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Tarō Okamoto
was a Japanese artist, art theorist, and writer. He is particularly well known for his avant-garde paintings and public sculptures and murals, and for his theorization of traditional Japanese culture and avant-garde artistic practices. Biography Early life (1911–1929) Taro Okamoto was the son of cartoonist Okamoto Ippei and writer Okamoto Kanoko. He was born in Takatsu, in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. In 1927, at the age of sixteen, Okamoto began to take lessons in oil painting from the artist Wada Eisaku. In 1929, Okamoto entered the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (today Tokyo University of the Arts) in the oil painting department. Time in Europe (1929–1940) In 1929, Okamoto and his family accompanied his father on a trip to Europe to cover the London Naval Treaty of 1930. While in Europe, Okamoto spent time in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Paris, where he rented a studio in Montparnasse and enrolled in a lycée in Choisy-le-Roi. After his parents returned to Japan i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Takatsu-ku, Kawasaki
is one of the 7 Wards of Japan, wards of the city of Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. As of 2010, the ward had an estimated population of 215,158 and a population density, density of 13,150 persons per km². The total area is 16.38 km². Geography Takatsu Ward is located in eastern Kanagawa Prefecture, in the north-center portion of the city of Kawasaki, bordering on Tokyo. It is bordered to the north by the Tama River. Surrounding municipalities *Tama-ku, Kawasaki *Miyamae-ku, Kawasaki *Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki *Kōhoku-ku, Yokohama *Tsuzuki-ku, Yokohama *Setagaya-ku, Tokyo Neighborhoods Mizonokuchi, Futago, Seta, Suwa, Kitamigata, Shimonoge, Hisamoto, Sakado, Kuji, Unane, Shimo-Sakunobe, Kami-Sakunobe, Mukaigaoka, Suenaga, Kajigaya, Shinsaku, Chitose, Chitose-Shin-cho, Shibokuchi, Shibokuchi-Fujimi-dai, Hisasue, Kanigaya, Akutsu, and Nogawa. History Archaeologists have found stone tools from the Japanese Paleolithic period and ceramic shards from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Basch
Basch Viktor Vilém, or Victor-Guillaume Basch (18 August 1863/1865, Budapest – 10 January 1944) was a French politician and professor of germanistics and philosophy at the Sorbonne descending from Hungary. He was engaged in the Zionist movement, in the Ligue des droits de l'homme (president from 1926 to 1944) and in Anti-Nazism. His father was the journalist and political activist, Raphael Basch. Born in Budapest in 1863, Victor Basch emigrated with his family to France as a child, and later studied at the Sorbonne. In 1885 he was appointed professor at the University of Nancy, and in 1887 at the University of Rennes, where he became friend with Jean Jaurès. During the Dreyfus affair Basch was the leader of the Dreyfusards at Rennes, who were placed in a serious and difficult position when the case was tried in that city. Both as a Jew and a Dreyfusard, Basch was subjected to persecution at the hands of the fanatical anti-Semitic populace. In a 1916 interview cited by his bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of List of artistic media, media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion photography, fashion and portrait photographer. He is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself. Biography Background and early life During his career, Man Ray allowed few details of his early life or family background to be known to the public. He even refused to acknowledge that he ever had a name other than Man Ray.Neil Baldwin (writer), Baldwin, Neil. ''Man Ray: American Artist''; Da Capo Press; (1988, 2000) Man Ray's birth name was Emmanuel Radnitzky. He was born in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage (surrealist technique), frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and Grattage (art), grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, and this experience left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable forei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Seligmann
Kurt Leopold Seligmann (1900–1962) was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter and engraver. He was known for his fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights in macabre rituals and inspired by the carnival held annually in his native Basel, Switzerland. Life and career Born in Basel in 1900, the son of a furniture department store owner, his parents were not in favor of Seligmann's artistic aspirations but eventually relented. After studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva and spending several years working in his father's business in Basel, Seligmann left for Paris where he met with his friends from Geneva, sculptor Alberto Giacometti and art critic Pierre Courthion. During this time, he also met Ivy Langton. Through Giacometti he met Hans Arp and Jean Hélion, who admired his sinister bio-morphic paintings and invited him to join their group, Abstraction-Creation Art Non-Figuratif. In the mid-1930s his work began to take on a more baroque aspect, as he a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "Surrealist automatism, pure psychic automatism". Along with his role as leader of the surrealist movement he is the author of celebrated books such as ''Nadja (novel), Nadja'' and ''L'Amour fou''. Those activities, combined with his critical and theoretical work on writing and the plastic arts, made André Breton a major figure in twentieth-century French art and literature. Biography André Breton was the only son born to a family of modest means in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, France. His father, Louis-Justin Breton, was a policeman and atheism, atheistic, and his mother, Marguerite-Marie-Eugénie Le Gouguès, was a former seamstress. Breton attended medical school, where he developed a parti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or ''surreality.'' It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media. Works of Surrealism feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and '' non sequitur''. However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the "pure psychic automatism" Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e. artifacts of surrealist experimentation. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acéphale
''Acéphale'' is the name of a public review created by Georges Bataille (which numbered five issues, from 1936 to 1939) and a secret society formed by Bataille and others who had sworn to keep silent. Its name is derived from the Greek ἀκέφαλος (''akephalos'', literally "headless"). ''Acéphale'', the review Dated 24 June 1936, the first issue was only eight pages. The cover was illustrated by André Masson with a drawing openly inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of ''Vitruvian Man'', who embodies classical reason. Masson's figure, however, is headless, his groin covered by a skull, and holds in his right hand a burning heart, while in his left he wields a dagger. Under the title ''Acéphale'' are printed the words ''Religion. Sociologie. Philosophie'' followed on the next line by the expression ''the sacred conjuration'' (''la conjuration sacrée''). The first article, signed by Bataille, is titled "The Sacred Conjuration" and claims that "Secretly or not. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism. Early life Georges Bataille was the son of Joseph-Aristide Bataille (b. 1851), a tax collector (later to go blind and be paralysed by neurosyphilis), and Antoinette-Aglaë Tournarde (b. 1865). Born on 10 September 1897 in Billom in the region of Auvergne, his family moved to Reims in 1898, where he was baptized. He went to school in Reims and then Épernay. Although brought up without religious observance, he converted to Catholicism in 1914, and became a devout Catholic for about nine years. He considered entering the priesthood and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
College Of Sociology
The College of Sociology (French: ''Collège de Sociologie'') was a loosely-knit group of French intellectuals, named after the informal discussion series that they held in Paris between 1937 and 1939, when it was disrupted by the war. Its main objective was to find out signs of the sacred in everyday social life. History Founding members include some of France's most well-known intellectuals of the interwar period, including Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, Pierre Klossowski, Jules Monnerot, Pierre Libra and Georges Ambrosino. Participants also included Hans Mayer, Jean Paulhan, Jean Wahl, Michel Leiris, Alexandre Kojève and André Masson. Walter Benjamin was invited to give lectures, but these never materialized.Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin (London, UK; Reaktion Books, 2007). The members of the College were united in their dissatisfaction with surrealism. They believed that surrealism's focus on the unconscious privileged the individual over society, and obscured the social ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abstraction-Création
Abstraction-Création was a loose association of artists formed in Paris in 1931 to counteract the influence of the Surrealist group led by André Breton. Founders Theo van Doesburg, Auguste Herbin, Jean Hélion and Georges Vantongerloo started the group to foster abstract art after the trend turned to representation in the 1920s. A non-prescriptive group of artists were involved, whose ideals and practices varied widely: Albert Gleizes, František Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, Marlow Moss, Naum Gabo, Alberto Magnelli, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky, Wolfgang Paalen, Théo Kerg, Taro Okamoto, Paule Vézelay, Hans Erni, Bart van der Leck Bart van der Leck (26 November 1876, Utrecht (city), Utrecht – 13 November 1958, Blaricum) was a Dutch painter, designer, and ceramicist. With Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian he founded the De Stijl art movement. Son of a house painter, h ..., Katarzyna Kobro, Leon Tutundjian and John Wardell Power ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Rosenberg (art Dealer)
Paul Rosenberg (29 December 1881 – 29 June 1959) was a French art dealer. He represented Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse. Both Paul and his brother Léonce Rosenberg were among the world's major dealers of modern art. Career The younger son of Jewish antiques dealer Alexandre Rosenberg, Paul and his elder brother Léonce joined their father's business. Alexandre had established his business in 1878, and by 1898 had become a noted dealer of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. He educated his sons in this passion by allowing them both a grand tour via London, Berlin, Vienna and New York to acquire experience and contacts. During the tour, Paul bought two van Gogh drawings and a Manet portrait for $220, which he had transported to his father's gallery and sold onwards at a profit. From 1906 on, the brothers worked as partners within the business. When their father retired, they became directors. Having established their own networks, the brothers opened thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
