

2 Docents Needed: Thursday, February 9 from 6-8 pm

Can anyone do a mini-docent shift on Thursday, February 9 from 6-8 pm?

A group of 250 people from Cascade Regional Blood Supply will be at TAM for a donor appreciation reception from 6-9 pm. Having 2 docents would be ideal.

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Monday, January 30, 2006

SUPER-DUPER URGENT: Docents Needed for GAT Members' Opening: Saturday, February 4 from 6-8 pm

Apparently, our docents are very busy on Saturday nights because I STILL need 2 ½ docents for The Great American Thing Member’s Opening on Saturday, February 4 from 6:00-8:00 pm.

 

Bev Bright will only be docent-ing from 6-7 pm, so maybe someone else will volunteer an hour of their time at the opening?

Thanks to Bev, Barbara Reisman and Sanjeev for volunteering at the opening!!!

 

Please reply only if you are available, and I will confirm whether or not you are needed.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Reminder: Training on Mon. Feb. 6 or Tues. Feb. 7

 

Please make sure that you attend the next training session, which is the GAT walk-through:

 

Monday, February 6 from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm

OR

Tuesday, February 7 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm

 

This will be the walk-through for The Great American Thing, given by Patricia McDonnell, in the galleries.

If you didn’t receive the GAT checklist (labels), tour objectives, wall text, and timeline, please let me know and I will re-send it to you.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Deceits and Fantasies catalog

There is currently one copy of the Deceits and Fantasies catalog at the Docent Desk.

If you would like to borrow it, please let me know that you have done so.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Oops! Art lover trips, shatters ancient vases

Attention All Visitor Services!

***

Oops! Art lover trips, shatters ancient vases
Museum's Qing dynasty collection reduced to shards, but visitor is OK

LONDON - It was every art lover's nightmare — a stumble, a crash and
thousands of dollars worth of historic fragments lying on the floor.

The incident happened last week at the Fitzwilliam Museum in
Cambridge, England, which for decades has displayed a group of Qing
dynasty Chinese vases on a window sill.

A hapless visitor tripped on a loose shoelace, tumbled down a flight
of stairs and crashed into the vases, smashing them into smithereens.

The man, who has not been named, left the museum shaken but undamaged
-- in sharp contrast to the vases.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident but we are glad
that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed,"
museum director Duncan Robinson said on Monday.

"Whilst the method of displaying objects is always under review, it is
important not to over-react and make the museum's collections less
accessible to the visiting public," he added in a statement.

The priceless vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century,
were donated to the museum in 1948 and have become one of its most
recognizable exhibits.

Shocked but determined museum staff members have vowed to glue the
shards back together again.

--
Regards,
Sanjeev Narang

***

email: ask {*at*} eConsultant dot com
<a href="http://www.eConsultant.com">www.eConsultant.com</a>

substitute needed, please

Hello everyone:
I will need a substitute for my 10am to 2pm docent shift on Saturday February 18th. I could potentially swap for a shift on the following weekend. Should be a good day for tours of The Great American Thing exhibit! Thank you.


Bring words and photos together (easily) with
PhotoMail - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Great American Thing Quick Biographies Cheat Sheet


Hello Fellow Docents

Artnet has a wonderful artists' biography section ...

http://www.artnet.com/library/BiosGrove.asp

Here are the ones available for the artists featured in the Great
American Thing.

If this cheat-sheet answers a question from your visitor, you owe me a cookie!

Regards
Sanjeev

Errors in artist identification/selection: Sanjeev's.

Errors in biography text: Artnet's.

PS: Some of them are in (British) English with "colours" and "favoured" and all.
***

Abbott, Berenice

(b Springfield, OH, 17 July 1898; d 9 Dec 1991). American
photographer. She spent a term at the Ohio State University in
Columbus (1917 - 18) and then studied sculpture independently in New
York (1918 - 21) where she met Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. She left
the USA for Paris in 1921 where she studied at the Academie de la
Grande Chaumiere before attending the Kunstschule in Berlin for less
than a year in 1923. From 1924 to 1926 she worked as Man Ray's
assistant and first saw photographs by Eugene Atget in Man Ray's
studio in 1925. Her first one-woman show, at the gallery Le Sacre du
Printemps in Paris in 1926, was devoted to portraits of avant-garde
personalities such as Jean Cocteau, James Joyce and Andre Gide. She
continued to take portraits until leaving Paris in 1929, such as that
of James Joyce (1927; see Berenice Abbott: Photographs, p. 26). After
Atget's death (1927) she bought most of his negatives and prints in
1928, and in 1929 she returned to New York. There she began a series
of documentary photographs of the city and from 1935 to 1939 directed
the 'Changing New York' project for the Works Progress Administration
Federal Art Project, which resulted in the book of photographs
Changing New York (1939). Like Atget's views of Paris these covered
both the people and architecture of New York in a methodical and
detached way. The images in Greenwich Village Today and Yesterday
(1949) were motivated by a similar spirit. She also took various
portrait photographs in the 1930s and 1940s, such as that of Max Ernst
(1941; see O'Neal, p. 182).

Covarrubias, Miguel

(b Mexico City, 22 Nov 1904; d Mexico City, 4 Feb 1957). Mexican
illustrator and writer. He worked as a draughtsman on maps and street
plans in the Secretaria de Comunicaciones, Mexico City, c. 1919, and
in 1920 made a series of caricatures for a student magazine,
Policromias. He soon established himself as an illustrator, publishing
his work from 1921 to 1923 in large circulation newspapers such as El
Heraldo, El Mundo and the Universal Ilustrado.

Davis, Stuart

(b Philadelphia, 7 Dec 1894; d New York, 24 June 1964). American
painter and printmaker. He was born into an artistic family: his
parents studied with Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Arts, and his father was the art editor at the Philadelphia
Press, a newspaper that included among its employees the Robert Henri
circle of artist - reporters. Davis studied art under Henri in New
York between 1909 and 1912. His earliest works, which chronicle urban
life in the streets, saloons and theatres, are painted with the dark
palette and thickly applied brushstrokes typical of the ASHCAN SCHOOL
style inspired by Henri. Davis also published illustrations in the
left-wing magazine The Masses between 1913 and 1916, and in The
Liberator, which succeeded it in the 1920s.

Demuth, Charles (Henry Buckius)

(b Lancaster, PA, 8 Nov 1883; d Lancaster, 23 Oct 1935). American
painter and illustrator. He was deeply attached to Lancaster, where
his family had run a tobacco shop since 1770. Although not a
Regionalist, Demuth maintained a strongly localized sense of place,
and Lancaster provided him with much of the characteristic
subject-matter of both his early and later work. He trained in
Philadelphia at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry
(1901 - 5) and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1905 -
11), where his teachers included Thomas Anshutz, Henry McCarter (1864
- 1942), Hugh Breckenridge (1870 - 1937) and William Merritt Chase.
While still a student, he participated in a show at the Academy
(1907), exhibiting his work publicly for the first time.

Douglas, Aaron

(b Topeka, KS, 27 April 1899; d Nashville, TN, 3 Feb 1979). American
painter and illustrator. He was a leading artist of the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s (see AFRICAN AMERICAN ART). He
studied at the University of Nebraska and then in Paris with Charles
Despiau and Othon Friesz (1925 - 31). Douglas was the earliest Black
American artist consciously to include African imagery in his work,
which emphasized the creativity and continuity of African American
culture, despite slavery and segregation. He was, however, criticized
by his comtemporaries for his idealism. In 1934, under the sponsorship
of the Public Works of Art project (see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,), he
designed a number of murals, including four panels depicting Aspects
of Negro Life for the Schomberg Library in Harlem (New York, Pub.
Lib.); this work and such others as Judgment Day (1939; USA, priv.
col., see exh. cat., no. 99) and Building More Stately Mansions (1944;
Nashville, TN, Fisk U.) are executed in a strongly two-dimensional and
decorative style with elongated, angular figures. His work also
includes landscapes, portraits and book illustrations and jackets.

Dove, Arthur (Garfield)

(b Canandaigua, NY, 2 Aug 1880; d Long Island, NY, 23 Nov 1946).
American painter. He worked as an illustrator in New York (1903 - 7).
In 1907 he travelled to Paris and southern France, where under the
influence of Henri Matisse and Paul Cezanne he experimented with a
style characterized by bright colours, curvilinear rhythms and
non-naturalistic representation. On his return to the USA in 1909, his
association with Alfred Stieglitz began. In 1910 he moved to a farm in
Westport, CT. At this time he created some of the first distinctively
non-representational works produced by an American, for example the
Abstractions series (all priv. cols, see Morgan, pp. 100 - 103). The
ten pastels that he showed in his first one-man exhibition at the 291
Gallery (1912) consisted of simplified, stylized motifs, the circular
and saw-tooth forms of which interpenetrated and overlapped to create
an organic Futurism. In them he expressed his belief that objects are
not discrete, isolated entities, but active forces whose rhythms are
in constant interplay with their environments.

Duchamp, (Henri-Robert-) Marcel

(b Blainville, Normandy, 28 July 1887; d Neuilly-sur-Seine, 2 Oct
1968). French painter, sculptor and writer. The art and ideas of
Duchamp, perhaps more than those of any other 20th-century artist,
have served to exemplify the range of possibilities inherent in a more
conceptual approach to the art-making process. Not only is his work of
historical importance from his early experiments with Cubism to his
association with Dada and Surrealism but his conception of the
ready-made decisively altered our understanding of what constitutes an
object of art. Duchamp refused to accept the standards and practices
of an established art system, conventions that were considered
essential to attain fame and financial success: he refused to repeat
himself, to develop a recognizable style or to show his work
regularly. It is the more theoretical aspects implicit to both his art
and life that have had the most profound impact on artists later in
the century, allowing us to identify Duchamp as one of the most
influential artists of the modern era.

Evans, Walker

(b Saint Louis, MO, 3 Nov 1903; d New Haven, CT, 10 April 1975).
American photographer and writer. He grew up in Kenilworth, a suburb
of Chicago, but moved to New York with his mother after his parents
separated. Primarily interested in literature, he sat in on lectures
at the Sorbonne in Paris (1926 - 7), visited museums and bookshops,
and thought of becoming a writer. In 1928 he acquired a camera and,
out of frustration over his inability to find work and develop a
literary means of expression, he decided to become a photographer.
Intermittent assignments instigated by friends such as Lincoln
Kirstein made it possible for him to live a bohemian life in Greenwich
Village, where he met the writers Hart Crane (1899 - 1932) and James
Agee (1909 - 55) and the artist Ben Shahn, with whom he worked and
shared a house for a short time. Within this circle he found his early
influences.

Gleizes, Albert

(b Paris, 8 Dec 1881; d Avignon, 23 June 1953). French painter,
printmaker and writer. He grew up in Courbevoie, a suburb of Paris,
and as a student at the College Chaptal became interested in theatre
and painting. At 19, his father put him to work in the family interior
design and fabric business, an experience that contributed to a
lifelong respect for skilled workmanship. The first paintings he
exhibited, at the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1902,
were Impressionist in character, but the work accepted within two
years at the Salon d'Automne showed a shift to social themes, a
tendency that accelerated until 1908. Compulsory military service from
1903 to 1905 thrust him into the company of working-class people,
arousing a permanent sense of solidarity with their aspirations and
needs. The results were immediately apparent in the Association Ernest
Renan, which he helped to establish in 1905, a kind of popular
university with secular and socialist aims. He was also one of the
founders of a community of intellectuals based near Paris, the ABBAYE
DE CR ETEIL, which functioned from November 1906 to February 1908. He
remained interested during these years in social art, but his
paintings became flatter and more sombre, more simplified and with an
increased emphasis on structure. Through the circle of poets
associated with the Abbaye de Creteil, Gleizes met Henri Le
Fauconnier, whose portrait of Pierre-Jean Jouve (1909; Paris,
Pompidou) made a decisive impression on him, confirming his
exploration of volume. His friends soon included Jean Metzinger and
Robert Delaunay, with whom he exhibited alongside Le Fauconnier and
Fernand Leger at the Salon d'Automne in 1910; the critic Louis
Vauxcelles wrote disparagingly of their 'pallid' cubes. The five
artists, plus Marie Laurencin, encouraged by Guillaume Apollinaire,
Roger Allard, Alexandre Mercereau and Jacques Nayral, determined to
group themselves together at the Salon des Independants in 1911.
Manipulating the rules and helping to elect Le Fauconnier chairman of
the hanging committee, they showed together in a separate room,
marking the emergence of CUBISM. Gleizes's portrait of Jacques Nayral
(oil on canvas, 1.62*1.14 m, 1910 - 11; London, Tate), one of his
first major Cubist works, dates from this period.

Gross, Chaim

(b Wolow, Austria-Hungary [now Poland], 17 March 1904; d 1991).
American sculptor, draughtsman, painter and printmaker of
Austro-Hungarian birth. After studying art in Budapest and Vienna, he
settled in the USA in 1921, continuing his studies in New York at the
Educational Alliance Art School and the Art Students League. He
produced a large number of works in different media, including stone
and bronze sculptures, pen-and-ink drawings and watercolours, but he
was noted above all for sculptures in wood such as Two Sisters (1956;
New York, Mr and Mrs Lewis Garlick priv. col., see 1977 exh. cat., p.
4). He never treated or disguised the surface of wood but respected
its basic texture and grain; until the early 1960s he favoured the
solid masses of direct carvings in which he exploited the qualities of
rare tropical woods and colourful stones. Much of his subject-matter
was derived from popular art forms, including the circus, Jewish
traditions and holidays, which he recalled from his early years in the
Austrian countryside. In later works such as Happy Children No. 1
(1968; New York, Forum Gal.), sand-cast in bronze from maquettes
modelled in plaster, he adopted light, airy forms.

Grosz, George [Georg]

(b Berlin, 26 July 1893; d W. Berlin, 6 July 1959). German painter,
draughtsman and illustrator. He is particularly valued for his caustic
caricatures, in which he used the reed pen with notable success.
Although his paintings are not quite as significant as his graphic
art, a number of them are, nonetheless, major works. He grew up in the
provincial town of Stolp, Pomerania (now Slupsk, Poland), where he
attended the Oberrealschule, until he was expelled for disobedience.
From 1909 to 1911 he attended the Akademie der Kunste in Dresden,
where he met Kurt Gunther, Bernhard Kretschmar (1889 - 1972) and Franz
Lenk (b 1898). Under his teacher Richard Muller (1874 - 1954), Grosz
painted and drew from plaster casts. At this time he was unaware of
such avant-garde movements as Die Brucke, also active in Dresden. In
1912 he studied with Emil Orlik at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin. A
year later he moved to the Academie Colarossi in Paris, where he
learnt a free drawing style that swiftly reached the essence of a
motif.

Hartley, Marsden

(b Lewiston, ME, 4 Jan 1877; d Ellsworth, ME, 2 Sept 1943). American
painter and writer. He spent part of his youth in Cleveland, OH, where
in 1896 he studied art with a local painter, John Semon. After study
at the Cleveland School of Art (1898 - 9), he entered the Chase School
in New York (1899) and the National Academy of Design (1900 - 04).
From 1900 he regularly spent his summers in Maine, a state for which
he maintained an enduring passion. At the end of autumn 1907 he moved
from Maine to Boston, MA. By this stage his painting was progressing
from an American form of Impressionism to a type of Neo-Impressionism.
Partly inspired by illustrations in the German satirical magazine
Jugend, he emulated the divisionist technique of Giovanni Segantini,
for example in Mountain Lake in the Autumn (1908; Washington, DC,
Phillips Col.).

Hassam, (Frederick) Childe

(b Dorchester, MA, 17 Oct 1859; d East Hampton, NY, 27 Aug 1935).
American painter and printmaker. The son of Frederick F. Hassam, a
prominent Boston merchant, and his wife, Rosa P. Hathorne, he was
initially trained as an apprentice to a wood-engraver. From the late
1870s to the mid-1880s he executed drawings for the illustration of
books, particularly children's stories. He had a long affiliation with
the Boston firm of Daniel Lothrop & Co., for whom he illustrated E. S.
Brooks's In No-man's Land: A Wonder Story (1885), Margaret Sidney's A
New Departure for Girls (1886) and numerous other books.

Johnson, William H(oward)

(b Florence, SC, 18 March 1901; d Long Island, NY, 13 April 1970).
American painter. His early education was intermittent, but his
drawing skills were developed through cartoon work for local
newspapers. At 17 he moved to New York, where he found work as a
stevedore, cook and hotel porter. From 1923 to 1926 he attended the
National Academy of Design in New York and Hawthorne's Cape Cod School
of Art at Provincetown. On his graduation funds were raised by
supporters to enable further study in Paris, where he stayed for three
years, absorbing the impact of such European Expressionists as Chaim
Soutine and simplifying his paintings to bold rhythmic compositions.
In Paris he met Holcha Krake (1885 - 1944), a Danish textile designer,
whom he married. The couple travelled through Europe, returning to the
USA in 1930. Endorsed by the artist George Luks, Johnson received an
award from the Harmon Foundation for 'Distinguished Achievement among
Negroes'. He subsequently developed a broader technique with richness
of texture and colour. With his wife he settled in Denmark, travelling
to Tunisia in 1932 to study art and crafts. A visit to Scandinavia
inspired dynamic landscapes that found an interested critical
response. This period marked the height of the artist's expressionist
phase. After returning to New York (1938), Johnson changed his style
to produce flat designs with patterns of brilliant colour, emulating
stained glass, depicting religious subjects and scenes from Black
American history, for example Going to Church (c. 1940 - 44; see
AFRICAN-AMERICAN ART). His wife's death was destabilizing and to
maintain a precarious existence he took work in the Navy Yard, but he
left in 1946 to stay with his wife's family in Denmark. However, he
returned to New York to be hospitalized in Islip, Long Island, where
he remained until his death. His estate of 1100 works was accommodated
by the Harmon Foundation until its closure, when it was dispersed
among interested organizations.

Kuniyoshi, Yasuo

(b Okayama, 1 Sept 1893; d Woodstock, NY, 14 May 1953). American
painter, photographer and printmaker of Japanese birth. He arrived in
the USA in 1906 and studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and
Design from 1907 to 1910. He then moved to New York, studying, in
rapid succession, with Robert Henri at the National Academy of Design,
at the Independent School of Art and from 1916 to 1920 with Kenneth
Hayes Miller at the Art Students League. He supported himself through
his later art studies and thereafter as an art photographer. He
travelled to Europe in 1925 and again in 1928, settling in Paris,
where he studied lithography at the Atelier Desjoubert. After a trip
back to Japan in 1931 he worked on the Federal Art Project of the
Works Progress Administration during the Depression. Paintings such as
Fisherman (1924; New York, MOMA) show both his interest in Surrealism
and a blend of his two cultures. His massive forms of the late 1930s
and early 1940s, as in Circus Girl Resting (Auburn, AL, U. Col.), were
borrowed from both Jules Pascin and the figure styles of early Italian
Renaissance masters. After World War II his drily applied flat areas
of colour were replaced by brilliant and shining golds and purples,
and his carnival themes changed from jugglers to masked figures such
as Mr Ace (1952; Baltimore, MD, Mus. A.). In New York he taught at the
Art Students League and the New School for Social Research after 1936
and became the first president of Artists Equity Association between
1947 and 1950.

Leger, Fernand

(b Argentan, Orne, 4 Feb 1881; d Gif-sur-Yvette, Seine-et-Oise, 17 Aug
1955). French painter, draughtsman, illustrator, printmaker, stage
designer, film maker and ceramicist. Among the most prominent artists
in Paris in the first half of the 20th century, he was prolific in
many media and articulated a consistent position on the role of art in
society in his many lectures and writings. His mature work underwent
many changes, from a Cubist-derived abstraction in the 1910s to a
distinctive realist imagery in the 1950s. Leger attracted numerous
students to his various schools, and his ideas and philosophy were
disseminated by modern artists throughout Europe and the Americas.

Marin, John
(b Rutherford, NJ, 23 Dec 1870; d Cape Split, ME, 1 Oct 1953).
American painter and printmaker. He attended Stevens Institute in
Hoboken, NJ, and worked briefly as an architect before studying at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia from 1899 to
1901 under Thomas Pollock Anshutz and Hugh Breckenridge (1870 - 1937).
His education was supplemented by five years of travel in Europe where
he was exposed to avant-garde trends. While abroad, he made etchings
of notable and picturesque sites, for example Campanile, S Pietro,
Venice (1907; see Zigrosser, no. 57), which were the first works he
sold.

O Keeffe, Georgia

(b Sun Prairie, WI, 15 Nov 1887; d Santa Fe, NM, 6 March 1986).
American painter and draughtsman. She decided to become an artist when
she was 12. From 1905 to 1906 she attended the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. In 1907 she went to New York to study oil,
pastel and watercolour painting at the Art Students League. She worked
there for a year with William Merritt Chase and won the Chase Still
Life Scholarship. In 1908 she saw the first American exhibitions of
the work of Auguste Rodin (watercolours) and of Henri Matisse at the
Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, known as 291, run by Alfred
Stieglitz.

Picabia, Francis [Francois]

(b Paris, 22 Jan 1879; d Paris, 30 Nov 1953). French painter and
writer. He was one of the major figures of the Dada movement in France
and in the USA but remained as stubbornly uncategorizable as he was
influential. In his rejection of consistency and of an identifiable
manner, he called into question attitudes to the artistic process that
had been regarded as sacrosanct and in so doing guaranteed the
intellectual force of his ideas for subsequent generations of artists.

Ray, Man [Radnitzky, Emmanuel]

(b Philadelphia, PA, 25 Aug 1890; d Paris, 18 Nov 1976). American
photographer and painter. He was brought up in New York, and he
adopted the pseudonym Man Ray as early as 1909. He was one of the
leading spirits of DADA and SURREALISM and the only American artist to
play a prominent role in the launching of those two influential
movements. Throughout the 1910s he was involved with avant-garde
activities that prefigured the Dada movement. After attending drawing
classes supervised by Robert Henri and George Bellows at the Francisco
Ferrer Social Center, or Modern School, he lived for a time in the art
colony of Ridgefield, NJ, where he designed, illustrated and produced
several small press pamphlets, such as the Ridgefield Gazook,
published in 1915, and A Book of Diverse Writings.

Sheeler, Charles (Rettew)

(b Philadelphia, PA, 16 July 1883; d Dobbs Ferry, NY, 7 May 1965).
American painter and photographer. He studied at the Philadelphia
School of Industrial Design from 1900 to 1903, and then with William
Merritt Chase at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1903 - 6). In 1906
he exhibited in a group exhibition at the National Academy of Design,
New York. From 1908 to 1909, while visiting Europe, Sheeler and Morton
Schamberg discovered the architectonic painting structure in the
frescoes of Piero della Francesca at Arezzo, in the work of Paul
Cezanne and in works by Henri Matisse and Georges Braque; Sheeler
exhibited paintings influenced by Cezanne and by Synchromist colour
abstraction at the 1913 Armory Show.

Stieglitz, Alfred

(b Hoboken, NJ, 1 Jan 1864; d New York, 13 July 1946). American
photographer, editor, publisher, patron and dealer. Internationally
acclaimed as a pioneer of modern photography, he produced a rich and
significant body of work between 1883 and 1937. He championed
photography as a graphic medium equal in stature to high art and
fostered the growth of the cultural vanguard in New York in the early
20th century.

Stella, Joseph

(b Muro Lucano, Italy, 13 June 1877; d New York, 5 Nov 1946). American
painter and collagist of Italian birth. He arrived in New York in
1896. The following year he enrolled briefly in the Art Students
League and then in the New York School of Art (1898), where his
ability was recognized by William Merritt Chase. The Lower East Side
subject-matter of Stella's early work was similar to that of his
contemporaries of the New York Ashcan school. In place of their
dark-toned Impressionism, however, Stella's early style was academic
in the manner of late 19th-century Italian painting. His first
important commission was to depict the industrial workers in
Pittsburgh for Survey, a social reform journal.

Strand, Paul

(b New York, 16 Oct 1890; d Orgeval, nr Paris, 31 March, 1976).
American photographer. He studied at the Ethical Culture High School,
New York, where in 1908 he enrolled for a course in photography given
by Lewis Hine. During this period he visited Alfred Stieglitz's
gallery, 291, in New York, where the work of the Photo-Secession
convinced him that the camera could be used as the instrument for
aesthetic as well as documentary purposes. To further his skill in the
techniques associated with more 'artistic' photography, he joined the
Camera Club of New York and learnt how to make enlargements and to
print in platinum, gum bichromate and carbon. After 1913 his work
evolved slowly from the soft-focus symbolism of Pictorial photography
to the images of greater definition in his urban street scenes and
portraits of 1915 (e.g. Wall Street, New York, 1915; Millerton, NY,
Aperture Found., Strand Archv; see fig.). This transformation embodied
concepts of abstract pictorial organization, stimulated by examples he
had seen in the Armory Show of 1913, in exhibitions at the 291 gallery
and in reproductions in Stieglitz's photographic journal Camera Work.
In 1916 Stieglitz, who considered Strand the only photographer of
merit coming to the fore, organized an exhibition of his work at 291,
which he featured in the last two issues of Camera Work in 1917.
Included in the exhibition were images in which ordinary artefacts,
among them crockery and porch furniture, were converted into abstract
statements of form and light, for example Abstraction, Bowls (1916;
photogravure reproduction in Camera Work, 1917). The eventual
evolution of Strand's vision and his preference for sharply defined,
pre-visualized, large format imagery were a consequence of his
practical experience as well as his awareness of contemporary artistic
idioms. As a photographer for the US Army Medical Corps during his
service in World War I in 1918 - 19, he made X-ray plates and
close-ups of medical practices that helped to confirm his choice. His
chosen direction can be seen in the urban scenes of the 1920s and in
the close-ups of forms in nature that claimed his interest more
strongly in the late 1920s.

Weber, Max

(b Belostok, Russia [now Bialystok, Poland], 18 April 1881; d Great
Neck, NY, 4 Oct 1961). American painter, printmaker, sculptor and
writer of Russian birth. He was born of Orthodox Jewish parents and in
1891 emigrated with his family to America. After settling in Brooklyn,
NY, Weber attended the Pratt Institute (1898 - 1900), where he studied
art theory and design under Arthur Wesley Dow (1857 - 1922). Dow's
extensive knowledge of European and Far Eastern art history, together
with his theories of composition, made a lasting impression on Weber.
Weber was in Paris from 1905 to 1908 and studied briefly at the
Academie Julian. He developed a close friendship with Henri Rousseau
and helped to organize a class with Henri Matisse as its instructor.
Visits to the ethnographic collections in the Trocadero and other
Parisian museums extended his sensitivity to non-Western art, while
travels through Spain, Italy and the Netherlands broadened his
knowledge of the Old Masters.

Zorach, Marguerite Thompson

(b Santa Rosa, CA, 25 Sept 1887; d New York, 27 June 1968). Painter.
She studied briefly at Stanford University (1908), before going to
Paris to attend in 1908 - 11 La Palette, a small modernist school
where she met (2) William Zorach; they married in 1912. She also
travelled throughout Europe, occasionally with Jessica Dismorr. Both
Dismorr and Thompson contributed to the avant-garde publication Rhythm
in 1911 and 1912. She returned to Fresno, CA, by way of Italy,
Morocco, Egypt, the Middle East and East Asia (1911 - 12). During the
summer of 1912 she spent time in the Sierra Mountains, producing a
series of bold Fauvist paintings, including Waterfall (1912; priv.
col, see 1973 exh. cat., p. 31), rendered in saturated colours with
great spontaneity.

Zorach, William

(b Eurburg [now Yurbarkas], Lithuania, 1889; d Bath, ME, 15 Nov 1966).
Sculptor, painter and writer of Lithuanian birth, husband of (1)
Marguerite Zorach. He emigrated to the USA with his family in 1893,
settling in Cleveland, where he worked as a lithographer (1902 - 8)
and studied painting with Henry G. Keller (1869 - 1949) at the School
of Art (1905 - 7). In New York he received academic training in
painting at the Art Students League, and he studied at La Palette in
Paris (1910 - 11). William and Marguerite Zorach became part of a
small group of modern artists in New York, in Provincetown, MA, and in
Maine, exhibiting Fauvist paintings at the Armory Show in 1913 and
Cubist and Expressionist works at the Forum Exhibition in New York in
1916.

--
Regards,
Sanjeev Narang

***

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