Tag Archives: Artists’ Birthdays

Rube Goldberg: Born July 4, 1883

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by


Learn more~ http://www.rube-goldberg.com/
https://www.rubegoldberg.org/all-about-rube/a-cultural-icon/

[Rube Goldberg’s] father…convinced Rube to study Engineering at the School of Mining Engineering at UC Berkeley. He went on to graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in Engineering in 1904.

After graduation, Rube Goldberg took on a position designing sewer pipes for the San Francisco Water and Sewers Department…he lasted six months. Rube Goldberg followed his passion and began to shift gears to pursue his previous dreams and pursue a career as a cartoonist.

Rube Goldberg made an important observation. In his eyes, many people seemed to be solving simple problems with overly complex contraptions. This…was his main inspiration for the “Inventions!” series. The most famous of which has come to be known as the Rube Goldberg Machine.

Rube Goldberg is the only cartoonist to be listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as an actual adjective. The phrase “Rube Goldberg” has been adopted into common use to mean “doing something simple in a very complicated way that is not necessary”.
http://interestingengineering.com/rube-goldberg-the-man-behind-the-worlds-craziest-machines/

Bill Moggridge: June 25, 1943-September 8, 2012

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by

In 2010, as the new director of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Bill Moggridge rode into New York from California with a formidable resume: cofounder of Ideo, inventor of the first laptop computer, author of the seminal work on interaction design, educator, and winner of a slew of international design awards.
But as a city full of designers and design-lovers was quick to discover, rarely has such an illustrious bio been animated by such a delightful person.
…
“If there is a simple, easy principle that binds everything I have done together, it is my interest in people and their relationship to things.”
FROM http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670751/in-remembrance-of-bill-moggridge-1943-2012

Peter Blake: Born June 25, 1932

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by

Peter graduated from the RCA in 1956 having also completed his National Service. He received the Leverhulme Research Award to study popular art whilst travelling Europe and went on to teach for several years at various London Art Schools, all the while working and exhibiting. His first solo show was held in the Portal Gallery in 1962 and since the early 70s his work has regularly been exhibited in one-man shows and retrospectives around the world. In 1981 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy and in 1994 was made the Third Associate Artist of the National Gallery. He was Knighted in 2002.
Sir Peter Blake | Illustrators | Central Illustration Agency

SPLHCB

The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released by EMI Records in 1967, is arguably the most famous album sleeve of all time. The image on the album cover is composed of a collage of celebrities. There are 88 figures, including the band members themselves. Pop artist Peter Blake and his wife Jann Haworth conceived and constructed the set, including all the life-sized cut-outs of historical figures. The set was photographed, with the Beatles standing in the centre, by Michael Cooper. Copyright was a problem as Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, had to locate each person in order to get permission to use their image in this context.

Irving Penn: Born June 16, 1917

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by

Penn

CapoteThe photographer Irving Penn put Marcel Duchamp in a corner, exposed Colette’s forehead and swaddled Rudolf Nureyev’s lithe body in layers of winter clothing. His subjects, who included many of the greatest creative talents of the 20th century, emerged from their portrait sessions with their carefully shaped personas profoundly shaken. Mr. Penn died on Oct. 7, 2009; he was 92.Fashion1
As one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, Mr. Penn’s signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide.
FROM https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/irving-penn

Irving Penn Foundation~ https://irvingpenn.org/

Fashion2Art Institute of Chicago: Irving Penn Archives~ https://archive.artic.edu/irvingpennarchives/overview/Igor

Time Magazine: Appreciation –The Photos of Irving Penn~ http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1929105_1964784,00.html

Margaret Bourke-White: Born June 14, 1904

Posted in Artists Born Today Include:, Women Artists by

eagle

standardoflvngMargaret Bourke-White was a pioneering photojournalist whose insightful pictures of 1930s Russia, German industry, and the impact of the Depression and drought in the American midwest established her reputation…In 1927 she graduated from Cornell University with a degree in biology, but she spent most of her time establishing herself as a professional photographer. Bourke-White opened her first studio in her apartment in Cleveland, Ohio.
FROM http://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/artists/712.htmlairplane

campAs an artist, Bourke-White continued to use photography as an instrument to examine social issues from a humanitarian perspective. She witnessed and documented some of the 20th century’s most notable moments, including the liberation of German concentration camps by General Patton in 1945, the release of Mahatma Gandhi from prison in 1946, and the effects of South African labor exploitation in the 1950s. Her career was cut short in 1966 due to Parkinson’s disease, and she died in 1971.
FROM https://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/margaret-bourke-white

International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum~ https://iphf.org/inductees/margaret-bourke/

LIFELIFE’s First-Ever Cover Story~ http://time.com/3764198/lifes-first-ever-cover-story-building-the-fort-peck-dam-1936/

Shorpy Archives~ http://www.shorpy.com/image/tid/208

Christo (June 13, 1935-May 31, 2020) & Jeanne-Claude (June 13, 1935–Nov. 18, 2009)

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a married couple who created environmental works of art. Christo was born on 13 June 1935 in Bulgaria as Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, while Jeanne-Claude was born on the same date in Morocco as Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon. They have been collaborating for over 40 years and were best known for producing enormous packaging projects including parks, buildings, and entire outdoor landscapes.
FROM  http://www.rosenthalfineart.com/christo-and-jeanne-claude/

hthttps://www.christojeanneclaude.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo_and_Jeanne-Claude

Julia Margaret Cameron~ Born June 11, 1815

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by

Detail: Painting of Julia Margaret Cameron by George Frederic Watts

Julia Margaret Pattle was born in British India, on June 11, 1815, the daughter of an official in the Bengal Civil Service and a descendant of the French aristocracy. After her early years she received an education in France and England, returning to India in 1834. Four years later, in 1838, she married Charles Hay Cameron, twenty years her senior. In 1848, after Charles retired, he and Julia returned to England where they raised five children, adding a sixth in 1857 when they adopted Mary Ryan. Through Julia’s sister, Sarah Prinsep, the new arrivals cultivated a wide circle of elite, intellectual friends. It is this company of friends, family, and servants that Cameron used as models for her “tableux vivants”.
FROM http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/creator/julia-margaret-cameron

Cameron’s practice of photography began relatively late in her life, at age forty-eight, when her daughter gave her a sliding wooden box camera. Her “very first success in photography” came in January 1864, with a portrait of Annie, daughter of a neighbor.
Cameron used the wet collodion process, making prints with albumen printing-out paper, and worked with large negatives in order to avoid having to enlarge. In 1864 she began to register her work at the British Copyright Office, became a member of the Photographic Society of London and of Scotland, and prepared photographs for exhibition and sale through the London print dealers P. and D. Colnaghi. Most of her work was made between 1864 and 1875, before she left for family coffee plantations in Ceylon.
FROM https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/julia-margaret-cameron?all/all/all/all/0

From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour,” she wrote, “and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour.” Condemned by some contemporaries for sloppy craftsmanship, she purposely avoided the perfect resolution and minute detail that glass negatives permitted, opting instead for carefully directed light, soft focus, and long exposures that allowed the sitters’ slight movement to register in her pictures, instilling them with an uncommon sense of breath and life.  FROM http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/julia-margaret-cameron

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Beauty of the Heroine: Julia Margaret Cameron and the Poetic Portrait

Julia Margaret Cameron: soft-focus photographer with an iron will

Maurice Sendak: Born June 10, 1928

Posted in Artists Born Today Include: by

Dubbed by one critic “the Picasso of children’s literature” and once addressed by former President Bill Clinton as “the King of Dreams,” Maurice Sendak illustrated nearly a hundred picture books throughout a career that spanned more than 60 years. Some of his best known books include Chicken Soup with Rice (1962), Where the Wild Things Are (1963), and In the Night Kitchen (1970). Born in Brooklyn in 1928 to Jewish immigrant parents from northern Poland, Sendak grew up idolizing the storytelling abilities of his father, Philip, and his big brother, Jack. As a child he illustrated his first stories on shirt cardboard provided by his tailor-father. Aside from a few night classes in art after graduating high school, Sendak was a largely self-taught artist.
FROM http://www.rosenbach.org/maurice-sendak-biography-and-timeline

Classical Music Fueled Maurice Sendak’s Creative Muse~
https://www.wqxr.org/story/207545-classical-music-fueled-maurice-sendak-muse/

This slideshow requires JavaScript.