Remembering Mark Rothko on his birthday π
π· 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
Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell & Bradley Walker Tomlin in the John D. Rockerfeller 3rd Guest House, 1951
The paintings:
Rothko's Number 18, 1948
Motherwell's The Voyage, 1949
Tomlin's Number 9: In Praise of Gertrude Stein, 1950
"In the two soft-edged and rounded rectangles of Mark Rothkoβs matured style there is an enveloping magic, which conveys ... a sense of being in the midst of greatness. It is the color of course."
- Duncan Phillips @PhillipsMuseum
Ochre and Red on Red, 1954
"Dear Lee: I wish I could find some way to tell you how I feel about Jackson."
- Mark Rothko's letter to Lee Krasner, August 16, 1956, five days after Jackson Pollock's death. @smithsonian @ArchivesAmerArt
The rest of Mark Rothko's letter to Lee Krasner.
"I wish I had been there, too, for my own sake."
"There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth."
When Irving Sandler encountered this quote from Nietzsche, he mailed it to Mark Rothko.
π· Timothy A. Clary, New York, 2020
Mark Rothko at the Sidney Janis Gallery
π· Fred W. McDarrah, 1961
"His painting accumulated resonance by appealing to myth; but myths were in decline..."
- Robert Hughes
The photographer Hans Namuth's point of view often underlines psychological insights. His shot of Mark Rothko, from 1964, is in retrospect very sad. As the painter himself said, 'There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: one day, the black will swallow the red.'
Mark Rothko by Hans Namuth, 1964
Today we're celebrating the great artist's birthday. π @smithsonian @ArchivesAmerArt
Looking at Mark Rothko's No. 5/No. 22, 1950
π· Thomas Hoepker, @MuseumModernArt, 2005
Mark Rothko by Kay Bell Reynal, 1952 @smithsonian @ArchivesAmerArt
Dorothy Seiberling quoted Rothko in a 1959 Life magazine feature:
"A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience."
Mark Rothko by Kate Rothko, 1961
"However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command."
A wonderful portrait! Kate was only 10 or 11 when she took this.
Mark Rothko, "How to Combine Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture", 1951 symposium @MuseumModernArt
Here's Mark Rothko talking about his contemporaries in a letter to Barney & Annalee (Barnett Newman & his wife), 1946.
Bob is Robert Motherwell.
More of a social whirl than lone artists in their garrets!
Such is the panorama.
Mark Rothko by Ben Martin
"No other painter can occasion feelings so intense, so directly."
- Peter Schjeldahl
Kate Rothko Prizel in front of her father's No. 36 (Black Stripe)
Munich Rothko Retrospective 2008
π· Johannes Simon
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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 π
π· 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
π· Philippe Le Tellier, 1968
A great photo for #caturday
Remembering Dmitri Shostakovich on his birthday π
π· 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
π· 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.
π· Co Broerse, 1990
Remembering Glenn Gould on his birthday π
π· 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.
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/1ne1gFCTβ¦
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."
Remembering Gerry Marsden on his birthday π
π· A Stanley Bielecki photo from the set of Ferry Cross The Mersey, 1965.
So much energy, such stage presence.
Here from Top of the Pops, 1965:
Gerry Marsden at the Beat Club, Bremen
π· Gunter Zint, 1965
"We went over with the Beatles & had a good laugh. All they had over there were oompah bands. We took over this music, and they loved it."
I like this more formal portrait of Gerry Marsden, by David Redfern, from 1965.
I learn from Wikipedia that the original name for the band was Gerry Marsden & the Mars Bars, until they got a cease-&-desist letter from Big Chocolate. The Pacemakers broke up in 1967. Short & sweet.