Remembering Louise Nevelson on her birthday 🎂
📷 Ara Güler, c.1974 @smithsonian@ArchivesAmerArt
"I don’t like the safe way, it limits you. One has to have courage and one has to gamble with life to really move into the areas where they can fulfil themselves."
Louise Nevelson by Hans Namuth, 1977 @smithsoniannpg
"While it’s risky to conflate the artist with the art, in Nevelson’s case her public persona was an extension of her sculptural practice: another fabulist, layered creation."
- Andrea K. Scott
Louise Nevelson by Arnold Newman, NY 1980
Newman told her grand-daughter Maria "how he photographed Nevelson at the Whitney in 1980 the day she learned her brother died. With her insistence, they continued the photo session even though she was visibly upset."
Here's Louise Nevelson with her high school basketball team in 1913. She's the captain: 4th from the left. @smithsonian @ArchivesAmerArt
Louise Nevelson
White Vertical Water, 1971 @Guggenheim
"I once asked Josef Albers if he was a great reader and he said, 'If I wanted to read, I’d write my own book.'"
Louise Nevelson
Luminous Zag: Night, 1971 @Guggenheim
"There hasn’t been a surprise in my life. In my darkest moments, I was never not with what I was doing. My life was important to me—I certainly expected it to be what it is."
Louise Nevelson
Untitled, 1967 @MuseumModernArt
"My work is the mirror of my consciousness. In my own work, I think there is a beyondness, some call it mystery. It contains the awareness of love, or sorrow, all the human emotions."
Louise Nevelson
Black wall, 1959 @Tate Modern
"I fell in love with black; it contained all color. It wasn't a negation of color... Black is the most aristocratic color of all... You can be quiet, and it contains the whole thing."
Louise Nevelson by Ara Güler, c.1974 @smithsonian@ArchivesAmerArt
"Her black walls lived in shadow and drew sustenance from it, and a large public found in her work a satisfaction that it found nowhere else in modern art."
- John Russell
Louise Nevelson by Arnold Newman, New York, 1972
"Life isn’t one straight line. Most of us have to be transplanted, like a tree, before we blossom."
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A great shot of one of my favourite photographers, Horst P. Horst, by the fine Toronto Star photographer Reg Innell, 1998
This is from the @torontolibrary digital archive
Irving Berlin by Reg Innell, Toronto, 1966 @torontolibrary digital library
Reg Innell
Aaron Copland conducts the @TorontoSymphony at Massey Hall, 1976 @torontolibrary digital archive
Copland was a fine conductor; I happened to see him the same year, in Minneapolis.
Remembering Robert Bresson on his birthday 🎂
📷 Philippe Le Tellier, 1968
"He is a great director, even if no other great director seems less intrigued by cinema itself."
- David Thomson
Robert Bresson at home with his cat
📷 Philippe Le Tellier, 1968
A great photo for #caturday
Robert Bresson by Sam Lévin, c. 1950
"It is with something clean and precise that you will force the attention of inattentive eyes and ears."
Remembering Dmitri Shostakovich on his birthday 🎂
📷 Jack Mitchell, 1973
"Shostakovich's genius, like Beethoven's, was to subsume formal complexity and innovation into a style that achieved intense, direct communication with large audiences."
- Thomas Travisano
Dmitri Shostakovich having tea with Yevgeny Mravinsky
📷 G. Chertov, 1961
In 1993 Tatiana Nikolayevna was performing Shostakovich's Preludes & Fugues op. 87, which he had written for her. She suffered a stroke during the concert, but continued playing (!) until the intermission. She died a few weeks later.
📷 Co Broerse, 1990
Remembering Glenn Gould on his birthday 🎂
📷 Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1981
"With a technique that knew no difficulties, Gould could dissect a work, cleanse it of its standard interpretive manners and restore to it an almost ecstatic excitement."
- Edward Rothstein
Listening to Glenn Gould's Bach English Suites album, a 2 LP set from 1977. Never noticed this before: the superb Don Hunstein portrait of Glenn on the front cover is matched by a cheeky portrayal of Johann Sebastian on the back.
Glenn Gould by Gordon Parks, 1955
He's laughing because the engineers are questioning his humming. The humming is part of the charm of his recordings.
Remembering Mark Rothko on his birthday 🎂
📷 Bert Stern for Life Magazine, 1959
"I'm the most violent of all the American painters. Behind those colors there hides the final cataclysm."
Mark Rothko by Consuelo Kanaga, 1940s @brooklynmuseum
"The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is the faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed."
Another portrait of Mark Rothko by Consuelo Kanaga
Yorktown Heights, ca. 1949 @brooklynmuseum
"He loved Mozart. And he was a great, loyal, wonderfully affectionate friend."
- Stanley Kunitz
When Time magazine put Dave Brubeck on the cover of its November 8, 1954, it was a big deal for Brubeck & for jazz. Boris Artzybasheff's portrait of the pianist is fabulous. I love how he makes reference to the other members of the Quartet: Paul Desmond, Joe Dodge & Bob Bates.
The Time cover is featured on the cover of the Dave Brubeck Quartet's 1955 LP, Brubeck Time. I just got the pun in the title! A great album. open.spotify.com/album/1ne1gFCT…
The attention the Time cover brought to Brubeck caused a bit of a backlash from hardcore jazz fanatics. He told the writer Joe Goldberg, "Most jazz fans wouldn't be caught dead listening to us anymore. But we've picked up a whole new audience. Just people."