Artist Birthdays in March

 It's artist birthday remembrance for March!

Van Gogh has a birthday coming up March 30 and surely by then I can start thinking if not of Irises just yet, at least of a crocus or two. 

A long before Van Gogh but on the same day,  Francisco de Goya was born in 1746.

March 6 was the birthday of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni ((6 March 1475 – 18 February).

American photographer Diane (Nemerov) Arbus was born on March 14, 1923 and died in 1971, in New York City.

Diane Arbus

Self-Portrait

March 7 was American modernist painter Milton Avery's birthday, born in 1885 in Sand Bank, New York

Self-Portrait

Music for Sunday - Dan Hicks

 Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks

(original recording)

The live version is just as bad but a lot more interesting! What I like about Dan Hicks is the stage theatrics and the unapologetic, unspoiled quirkiness. Here, Dan Hicks describes the music he makes:


“My music is kind of a blending. We have acoustic instruments. It starts out with kind of a folk music sound, and we add a jazz beat and solos and singing. We have the two girls that sing, and jazz violin, and all that, so it’s kind of light in nature, it’s not loud. And, it’s sort of, in a way, kinda carefree. Most of the songs are, I wouldn’t say funny, but kinda maybe a little humorous. We all like jazz, so we like to play in a jazzy way, with a swing sound you know, so I call it “folk swing”. There are a lot of original tunes that I’ve been writing through the years, so that has its personal touch on it."
~ Dan Hicks

I hope you're having a good Sunday! 

It's raining here and raw and windy but the snow's a-meltin' away!!
Pagan Sphinx

Sunday Snippet - Emily Dickinson

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—

Emily Dickinson

Happy Hour Friday - Sam Phillips

The video I really wanted to share with you won't allow embedding, so I'll link to it here, in the remote chance that there is anyone else out there who is a Sam Phillips fan. She is this Sam Phillips, no this Sam Phillips. It gets  a little confusing...

Here is a video I did find by Sam Phillips for a song off the album Martinis and Bikinis, from 1994.

 When I Fall by Sam Phillips

ABC Wednesday - G

G if for George Grosz
(July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959)
 German-born, American artist known for painting, drawing and caricatures

George Grosz gave a fantastic testimony of Berlin life during a terrible period, divided between fascism and communism. He was active in the communist party but had an anarchist’s fascination for the characters of underground life. Military figures, prostitutes and violence abound, and fascinate the viewer.

 Self-Portrait

  The Love Sick Man
 1916

 The Suicide
 1916

In 1921 his album "Gott mit uns" (God with us) brought Grosz charges of defaming the Reichswehr (army); in 1924 he was prosecuted for offences against public morality by his album "Ecce Homo" (the album was confiscated as being pornographic); in 1928 for his drawing "Shut up and keep serving the cause" he was accused of blasphemy. All these scandals only helped consolidate his fame. Olga's Gallery

.

1921

 Remembering Uncle August
1919

 The White Slave
 1918


"I don't even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very small one. I let them bellow at me for just as long as it took me to find enough pluck to bellow back at them."

 Eclipse of the Sun
 1926

 Artist and Model
1928

In the early 1930's,  Grosz was invited to lecture at the Arts Student League in NY, after being forced to flee from Nazi Germany. In 1938, Grosz's wife and sons joined him. He became a naturalized citizen in 1938.
Here is what Grosz had to say about that period of work in the United States:

  "My motto was now to give offense to none and be pleasing to all. Assimilation is straightforward once one overcomes the greatly overvalued superstition concerning character. To have character generally means that one is distinctly inflexible, not necessarily for reasons of age. Anyone who plans to get ahead and make money would do well to have no character at all. The second rule for fitting in is to think everything beautiful! Everything – that is to say, including things that are not beautiful in reality." 

Note:  I had a difficult time finding an example of what Grosz may have meant when he referred to work with "no character" , which appears to distinguish his period of work in from the early 1930's until just before his return to Berlin in the late 1950's.  I found an image of the painting below, which may or may not be what he was referring to and what critics called an uninteresting time in his career. Certainly, his early paintings are the stand-outs, in my opinion. But then again, I am a huge fan of expressionism and I find the Dad movement fascinating. 

 Nude in the Dunes

 1948

 Eva Grosz

(the artist's wife)

1940

 The Survivor" by George Grosz 

1944

Private Collection

"I had grown up in a humanist atmosphere, and war to me was never anything but horror, mutilation and senseless destruction, and I knew that many great and wise people felt the same way about it. "
George Grosz

George Grosz sketches or caricatures of The Weimer Republic

"The war was a mirror; it reflected man's every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity."
George Grosz

Sources

Olga's Gallery

Exposición de Pintura blog

Spartacus Educational

MoMA

Brainy Quotes

ABC Wednesday

Look it up here