Art is Life

Creator of Lucky Compiler (http://luckycompiler.com), featuring interviews with eminent artists and photographers from across the world; It’s Quoted (http://its-quoted.com), a tumblr blog dedicated exclusively to celebrate the power of words; Digital Filbert (http://digitalfilbert.com), devoted to my musings about the world of web and beyond.

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Ajanta

Approximately 67 miles (107 km) to the north of Aurangabad in the Indhyadri range of Western Ghats lie the caves of Ajanta. The 30 caves, famous for their early Buddhist temple architecture and many delicately...

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A Painting by Rabindranath Tagore.

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A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, ‘I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.’ It says, ‘Come to me across the worn–out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.’

Rabindranath Tagore (via itsquoted)

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The indifferent pendulum of the clock kept chopping off the seconds of life, calmly and precisely.

Maxim Gorky (via itsquoted)

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Stand erect! Open your eyes and look about you! Be not afraid! The modicum of truth which you can secure by your own efforts is your safest light. Your essential need is not the acquisition of vast knowledge. The essential is that the knowledge you gain, be it little or be it much, shall be your own, nourished with your own blood, outcome of your own untrammelled effort. Freedom of the spirit is the supreme treasure.

Romain Rolland (via itsquoted)

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Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

Alexandre Dumas (via itsquoted)

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luckycompiler:

Using painting as a powerful tool to poke fun at the prevailing social, economic and political condition may not be such a rare thing. But the way this instrument was used by Honoré Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10, 1879), a prolific painter, sculptor, lithographer and engraver, boasts of a singularity not seen before or since his lifetime. He used all forms of art, including sculpture, to express his dissatisfaction over the health of the ‘republic’. Daumier believed in equal opportunities for all and did not shy away from showing his disapproval of the maltreatment of the citizens of his country through his works.

The man often dubbed as the ‘Michelangelo of caricature’, whom Baudelaire considered, ‘One of the most important men, I will not say only of caricature, but also of modern art’ died virtually unknown. During the time of his death Daumier, who already lost his sight, was living off the mercy of his friends such as Camille Corot. Perhaps, it is the ignominy of the same society that one of 19th century’s most remarkable artists died a broken man. Courtesy his association with Eugène Delacroix, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Degas, Corot and art connoisseur Paul Durand-Ruel a considerable amount of his massive collection was saved for future generation to review and admire.

A lifelong devotee of art, Daumier was very fond of Don Quixote since early days. A quixotic treatment of subjects is revealed in almost all his works. But unlike many caricaturists of his time and of later date, he never compromised with artistic sanctity, something which renders greater value to his work. Everybody has a favourite Daumier piece of art which may include the famous Ratapoil, Mother, The Fool or something else. Even the lesser known ones, like the Big, Bold and … Constitutional, do not fail to amaze the viewers. Somewhat expectedly, political establishments never took his work kindly. Many of his lithographs were confiscated. 

Despite constant opposition of the powers that be and apparent disregard of the very people for whom he took up his brush, the powerful message of art could not be erased. This reminds us one of Daumier’s own work titled, ‘Intermission’. In the scene, the artist’s chair is vacant, his hat left behind as a cue that he is to come back in a short while, perhaps when the intermission is going to be over.

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Eadweard Muybridge’s life could be a case in point for an argument that suggests fictional stories, however inspired by life, can hardly match the dramas of reality. The photographer who pioneered chronophotography and the study of locomotion alongside Étienne–Jules Marey inspired generations of artists, photographers, filmmakers and creatives of every other field through his art and life. The likes of Francis Bacon, Thomas Eakins and Marcel Duchamp depended on the genius of Eadweard Muybridge to produce their works of art.

Eadweard Muybridge was born on April 9, 1830 in Kingston upon Thames. Son of a prospective businessman, Muybridge thrived in his own business of selling books since an early age. At an age of 25, Muybridge relocated to California at the height of gold rush where his life started unfolding in unexpected often bizarre fashion. Five years after his emigration, Muybridge planned to pay a short visit to England for procuring more books. With his brother looking after his business, he set out in a stagecoach on a fateful day. While approaching Saint Louis, the stagecoach got involved in a terrible accident, killing one of the passengers and severely injuring others, including Muybridge. Muybridge spent months in recuperation with impaired vision, memory and other psychological effects as a result of his traumatic brain injury. As a course of treatment, his doctor suggested him to take up an art form such as photography. Accordingly, in years between 1861 and 1866 he devoted himself in studying photography. A year later he returned to his adopted home, San Francisco as a professional photographer. His prominence rose with his famous landscape photographs of Yosemite Valley.

Just as the photographer Muybridge’s career started blossoming, once again he found himself involved in a tragedy. This time a skirmish with his wife’s lover saw the latter killed by Muybridge, shot point blank. Muybridge was arrested and a lengthy and often irksome courtroom drama ensued. His friends and lawyers contested, that the accident more than decade ago left Muybridge emotionally unstable. This extricated him from the confinement. 1872 was also a landmark year in artist Muybridge’s life. On invitation of Leland Stanford, Muybridge took several photographs of horses in locomotion in Sandford’s ranch. He used a crude form of movie projector, zoopraxiscope, to show how all four feet of a galloping horse remain in air even if for a fraction of a second. He used the multiple exposure techniques to picture other moving animals and even waltzing couples. However, these were only tips of Muybridge’s extensive portfolio which contain treasures yet to be unearthed. The last decade of his life was spent in England, lecturing and writing on photographic techniques. He passed away on May 8, 1904 in the same place he was born, Kingston upon Thames.

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When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (via itsquoted)

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…opposites do not bring confusion in the universe, but harmony. If creation were but a chaos, we should have to imagine the two opposing principles as trying to get the better of each other. But the universe is not under martial law, arbitrary and provisional. Here we find no force which can run amok, or go on indefinitely in its wild road, like an exiled outlaw, breaking all harmony with its surroundings; each force, on the contrary, has to come back in a curved line to its equilibrium. Waves rise, each to its individual height in a seeming attitude of unrelenting competition, but only up to a certain point; and thus we know of the great repose of the sea to which they are all related, and to which they must all return in a rhythm which is marvellously beautiful.

Rabindranath Tagore (via itsquoted)

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Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants; each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both.

William Cowper (via itsquoted)

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Come O heart, let’s commend ourselves unto the Lord Keep from rolled up sleeve that outstretched arm belies. Undeceived, whoever lost himself in compassion In the spirit of love, his soul upward flies. In the court of the truth, at the time of our demise Shame on he, who permissible never defies.

Hafez Shirazi (via itsquoted)

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Rudolf Koppitz used the language of photography to interpret the aestheticism of human form and nature. Photography was very much a new medium still and frequently borrowed its inspirations from the rapidly changing scenes of traditional world of art. Koppitz too was affected by the beauty of art nouveau and subsequently the aspirations of modernism.

Rudolf Koppitz (January 4, 1884 – July, 1936) was born in Schreiberseifen, now part of Czech Republic. The humble rural surrounding he grew up in seemed to have stayed with him forever. Once his explorations of the wide range of subjects, modish and elegant, were over he returned to his original muse, nature. Koppitz’s tryst with photography began very early and by the age of fourteen he was already an apprentice in the atelier of Robert Rotter. His introduction to the Atelier de Madame d’Ora, the famous studio of Dora Kallmus, proved to be a crucial point in his life. In between he also took time out to study graphic arts in the Graphische Lehr–und Versuchsanstalt. As the war broke out his services were needed in the air force where he worked as an aerial photographer. By then though, Koppitz has firmly established himself as the master of his craft.

In 1922, Koppitz married his student and photography enthusiast Anna Arbeitlang. She became an able partner in his many artistic sojourns. Their daughter Liselotte, born in 1925, also featured in many of his photographic essays. Owing to his refined tastes and technical wizardry, Koppitz’s exhibitions in Vienna, Paris and in other parts of Europe were a stellar success. In the last years of his life, he started taking photographs en plein air. Whether on the alpine plain or pebbled seashore, his camera never seemed to have felt tired in capturing the ever flowing passage of time. His self–portraits from this time are also a reflection of his undying love for his art. What Keats believed in theory,

‘In spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits.’

Koppitz practised in art.

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For modern connoisseurs, Jacob Olie’s camera has become a window to the past, an eye for surveying 19th century Amsterdam in minute details. During his lifetime Olie took thousands of photographs of both the city’s vista and the people living therein. To preserve the sanctity of the flow of time he used candid photography to capture his many now famous street scenes.

Jacob Olie (October 17, 1834 – April 23, 1905) was an engineer by profession and photography was his passion. It was also a mean of escaping everyday tedium and even pathos of life for him. Much like the city of his photograph, coping with the sweeping and not always harmonious changes, he own heart too was ravaged by the loss of three young children. In his photography Amsterdam too looks solemn as if expectant of some jolly change of scene. Olie’s ingenuity often made him toy with different techniques and come up with original ideas. The results of his experimentations with instant photography are often startling and sometimes quite amusing. The expert vedutist that he was, he seemed to have taken a step back to let the city speak for itself. In the end, as an artist, this proves to be his most outstanding stroke of genius.

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Antonio Canova was born on November 1, 1757 in Possagno, some 80 km away from Venice. He lost his father at a tender age of four and, when his mother remarried, came to stay with his grandfather Pasino Canova, a notable sculptor and stonemason. Antonio Canova’s childhood exploits as a sculptor are parts of legend. It is said that he sculpted a statue of lion out of butter at a dinner party with other Venetian noblemen when he was only six. Canova is also credited with the creation of two shrines, made of carrara marble, at an age of nine. His precocious talent was noticed by Senator John Falier and young Canova was introduced in Toretti (1768) for formal education in art. Canova enjoyed a lifelong patronage of Senator Falier and formed a friendship with his younger son Giuseppe that was only severed by death.

The artist spent about seven years in the workshop at Pagnano d’Asolo. He set up his independent studio in late 1775 and produced his first famous sculpture, Orpheus and Euridice, in 1776. This was followed up by another equally elaborate piece of art, Daedalus and Icarus (1779). The same year he proceeded to Rome. The classical style coupled with the touch of his genius found many admirers. With the French invasion of Rome came honours from the beyond the boundaries. Napoleon wanted him to overlook the art department as a director, but he refused. One of his most famous works from this period was of Napoleon’s sister’s, Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix. While the artist thought it appropriate to feature Paolina as Diana, she preferred herself to be seen as Venus, beautiful and seductive. Much to the credit of the artist, though nude, Venus’s eroticism here is clothed in dignity and did not stoop to frivolity.

With the fall of the empire, Canova’s skilful diplomacy was sought by Pope to recover the lost artworks from Paris. This assignment brought Canova to England. His success earned him a title of Marchese d’Ischia from Pope Pious VII. His entire life, Antonio Canova worked hard for the betterment of the conditions of the impoverished. He donated huge amounts to support young artists. Many people, including the prominent artists of the day, were touched by his benevolence, generosity and friendly nature. He passed away on October 13, 1822 in his home town and his mortal remains were buried in a shrine left half–finished by him. A visit to his home in Possagno became a pilgrimage for many, eager to be illuminated in the greatness of this artist and human being.

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Seeing Adolfo Farsari’s photographs Rudyard Kipling commented, ‘Mr Farsari is a nice man, eccentric and an artist, for which peculiarities he makes you pay, but his wares are worth the money….’ Farsari was an adept artist, photographer and entrepreneur. He was born on February 11, 1841 in Vicenza, Italy. He briefly served the Italian military before emigrating to the United States and taking part in the American Civil War. As an artist his talent really blossomed while being in Yokohama, Japan.

Farsari specialised in what is now known as hand–coloured photography. His career as a photographer is intertwined with another talented photographer of his time Tamamura Kozaburo. Together they acquired the Stillfried & Andersen studio and firmly established themselves as the most promising photographers of the country. Colour photography was unheard of then. So, Farsari’s elaborately painted photographs did not take much time to capture the imagination of an international audience. Additionally, the albums were used to be embellished with lacquer, ivory and brocade. Farsari’s understanding of the oriental techniques served him well. Such was the value of these albums that Farsari did not hesitate to present one to Italy’s future king.

The presence of such photographers as Farsari, who was also an enthusiastic teacher, helped in the development of local talents. Like painting, photography in Japan carved its own unique niche. His photographs, even if seen through a slightly tinted vision, bring memories of a bygone era back to public consciousness. Farsari passed away on February 7, 1898 in his native town, Vicenza. Perhaps, his journey around the world in the preceding thirty five years was nothing but a quest of understanding the artist within.