Fats Waller: Born May 21, 1904

Posted in Other Notable Birthdays by Christy

Fats Waller (May 21, 1904-December 15, 1943), jazz and popular pianist, singer, and songwriter, was born Thomas Wright Waller in New York City, the son of Edward Martin Waller, a Baptist preacher, and Adeline Lockett. From age six Waller was devoted to the piano but initially failed to practice properly or learn to read music well, because he could memorize lessons immediately. In his youth he also played reed organ in church. He studied piano, string bass, and violin at P.S. 89, which he attended to about age fourteen or fifteen. Although his girth had earned him a nickname by this time, the names Thomas and Fats appeared interchangeably (and sometimes together, as Thomas “Fats” Waller) in his professional work until at least 1931. Later in his career, and posthumously, the nickname prevailed.
http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-01201.html

21May2016

Norma Bassett Hall, American printmaker: Born May 21, 1889

Posted in Artists Born Today Include:, Women Artists by Christy

Norma Bassett Hall was an American woodblock printmaker who often depicted landscapes and outdoor scenes. She was born in Halsey, Oregon. In 1910, she become a member of the inaugural class of the Museum Art School in Portland, Oregon. After leaving Portland, she briefly taught in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before continuing her education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1915-1918. She also studied privately with the noted British printmaker Mabel Royds, who introduced Norma to the Japanese method of printing woodcuts on rice paper with transparent watercolors. While studying at the SAIC, Norma Bassett met and would later marry Arthur William Hall, a fellow student and artist. Following their marriage, they made their home in Kansas, becoming deeply involved with the state’s flourishing printmaking culture and helping to found the Prairie Print Makers. Hall, the only female among the group’s eleven charter members, designed their distinctive logo, a monogram set within a stylized sunflower. Hall and her husband divided their time and subjects between the rolling hills of Kansas and the dramatic vistas of New Mexico. In 1944 the couple permanently relocated to New Mexico, living first in Santa Fe and eventually purchasing an estate near Alcade from which they operated an art school. Bassett Hall continued to work and teach from their estate until her death in 1957. ~FROM Wikipedia

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art~
http://jsma.uoregon.edu/jordan-schnitzer-museum-art-opens-first-solo-exhibition-norma-bassett-hall-1957
Biography~ https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/927/Hall/Norma
Artnet~ http://www.artnet.com/artists/norma-bassett-hall/past-auction-results

18May2016

Gertrude Käsebier: Born May 18, 1852

Posted in Artists Born Today Include:, Women Artists by Christy

Gertrude Käsebier was a leading member of the pioneering photographic known as Pictorialism, which emphasized a subjective, painterly approach to photography rather than a documentary one.

Though she had long been interested in art, Käsebier only began her formal training at the Pratt Institute after her children entered high school. She planned to be a painter, but eventually switched to photography. Following classes in Paris and apprenticeships with a German photographic chemist, and a Brooklyn portrait photographer, Käsebier opened her own portrait studio in 1897.
FROM https://nmwa.org/art/artists/gertrude-kasebier/

Stieglitz included Käsebier as a founding member of the Photo-Secession, a group that argued for a more natural, less manipulated photograph. In 1899, he published five of her photos, declaring her “beyond dispute, the leading artistic portrait photographer of the day.”
FROM http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2012/05/12/nearly-forgotten-mother-of-modern-american-photography-gertrude-kaeseb

Library of Congress Biographical Essay: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/womphotoj/kasebieressay.html
Library of Congress Online Catalog: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/related/?fi=name&q=K%C3%A4sebier%2C%20Gertrude%2C%201852-1934
Shorpy Photo Gallery: http://www.shorpy.com/gertrude-kasebier-photographs

16May2016

Tamara de Lempicka~ Born May 16, 1898(?)

Posted in Artists Born Today Include:, Women Artists by Christy

Who was she? De Lempicka shuffled the facts of her biography much as she meddled with her birth date.
…
Her time was the 1920s: a period of transition, an era in which functionalism merged with fantasy and formal social structures lurched into the frenetic. In essence, De Lempicka was a classicist, having admired Renaissance painting since her adolescent travels in Italy. But she astutely combined traditional portraiture with advertising techniques, photographic lighting, vistas of the tower architecture of great cities.
…
In 1939, urged by Tamara, who was partly Jewish, Kuffner sold his estates in Hungary and they moved to the US. In New York, she tried abstract expressionism unsuccessfully, and was reduced to the role of a chic curiosity, “the painting baroness”.
FROM https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/may/15/art

http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/24/reviews/991024.24vincent.html
http://culture.pl/en/artist/tamara-lempicka-tamara-de-lempicka

15May2016

Richard Avedon: May 15, 1923-Oct 1, 2004

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by Christy

Mr. Avedon revolutionized the 20th-century art of fashion photography, imbuing it with touches of both gritty realism and outrageous fantasy and instilling it with a relentlessly experimental drive. So great a hold did Mr. Avedon’s fashion photography come to have on the public imagination that when he was in his 30’s he was the inspiration for Dick Avery, the fashion photographer played by Fred Astaire in the 1957 film “Funny Face.” In 1978 he appeared on the cover of Newsweek while a retrospective exhibition of his work was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/obituaries/richard-avedon-the-eye-of-fashion-dies-at-81.html

MoMA Collection~ http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/248?=undefined&page=1
International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum~ http://www.iphf.org/hall-of-fame/richard-avedon/

American Masters~ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/richard-avedon-about-the-photographer/467/
The Richard Avedon Foundation~ http://www.theavedonfoundation.net/

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6May2016

Nora Clench~ May 6, 1867-May 17, 1938

Posted in Other Notable Birthdays by Christy

World renowned violinist Nora Clench was a child prodigy, born Esther Leonora Clench in what is now Ontario, Canada. Nora made her debut as a violinist at the age of 8. When she was fifteen she entered the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany, and after graduating in 1889 she became first violinist and leader of an orchestra in Buffalo, New York. She later toured Europe and eventually moved to London. • In 1900 Clench temporarily gave up playing the violin in order to go to Paris to paint. When she returned to music she founded the all-female “Nora Clench Quartet”, which played a prominent role in the music of fin de siecle London. • Clench again retired from the violin in 1908, at the age of 41, when she married the Australian landscape painter Arthur Streeton. The Nora Clench Quartet continued without her. In 1923, the Streeton family moved to Australia. In 1937 Streeton was given a knighthood for his services to fine art, and Clench became Lady Streeton. • Nora Clench died in Australia in 1938; her husband died in September 1943 after a long illness. The couple’s property with its house, studio and cottage, in 5 acres of garden, remains in the ownership of the Streeton family today.

Biography & Photos~
http://www.riversidestmarys.biz/story-of-nora-clench/
Program of her farewell appearance~ https://archive.org/details/cihm_36309

Nude Study (1903) attributed to Nora Clench

6May2016

Rudolph Valentino: Born May 6, 1895

Posted in Other Notable Birthdays by Christy

While in New York during the spring of 1923, Rudolph Valentino paid a visit to the Brunswick studios and recorded two songs. El Relicario in Spanish and The Kashmiri Song in English. According to legend, Valentino recorded these songs for his new bride, Natacha Rambova since they had recently wed after a few very tense years of legal difficulties concerning Valentino’s divorce from Jean Acker.
It was reported that after he heard his voice, he quipped “There goes my opera career!“
https://www.popsike.com/19231926-Rudolph-Valentino-SingsKashmiri-Love-SongEl-Relicario-78rpm-Record/200783413331.html

4May2016

Keith Haring: May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by Christy

Renowned street artist Keith Haring…was born on May 4, 1958, in Pennsylvania, and died in New York in 1990. His eponymous foundation was established a year before his death, and provides grants to those affected by AIDS.
FROM 2016 https://news.artnet.com/people/keith-haring-birthday-2016-485381

After graduating high school, he enrolled in the Ivy School of Professional Art, Pittsburgh but quickly discovered he had no desire to become a commercial graphic artist. He dropped out and in 1978 moved to New York where he joined the School of Visual Arts as a scholarship student.
FROM https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/keith-haring-biography/16012/

When not torn or cut from their locations by admirers, they would eventually be covered with new ads. The routine disappearance of these works, in fact, became an incentive for their replenishment and a catalyst for constant reinvention. While many were documented by photographer Tseng Kwong Chi…most of the drawings went unrecorded, thus creating one of the most epic and ephemeral projects in the history of the city.
FROM http://publicdelivery.org/keith-harings-subway-drawings/

By the mid-1980’s, Mr. Haring was also doing oil and acrylic paintings, as well as wall sculptures and free-standing constructions. He had 42 one-man exhibitions, and was represented in group shows like the 1983 Sao Paulo Bienal, the 1984 Venice Biennale and exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His works are also in the permanent collections of museums like the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the Whitney in New York and the Beaubourg at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
FROM http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/17/obituaries/keith-haring-artist-dies-at-31-career-began-in-subway-graffiti.html

Haring Kids~ http://www.haringkids.com/
The Keith Haring Foundation~ http://www.haring.com/

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27Apr2016

Andrew John Henry Way: Born April 27, 1826

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by Christy

In 1860, Way came to the attention of visiting history painter Emanuel Leutze who encouraged him to pursue still life subject matter in the Düsseldorf style. Taking this advice to heart, Way began to paint fruit, primarily grapes, executed with great detail to form, a particular brilliance of light and typically staged against a dark background.…Despite the market demand and critical preference for vast panoramic landscapes and historic scenes, Way prospered, becoming the most important still life painter in the mid-Atlantic area during the late nineteenth century.

FROM http://thejohnsoncollection.org/andrew-way/

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artist/?id=5261
https://art.thewalters.org/detail/18788//

23Apr2016

Lee Miller: Born April 23, 1907

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by Christy

Lee Miller archives: https://bit.ly/3maYfBR

At the age of 19, Lee Miller was prevented from being hit by a truck in NYC by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue. Condé Nast thought she had the makings of a model, putting her on the cover of the magazine, which launched her modeling career. For a couple of years Miller was in high demand by photographers, until 1929 when a photograph of her taken by Edward Steichen was used to advertise Kotex pads, effectively ending her popularity as a model.

Miller then moved to Paris, with the intention of working with Man Ray. She became his model, muse, collaborator, and lover, thus beginning a new career on the other side of the camera as well as continuing as a model.

Lee Miller returned to New York in 1932, where she set up her own studio. She continued to pursue dual careers as model and photographer, however photography became her primary interest.

Miller was married in 1934 and moved to Cairo. The following years saw a succession of lovers and locations, eventually landing her in London where once again Vogue magazine had a major influence on her life, this time as a photographer: her work for them included being their war correspondent during WWII. She covered many major events including Normandy, the Liberation of Paris, and the death camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. There was a famous photo of her taking a bath in Hitler’s apartment in Munich taken as the war drew to its close.

Miller’s only child was born in 1947, fathered by her lover Sir Roland Penrose, whereupon she divorced her husband and married Penrose. They settled in a farm in England. Miller became a gourmet cook and a hostess for some of the most famous artists and photographers of the time, but her life became colored by her ongoing clinical depression and she started on what her son described as a “downward spiral”. She died of lung cancer in 1977. After her death, 60,000 of her photographic negatives were found in a stash of cardboard boxes.