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John Craxton
John Leith Craxton RA, (3 October 1922 – 17 November 2009) was an English painter. He was sometimes called a neo-Romantic artist but he preferred to be known as a "kind of Arcadian". Biography Career John was the son of musician Harold Craxton and his wife Essie. His older brother Harold Antony Craxton (1918–1999) became a leading television producer and outside broadcaster. His sister Janet became a notable oboist. He went to Clayesmore School but left without qualifications. He applied for Chelsea School of Art but was considered to be too young to attend nude life classes. Instead he studied at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris during 1939, until the outbreak of war meant he had to complete his studies in London, at Westminster School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Between 1941 and 1942, having been rejected for military service on medical grounds, he attended Goldsmiths College, then toured the wilds of Pembr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, London, lying 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from Regent's Park and Primrose Hill to Edgware Road, with the Swiss Cottage area of Hampstead to the north and Lisson Grove to the south. The area is best known for Lord's Cricket Ground, home of Marylebone Cricket Club and Middlesex CCC, and is a regular international test cricket venue. It also includes Abbey Road Studios, well known through its association with the Beatles. Origin The area was once part of the Forest of Middlesex, an area with extensive woodland, though it was not the predominant land use. The area's name originates, in the Manor of Lileston, one of the two manors (the other the Manor of Tyburn) served by the Parish of Marylebone. The Manor was taken from the Knights Templar on their suppression in 1312 and passed to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Sutherland
Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmaking, tapestry and glass design. Printmaking, mostly of romantic landscapes, dominated Sutherland's work during the 1920s. He developed his art by working in watercolours before switching to using oil paints in the 1940s. A series of surreal oil painting depicting the Pembrokeshire landscape secured his reputation as a leading British modern artist. He served as an official war artist in the Second World War, painting industrial scenes on the British home front. After the war, Sutherland embraced figurative painting, beginning with his 1946 work, ''The Crucifixion''. Subsequent paintings combined religious symbolism with motifs from nature, such as thorns. Such was Sutherland's standing in post-war Britain that he was commissioned to design ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Writing (magazine)
''New Writing'' was a popular literary periodical in book format founded in 1936 by John Lehmann and committed to anti-fascism.''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1 – An Age Like This 1939–1940'', p. 250. Penguin It featured leading poets and writers of the day such as W.H. Auden, V.S. Pritchett, Christopher Isherwood, Tom Wintringham, Stephen Spender, Ahmed Ali, Jim Phelan, Rex Warner, and B. L. Coombes.Steve Ellis, ''British writers and the approach of World War II.'' New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. (p. 175) ''New Writing'' also published articles about Mass-Observation by Tom Harrisson. After having been approached by Lehmann to contribute a piece to the periodical, George Orwell developed a "sketch" he had had in mind for some time, and which appeared as "Shooting an Elephant", first published in the second number of the periodical, in Autumn 1936. A second piece by Orwell, "Marrakech", appeared in the Christmas 1939 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollo (ballet)
''Apollo'' (originally ''Apollon musagète'' and variously known as ''Apollo musagetes'', ''Apolo Musageta'', and ''Apollo, Leader of the Muses'') is a neoclassical ballet in two ''tableaux'' composed between 1927 and 1928 by Igor Stravinsky. It was choreographed in 1928 by twenty-four-year-old George Balanchine, with the composer contributing the libretto. The scenery and costumes were designed by André Bauchant, with new costumes by Coco Chanel in 1929. The scenery was executed by Alexander Shervashidze, with costumes under the direction of Mme. A. Youkine. The American patron of the arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge had commissioned the ballet in 1927 for a festival of contemporary music to be held the following year at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The story centres on Apollo, the Greek god of music, who is visited by three Muses: Terpsichore, muse of dance and song; Polyhymnia, muse of mime; and Calliope, muse of poetry. The ballet takes Classical antiquity a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music. Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913). The last transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase", which continued with works such as '' Renard'', ''L'Histoire du soldat,'' and ''Les noces'', was followed in the 1920s by a period ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whitechapel Art Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the first publicly funded galleries for temporary exhibitions in London. The building is a notable example of the British Modern Style. In 2009 the gallery approximately doubled in size by incorporating the adjacent former Passmore Edwards library building. It exhibits the work of contemporary artists and organizes retrospective exhibitions and other art shows. History The gallery exhibited Pablo Picasso's ''Guernica'' in 1938 as part of a touring exhibition organised by Roland Penrose to protest against the Spanish Civil War. The gallery played a major role the history of post-war British art by promoting the work of emerging artists. Several significant exhibitions were held at the Whitechapel Gallery including '' This is Tomorrow'' in 1956, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, mak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Royal Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in 1931 by Ninette de Valois, Dame Ninette de Valois. It became the resident ballet company of the Royal Opera House in 1946, and has purpose-built facilities within these premises. It was granted a royal charter in 1956, becoming recognised as Britain's flagship ballet company. The Royal Ballet was one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century, and continues to be one of the world's most famous ballet companies to this day, generally noted for its artistic and creative values. The company employs approximately 100 dancers. The official associate school of the company is the Royal Ballet School, and it also has a sister company, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, which operates independently. The Prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Bal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sadler's Wells Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in 1931 by Dame Ninette de Valois. It became the resident ballet company of the Royal Opera House in 1946, and has purpose-built facilities within these premises. It was granted a royal charter in 1956, becoming recognised as Britain's flagship ballet company. The Royal Ballet was one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century, and continues to be one of the world's most famous ballet companies to this day, generally noted for its artistic and creative values. The company employs approximately 100 dancers. The official associate school of the company is the Royal Ballet School, and it also has a sister company, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, which operates independently. The Prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet is the late Dam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daphnis Et Chloé
''Daphnis et Chloé'' is a 1912 ''symphonie chorégraphique'', or choreographic symphony, for orchestra and wordless chorus by Maurice Ravel. It is in three main sections, or ''parties'', and a dozen scenes, most of them dances, and lasts just under an hour, making it the composer's longest work. In effect it is a ballet, and it was first presented as such. But it is more frequently given as a concert work, either complete or excerpted, vindicating Ravel's own description above. The dance scenario was adapted by choreographer Michel Fokine from a pastoral romance by the Greek writer Longus thought to date from the 2nd century AD, recounting the love between the goatherd Daphnis and the shepherdess Chloé. Scott Goddard in 1926 published a commentary on the changes to the story Fokine had to apply in order to make the scenario workable. Composition and premiere Ravel began to write the score in 1909 after a commission from impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Olney (food Writer)
Richard Olney (April 12, 1927 – August 3, 1999) was an American painter, cook, food writer, editor, and memoirist, best known for his books of French country cooking. Biography Olney was born in Marathon, Iowa. He lived in a house above the village of Solliès-Toucas in Provence, France, for most of his adult life, where he wrote many classic and influential cookbooks of French country cooking. He had first moved to France in 1951, to Paris, where he was close friends with (and painted many of) the American and English bohemian expatriate set, including James Baldwin, filmmaker Kenneth Anger, painter John Craxton, poet John Ashbery, and composer Ned Rorem. His deep knowledge of traditional classic French food and wine got him a job writing a column entitled ''Un Américain (gourmand) à Paris'' for the journal ''Cuisine et Vins de France'' beginning in 1962. After ''The French Menu Cookbook'' was published in English in 1970, his then-revolutionary approach of seasonal menu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete rests about south of the Greek mainland, and about southwest of Anatolia. Crete has an area of and a coastline of 1,046 km (650 mi). It bounds the southern border of the Aegean Sea, with the Sea of Crete (or North Cretan Sea) to the north and the Libyan Sea (or South Cretan Sea) to the south. Crete and a number of islands and islets that surround it constitute the Region of Crete ( el, Περιφέρεια Κρήτης, links=no), which is the southernmost of the 13 top-level administrative units of Greece, and the fifth most populous of Greece's regions. Its capital and largest city is Heraklion, on the north shore of the island. , the region had a population of 636,504. The Dodecanese are located to the no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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