Author, Lecturer, Broadcaster & Cultural Arts Expert;
President of Art Collage JANG/J Music/J Art/J Books & Media.
Author of over 40 books published on Amazon, including The Crimson Horror series and The Great and Immortal Painters’ Stories series.
Dedicated to sharing insights into art, culture, literature, and creative expression through writing, lectures, media, and content creation.
On every Thursday, I am
introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting Art Stories”.
The 10th story for this week is "The Persistence of Memory"by a Spanish artist Salvador Dalí.
“The Persistence of Memory” is a painting by a Spanish artist Salvador Dalí in 1931, and one of his most famous works as well as the most recognizable works of Surrealism. This painting is sometimes referred to as the title, such as “The Melting Watches” or “The Soft Watches”.
Salvador Dalí (1939)
Like many of his other works, it is a deeply personal painting of Dali. Around the time he drew this painting, he tried self-induced hypnosis to get into the state of psychotic hallucinations, and then painted what was seen in that state. Many people claimed that the melting watches signify Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, symbolizing the relationship between time and space, but Dali stated that the melting watches were only inspired by a piece of cheese that had melted in the sun.
When drawing this painting, Dali was deeply influenced by Freud, and the unshapely form with long eyelashes in the foreground of this painting represents Dali himself who is in his dream state. The melting watches depict that in this state the time loses its meaning.
In this painting, the orange clock at the bottom left is covered with ants, and Dali often used ants as a symbol of decay in his paintings. The craggy rocks depicted on the right background represent the hills of Cap de Creus in his hometown of Catalonia, and many of Dali's paintings were inspired by Catalonia's landscapes.
After drawing this painting, Dali returned to the theme of this painting in 1954 with the variation of this painting called “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory”. This variation shows a series of systematically divided rectangular blocks, suggesting something beneath the surface of the original version "The Persistence of Memory".
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954)
The variation is now in the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the original version has been held by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City since 1934, after first showing at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932.
Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida
In the late period of his career, Dali also made various sculptures on the theme of the soft watches, such as “Nobility of Time” and “Profile of Time.”
George Frideric Handel is a German,
later British, Baroque composer, born on February 23, 1685 and died on April
14, 1759. Handel spent most of his musical career in London, England, becoming
famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi and organ concertos.
Handel House, birthplace of Handel
He studied music in Halle, where he was born, worked as a composer in Hamburg
and Italy, settled in London in 1712 and then became a naturalized British
subject in 1727. Handel was greatly influenced by the great composers of the
Italian Baroque and the traditional polyphonic choral style of medieval
Germany.
Portrait of Handel, by Balthasar Denner (c. 1726–1728)
Gaining a good response by
composing the oratorio “Alexander's Feast” in 1736, Handel composed “Messiah”
in 1742 and succeeded with it. Handel, who lived in England for nearly 50
years, died in 1759, his funeral was held as a national honours, and his body
was buried in the Westminster Abbey in London.
Handel (centre) and King George I on the River Thames, 17 July 1717
Born in the same year as Johann
Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti, Handel is regarded as one of the
greatest composers of the Baroque era. His works such as Messiah, Water Music,
and Music for the Royal Fireworks still remain steady popularity.
A carved marble statue of Handel at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1738)
Handel
composed more than 40 opera serias during his career, and since the late 1960s,
interest in his operas has increased with the revival of Baroque music.
“Impromptu” is a 1991 film
directed by James Lapine and co-produced by the United Kingdom and the United
States, starring Hugh Grant as Frédéric Chopin and Judy Davis as George Sand.
The entire film was shot in France, among which the main location was at the
Chateau des Briottières outside of Angers.
Novelist George Sand falls in love
with composer Frédéric Chopin. She wants to confess her love to Chopin at a
weekend gathering hosted by Duchess D'Antan for famous musicians, artists, and
writers of the day. The gentle but sick Chopin finds himself strangely
attracted to her while being wary of the outspoken Sand.
Movie
Review
“An underrated treat...”
“Probably the best film ever made
on Chopin and Sand”
“A gem”
“Surprisingly enjoyable!”
“Delightful”
“Romantic, genuine, gorgeous, remarkable”
“A delightfully charming movie”
“Really awesome movie”
“A masterpiece”
“Worth watching!”
Interesting
stories about the film
“Impromptu” is one of the films that
Hugh Grant appeared as first leading role. He was an almost unknown actor in
the United States when this film aired on PBS in the early 1990s.
Modigliani Institute Korea (MIK) is
currently introducing artworks of Amedeo Modigliani one by one every week.
Amedeo Modigliani
The 44th work to introduce for this
week is “Beatrice Hastings in front of a door”.
This work is a portrait of an
expressionist style and an oil painting on canvas with the size of 81.3 x 46.4
cm, and currently in private collection.
Beatrice Hastings, an English
writer and poet, met Modigliani in 1914 by the introduction of the sculptor Ossip
Zadkine. Modigliani then lived with her in her house for two years until 1916.
She became famous for her peculiar behavior, attire, and avid supporter for the
theories of Helena Blavatsky.
Beatrice Hastings
Ossip Zadkine
Helena Blavatsky was a Russian occultist,
philosopher, and author, who was born on August 12, 1831 and died on May 8,
1891. She co-founded the Theosophical Society in the United States in 1875. The goal of the Theosophical
Society was to become a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity, without
distinction of race, gender, class, and skin color.
Helena Blavatsky
Hastings' influence on Modigliani is
divided. Some say she made Modigliani more and more addicted to drug and
alcoholism, but it is certain that while she was with Modigliani, she was his
muse, who gave him a lot of artistic inspiration.
Modigliani painted some paintings
of Hastings. However, the appearances of the paintings are not the same, and
her appearances are changing according to the paintings. For this work, she
looks like a graceful lady wearing a feathered hat. Looking at the image of the
work, she looks like a strong and cool-hearted woman, and her tight mouth shows
her stubborn personality. It is also interesting to note that the shapes of her
nose and neck are similar and that one of her ears is significantly emphasized
compared to the other. The background consists of a plane dominated by straight
lines using an object of a door. The background of these straight lines makes
her curved face and elongated neck more prominent.
Although Hastings was very bohemian,
in this picture, she is a graceful and an elegant lady wearing feathered hat,
such as “Madame Pompadour,” one of the paintings that Modigliani painted her. Such
appearance of her seems to reflect the situation that most women preferred to
wear hats in public places at the time.
Influenced
on:Walter Crane, Evelyn De Morgan, Dmitri
Zhilinsky
Friends/Co-workers:
Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio
Sandro Botticelli was an Italian
painter of the early Renaissance. As well as the small numbers of the paintings
for mythological subjects which are his most famous works today, he also
painted various religious subjects and some portraits. Botticelli and his
workshop were especially famous for their Madonna and Childs, many in the round
tondo shape.
His most famous works are “The Birth of Venus” and “Primavera” in the
Uffizi in Florence. He lived all his life in Florence, except the periods for
paintings in Pisa in 1474 and the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1481-82.
Botticelli
has been described as "an outsider" in the mainstream of Italian
painting, who had a limited interest in many of the developments most
associated with Quattrocento, such as the realistic depiction of human
anatomy, perspective, and landscape.
The 3rd theme of “The history of Jazz”
I will introduce this week is “New Orleans Jazz”. It is a summary of the
contents of “47th ACJ Music Academy, The history of Jazz: 3. New Orleans Jazz”,
which was introduced on May 14, 2016.
For
the process of forming New Orleans Jazz, the music, which is now called the 'New
Orleans Jazz', was already formed in New Orleans, in the 1910s, and until the Original
Dixieland Jass Band recorded first official jazz album in the Victor label in
New York, on February 26, 1917, many musicians from New Orleans were already
active in the Middle and Eastern parts of the United States.
For the background
of the development of the New Orleans Jazz, there was a regional foundation
called Storyville, which was very decadent and entertaining, and forced to be
closed by the US government in 1917. As Storyville was closed, many of the
musicians who were active in New Orleans moved to Chicago.
Basin Street (Storyville)
The
music of New Orleans Jazz were often introduced alongside the music of Chicago
Jazz. The famous music of New Orleans Jazz include “Dippermouth blues” by King
Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and “Black bottom stomp” by Jelly Roll Morton and his
Red Hot Peppers.
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
Looking at musical instruments in the New Orleans Jazz, for
the melody part, there are cornet, trumpet, and clarinet, and for the rhythm part,
there are piano, trombone, tuba, and banjo. Also,
in New Orleans Jazz, one of the characteristics of jazz, “improvising solo performance,”
was not much found, and the ensemble play was more than solo playing, and the
playing time was short, about 3 minutes.
One
of the representative forms of New Orleans Jazz, the “Stomp” was also the main
part of Jelly Roll Morton. Simply saying, based on one bar of four beats, tuba
(or trombone) and banjo alternately performs one beat’s rhythm playing,
respectively, and if the syncopations are added to these rhythms, stronger volumes
are added to second and fourth beats and a strong ringing sound continues as if
you are rolling on the floor. This
form plays a pivotal role in New Orleans Jazz, and you can listen to the
typical Stomp form in “Grandpa’s spells” by Jelly
Roll Morton.
New
Orleans Jazz becomes musically mature as jazz musicians based in New Orleans
have traveled around the cities since Storyville was closed. Settled in the cities
such as Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and Kansas City, New Orleans Jazz
continued to develop musically until it moved the main stage to New York, and “Louis
Armstrong” played a very important role for this background.
Louis Armstrong
The
representative New Orleans Jazz musicians include the Original Dixieland Jass
Band, King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton.
First,
the Original Dixieland Jass Band is a Dixieland jazz band who recorded and
released the first jazz album "Livery Stable Blues" in early 1917.
The Original Dixieland Jass Band
Second,
King Oliver is the most important musician when talking about New Orleans Jazz,
who led the King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and played a pivotal role in New
Orleans Jazz. Oliver also made a big popular success, and the clubs in Chicago
and Detroit fiercely competed to scout him.
King Oliver
He was also an outstanding 'cornet'
player, and he was active traveling between New Orleans and Chicagoafter his first success in Chicago in 1918.
The clarinet player Johnny Dodds and the cornet and trumpet player Louis
Armstrong were among the great musicians who worked with him.
Johnny Dodds
Third, Jelly Roll
Morton was an outstanding pianist, composer and band leader, who was also a
popular figure since the early days of New Orleans Jazz when King Oliver was so
popular and famous. Morton was also the figure, who developed "Stomp,"
an important form of New Orleans Jazz. He moved to Chicago after New Orleans,
working side by side with King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. He also played a
very pivotal role in the process that the main stage of jazz is moving from New
Orleans to Chicago to New York.
Jelly Roll Morton
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