1.
Albert Gleizes
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Albert Gleizes was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Gleizes was a founding member of the Section dOr group of artists. He was also a member of Der Sturm, and his theoretical writings were originally most appreciated in Germany. Gleizes spent four years in New York, and played an important role in making America aware of modern art. He was a member of the Society of Independent Artists, founder of the Ernest-Renan Association, Gleizes exhibited regularly at Léonce Rosenberg’s Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris, he was also a founder, organizer and director of Abstraction-Création. From the mid-1920s to the late 1930s much of his energy went into writing, La Peinture et ses lois, Vers une conscience plastique, La Forme et l’histoire and Homocentrisme. Born Albert Léon Gleizes and raised in Paris, he was the son of a designer who ran a large industrial design workshop. He was also the nephew of Léon Comerre, a portrait painter who won the 1875 Prix de Rome. The young Albert Gleizes did not like school and often skipped classes to idle away the time writing poetry, finally, after completing his secondary schooling, Gleizes spent four years in the 72nd Infantry Regiment of the French army then began pursuing a career as a painter. Gleizes began to paint self-taught around 1901 in the Impressionist tradition and his first landscapes from around Courbevoie appear particularly inspired by Sisley or Pissarro. The density with which these works are painted and their solid framework suggest affinities with Divisionism which were noted by early critics. Gleizes was only years of age when his work titled La Seine à Asnières was exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1902. The following year Gleizes exhibited two paintings at the Salon dAutomne, in 1905 Gleizes was among the founders of lAssociation Ernest-Renan, a union of students opposed to military propaganda. Gleizes was in charge of the Section littéraire et artistique, organizing theater productions, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Gleizes exhibited Jour de marché en banlieue. Tending towards 1907 his work evolved into a Post-Impressionist style with strong Naturalist and Symbolist components, Gleizes and others decide to create an association fraternelle dartistes and rent a large house in Créteil. The Abbaye de Créteil was a community of artists that aimed to develop their art free of any commercial concerns. For nearly a year, Gleizes along with painters, poets, musicians and writers. A lack of income forced them to give up their cherished Abbaye de Créteil in early 1908 and Gleizes moved to rue du Delta near Montmartre, in 1908 Gleizes exhibited at the Toison dOr in Moscow
2.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
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It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director and it adopted its current name after the death of its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1952. In 1959, the museum moved from rented space to its current building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the cylindrical building, wider at the top than the bottom, was conceived as a temple of the spirit. Its unique ramp gallery extends up from ground level in a long, the building underwent extensive expansion and renovations in 1992 and from 2005 to 2008. The museums collection has grown organically, over eight decades, and is founded several important private collections. The collection is shared with the museums sister museums in Bilbao, Spain, in 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the museum, and it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City. Solomon R. Guggenheim, a member of a mining family, had been collecting works of the old masters since the 1890s. In 1926, he met artist Hilla von Rebay, who introduced him to European avant-garde art, in abstract art that she felt had a spiritual. Guggenheim completely changed his strategy, turning to the work of Wassily Kandinsky. He began to display his collection to the public at his apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York City, as the collection grew, he established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in 1937, to foster the appreciation of modern art. The foundations first venue for the display of art, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, opened in 1939 under the direction of Rebay, in midtown Manhattan. By the early 1940s, the foundation had accumulated such a collection of avant-garde paintings that the need for a permanent museum building had become apparent. In 1943, Rebay and Guggenheim wrote a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright asking him to design a structure to house, Wright accepted the opportunity to experiment with his organic style in an urban setting. It took him 15 years,700 sketches, and six sets of working drawings to create the museum, in 1948, the collection was greatly expanded through the purchase of art dealer Karl Nierendorfs estate of some 730 objects, notably German expressionist paintings. By that time, the collection included a broad spectrum of expressionist and surrealist works, including paintings by Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka. Nevertheless, she left a portion of her collection to the foundation in her will, including works by Kandinsky, Klee, Alexander Calder, Albert Gleizes, Mondrian. The museum was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, Rebay conceived of the space as a temple of the spirit that would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern pieces in the collection. She wrote to Wright that each of these great masterpieces should be organized into space, would test the possibilities to do so
3.
Cubism
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Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century, the term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s. The movement was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Andre Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging, Cubism spread rapidly across the globe and in doing so evolved to a greater or lesser extent. In essence, Cubism was the origin of a process that produced diversity. In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art, in other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Other common threads between these movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization. Cubism began between 1907 and 1911, Pablo Picassos 1907 painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work. Georges Braques 1908 Houses at L’Estaque prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to refer to bizarreries cubiques, Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the first Cubist paintings. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, english art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. Douglas Coopers restrictive use of terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed, wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the Salle 41 artists, e. g. John Berger identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram, The diagram being a symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as not as imitations or recreations. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African, Polynesian, Micronesian, artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks. Picassos paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism, as seen in Les Demoiselles dAvignon
4.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1937 by philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim and his long-time art advisor, artist Hilla von Rebay. The foundation is an institution for the collection, preservation. The first museum established by the foundation was The Museum of Non-Objective Painting and this became The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, and the foundation moved the collection into its first permanent museum building, in New York City, in 1959. The foundation next opened the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, the Foundation seeks, in its constituent museums, to unite distinguished architecture and artworks. The foundations first permanent museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, is housed in a spiral building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Both of these innovative designs received wide press and critical attention, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection is housed in an 18th-century Italian palace, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal. The foundations collections have expanded greatly through eight decades and include every major movement of 20th- and its directors and curators have attempted to form a single collection that is not encyclopedic, but rather based on their unique visions. The collection has grown in scope to include new media and performance art, Solomon R. Guggenheim, a member of a wealthy mining family, began collecting works of the old masters in the 1890s. He retired from his business in 1919 to devote time to art collecting. In 1926, at age 66, he met artist Hilla von Rebay, Rebay introduced him to European avant-garde art, in particular abstract art that she felt had a spiritual and utopian aspect. Guggenheim completely changed his collecting strategy, in 1930, the two visited Wassily Kandinskys studio in Dessau, Germany, and Guggenheim began to purchase Kandinskys work. The same year, Guggenheim began to display the collection to the public at his apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York City, in 1937, Guggenheim established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to foster the appreciation of modern art. The foundations first venue for the display of art was called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting and it opened in 1939 under the direction of Rebay, its first curator, in a former automobile showroom at East 54th Street in midtown Manhattan. This moved, in 1947, to another rented space at 1071 Fifth Avenue, by the early 1940s, the foundation had accumulated such a large collection of avant-garde paintings that the need for a permanent building to house the art collection had become apparent. In 1943, Guggenheim and Rebay commissioned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design the museum building, Rebay conceived of the space as a temple of the spirit that would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern pieces in the collection. In 1948, the collection was expanded through the purchase of art dealer Karl Nierendorfs estate of some 730 objects. By that time, the collection included a broad spectrum of expressionist and surrealist works, including paintings by Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka. Guggenheim died in 1949, and the museum was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, the foundation expanded its display activities with a series of traveling exhibitions
5.
Crystal Cubism
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Crystal Cubism is a distilled form of Cubism consistent with a shift, between 1915 and 1916, towards a strong emphasis on flat surface activity and large overlapping geometric planes. The primacy of the geometric structure, rooted in the abstract. The tightening of the compositions, the clarity and sense of reflected in these works, led to its being referred to by the French poet. The collective phenomenon of Cubism once again—now in its advanced revisionist form—became part of a widely discussed development in French culture, in terms of the separation of culture and life, the Crystal Cubist period emerges as the most important in the history of Modernism. Cubism, from its inception, stems from the dissatisfaction with the idea of form that had been in practiced since the Renaissance, Cézanne was preoccupied by the means of rendering volume and space, surface variations with overlapped shifting planes. Increasingly in his works, Cézanne achieves a greater freedom. His work became bolder, more arbitrary, more dynamic and increasingly nonrepresentational, as his color planes acquired greater formal independence, defined objects and structures began to lose their identity. Where before, the pillars of academicism had been shaken. It was a regeneration, writes Gleizes, indicating the emergence of a wholly new cast of mind. Every season it appeared renewed, growing like a living body, the Cubist method leading to 1912 has been considered analytical, entailing the decomposition of the subject matter, while subsequently synthetic, built on geometric construction. The terms Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism originated through this distinction, by 1913 Cubism had transformed itself considerably in the range of spatial effects. At the 1913 Salon dAutomne, a salon in which the tendency was Cubism, Metzinger exhibited En Canot, Gleizes Les Bâteaux de Pêche. In these works, more so than before, can be seen the importance of the plane in the overall composition. At the outset of the First World War many artists were mobilized, Metzinger, Gleizes, Braque, Léger, de La Fresnaye, despite the brutal interruption, each found the time to continue making art, sustaining differing types of Cubism. Yet they discovered a link between the Cubist syntax and that of the anonymity and novelty of mechanized warfare. Cubism evolved as much a result of an evasion of the atrocities of war as of nationalistic pressures. Along with the evasion came the need to further and further away from the depiction of things. As the rift between art and life grew, so too came the burgeoning need for a process of distillation and this period of profound reflection contributed to the constitution of a new mindset, a prerequisite for fundamental change
6.
Abstract art
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Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective, the arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning, Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete, even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities, Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and representational art often contains partial abstraction, both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. It is at level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates. One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy or Islamic calligraphy without being able to read it, in Chinese painting, abstraction can be traced to the Tang dynasty painter Wang Mo, who is credited to have invented the splashed-ink painting style. While none of his paintings remain, this style is seen in some Song Dynasty Paintings. A late Song painter named Yu Jian, adept to Tiantai buddhism and his paintings show heavily misty mountains in which the shapes of the objects are barely visible and extremely simplified. This type of painting was continued by Sesshu Toyo in his later years, another instance of abstraction in Chinese painting is seen in Zhu Deruns Cosmic Circle. The painting is a reflection of the Daoist metaphysics in which chaos, in Tokugawa Japan some zen monk-painters created Enso, a circle who represents the absolute enlightenment. Usually made in one spontaneous brush stroke, it became the paradigm of the minimalist aesthetic that guided part of the zen painting, three art movements which contributed to the development of abstract art were Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism. Artistic independence for artists was advanced during the 19th century, patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists. Expressionist painters explored the use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations
7.
Banjo
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The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
8.
Carnegie Hall
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Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own programming, development, and marketing departments. It is also rented out to performing groups, the hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Centers Philharmonic Hall. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among its three auditoriums, Carnegie Hall presented about 200 concerts in the 2008–2009 season, up 3 percent from the previous year. Its stages were rented for an additional 600 events in the 2008–2009 season, Carnegie Hall contains three distinct, separate performance spaces. The Isaac Stern Auditorium seats 2,804 on five levels and was named after violinist Isaac Stern in 1997 to recognize his efforts to save the hall from demolition in the 1960s, the hall is enormously high, and visitors to the top balcony must climb 137 steps. All but the top level can be reached by elevator, the main hall was home to the performances of the New York Philharmonic from 1892 until 1962. Known as the most prestigious concert stage in the U. S. almost all of the classical music. After years of wear and tear, the hall was extensively renovated in 1986. The Ronald O. Perelman Stage is 42 feet deep, the First Tier and Second Tier consist of sixty-five boxes, the First Tier has 264 seats at eight seats per box and the Second Tier seats 238, with boxes ranging from six to eight seats each. Second from the top is the Dress Circle, seating 444 in six rows, at the top, the balcony seats 837. Although seats with obstructed views exist throughout the auditorium, only the Dress Circle level has structural columns, Zankel Hall, which seats 599, is named after Judy and Arthur Zankel. Originally called simply Recital Hall, this was the first auditorium to open to the public in April 1891, following renovations made in 1896, it was renamed Carnegie Lyceum. The completely reconstructed Zankel Hall is flexible in design and can be reconfigured in several different arrangements to suit the needs of the performers, the 599 seats in Zankel Hall are arranged in two levels. The Parterre level seats a total of 463 and the Mezzanine level seats 136, each level has a number of seats which are situated along the side walls, perpendicular to the stage. These seats are designated as boxes, there are 54 seats in six boxes on the Parterre level and 48 seats in four boxes on the Mezzanine level, the boxes on the Parterre level are raised above the level of the stage. Zankel Hall is accessible and its stage is 44 feet wide and 25 feet deep — the stage occupies approximately one fifth of the performance space, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall seats 268 and is named after Sanford I. Weill, a chairman of the board, and his wife Joan
9.
Igor Stravinsky
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Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century, Stravinskys compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. His Russian phase which continued with such as Renard, The Soldiers Tale. The works from this tended to make use of traditional musical forms, drawing on earlier styles. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures, Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum, a suburb of Saint Petersburg, the Russian imperial capital, and was brought up in Saint Petersburg. It is believed that Stravinsky’s ancestry is traceable back to the 17th and 18th centuries, to the bearers of the Soulima, ivan Sulima, was a famous Ukrainian hetman 1628–1635. Stravinskys family branch most likely came from Stravinskas, polonized Lithuanian land owners and it is still unclear to when exactly the Soulima part of the surname was dropped. Stravinsky recalled his schooldays as being lonely, later saying that I never came across anyone who had any attraction for me. Stravinsky began piano lessons as a boy, studying music theory. In 1890, he saw a performance of Tchaikovskys ballet The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theatre, despite his enthusiasm for music, his parents expected him to study law. Stravinsky enrolled at the University of Saint Petersburg in 1901, Stravinskys father died of cancer that year, by which time his son had already begun spending more time on his musical studies than on law. Thereafter, he concentrated on studying music, in 1905, he began to take twice-weekly private lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov, whom he came to regard as a second father. These lessons continued until Rimsky-Korsakovs death in 1908, in 1905 Stravinsky was betrothed to his cousin Katherine Gavrylivna Nosenko, whom he had known since early childhood. Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed by Fireworks to commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations and then to compose a ballet score. The early period of Igor Stravinsky’s work would be incomplete without a research of his life while in Ukraine. From approximately 1890 till 1914 the composer was frequently visiting Ustyluh, town in Volyn Oblast and he spent most of his summers there and that’s where he met his cousin, Katherine Nosenko who he married in 1906. In 1907 Stravinsky designed and built his own house in Ustyluh where his own family stayed often during summer times until 1914 and his new Ukrainian home he called “My heavenly place”. In this house Igor Stravinsky worked on his seventeen early compositions, among which were orchestral fantasy Fireworks, ballets Firebird, Petrushka, currently, after its renovation this house is the only composers house-museum opened to the public
10.
Portrait of an Army Doctor
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Portrait of an Army Doctor is a 1914-15 painting by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. The work represents Gleizess commanding officer, Major Mayer-Simon Lambert, the surgeon in charge of the military hospital at Toul. At least eight sketches, gouaches and watercolors of the work have survived. As other wartime works by Gleizes, Portrait of an Army Doctor represents a break from the first phase of Cubism, rather than based on the analysis of volumetric objects, the artist strove toward synthesis, something that originated in unity. The work forms part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection and it was gifted to the museum by Solomon Guggenheim in 1937. The painting is in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Portrait of an Army Doctor is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 119.8 x 95.1 cm inscribed Alb. An early photograph of the shows the inscribed date as 1914-15. The use of blue, white and red in the composition recall the colors of the French flag. Such a display of patriotism was not uncommon among the Cubists, French flags can be seen in the works of Roger de La Fresnaye, Fourteenth of July, 1913-14, and The Conquest of the Air,1913. The Cubo-Futurist Gino Severini, too, included the French flag in his 1913 painting Train of the Wounded,1913, in 1915 Gleizes published an article in Jean Cocteaus patriotic review, Le Mot in which he attacks critics who accuse the new tendencies in art of being unpatriotic. The final issue of Le Mot includes a sketch by Gleizes based on wounded soldiers returning from a battle at Bois le Prêtre, despite its descriptive title, the subject matter of Portrait of an Army Doctor has practically disappeared. The canvas is no longer analyzed or structured geometrically according to the golden ratio, the masses of the composition are arranged in quasi-equilibrium. The center of the face is the superior vertex of a triangular construct that extends toward the outer edges of the canvas. The intersection of the two arcs that compose the shoulders is centered on the vertical axis, by giving a multiple series of appearances, each one seen in its own perspective, writes Gleizes, a succession of descriptive states. Waking up, this eye lurched from one point of view to the other, jumped back again, for Gleizes, Cubism represented a normal evolution of an art that was mobile like life itself. Multiple perspective was in itself a protest against painting defined as an art based on space, an aspiration towards mobility begins to appear and to appeal to the eye. Breaking up the plane surfaces of different sizes reduced to geometrical forms. Sometimes certain indications of figures appear in this assemblage, obtained with the help of a few lines, while depth perception and perspective have been subdued to a large extent, the primary structural lines appear to recede or converge toward a multitude of vanishing points located at infinity
11.
Lorraine
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Lorraine is a cultural and historical region in north-eastern France, now located in the administrative region of Grand Est. Lorraines name stems from the kingdom of Lotharingia, which in turn was named for either Emperor Lothair I or King Lothair II. It became later the Duchy of Lorraine before it was annexed to France in 1766, from 1982 until January 2016, Lorraine was an administrative region of France, when it became part of the new region Grand Est. As a region in modern France, Lorraine consisted of the four departments Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Moselle and Vosges, the regional prefecture was Metz, although the largest metropolitan area of Lorraine is Nancy. Lorraine borders Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg and its inhabitants are called Lorrains in French and number about 2,356,000. Lorraines borders have changed often in its long history, in 840, Charlemagnes son Louis the Pious died, and the Carolingian Empire was divided among Louis three sons by the Treaty of Verdun of 843. On the death of Lothair I, Middle Francia was divided in three by the Treaty of Prüm in 855, with the northern third called Lotharingia and going to Lothair II and this allowed it to be a duchy in name but an independent kingdom in reality. In 870, it allied itself with East Francia while remaining an autonomous duchy, along with the rest of Europe, this prosperity was terminated in Lorraine in the 14th century by a series of harsh winters, bad harvests, and the Black Death. During the Renaissance, a flourishing prosperity returned to Lotharingia until the Thirty Years War, France annexed Lorraine by force in 1766, a condition that remains today. However, the population was mixed, with the north largely Germanic, speaking Lorraine Franconian, in 1871, the German Empire regained a part of Lorraine Bezirk Lothringen, corresponding to the current department of Moselle). The department formed part of the new Imperial German State of Alsace-Lorraine, however, after 1877 higher education, including state-run colleges, universities and teacher seminaries, was exclusively in German. The prevalence of German and the usage of French, though restricted, were both guaranteed by the 1911 constitution of Alsace-Lorraine. In the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the former German Empire suffered severe territorial losses, with the exception of its de facto annexation by Nazi Germany during World War II, that area has since remained a part of France. During that war, the cross of Lorraine was a symbol of Free France, the administrative region of Lorraine is larger than the 18th century duchy of Lorraine, which gradually came under French sovereignty between 1737 and 1766. The modern region includes provinces and areas that were separate from the duchy of Lorraine proper. These are, Barrois Three Bishoprics, non-contiguous territories around Metz, Verdun, several small principalities which were still part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time of the French Revolution. Some people consider the traditional province of Lorraine as limited to the duchy of Lorraine proper, while other people consider that it includes Barrois, the problem is that this duchy of Lorraine was originally the duchy of upper Lorraine, and did not include the entire area called Lorraine. Thus the duchies of Bar and Lorraine were united in personal union under the same duke, during the French Revolution, four departments were created on the main parts of the territories of Barrois, Three Bishoprics and the Duchy of Lorraine, Meuse, Meurthe, Moselle and Vosges
12.
Francis Picabia
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Francis Picabia was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism and his highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the major figures of the Dada movement in the United States. He was later associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment. Francis Picabia was born in Paris of a French mother and a Cuban father who was an attaché at the Cuban legation in Paris and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was seven. Some sources would have his father as of aristocratic Spanish descent, whereas others consider him of non-aristocratic Spanish descent, financially independent, Picabia studied under Fernand Cormon and others at the École des Arts Decoratifs in the late 1890s. Fernand Cormon took him into his academy at 104 boulevard de Clichy, from the age of 20, he lived by painting, he subsequently inherited money from his mother. In the beginning of his career, from 1903 to 1908, little churches, lanes, roofs of Paris, riverbanks, wash houses, lanes, barges—these were his subject matter. Some however, began to question his sincerity and said he copied Sisley, or that his cathedrals looked like Monet, from 1909, he came under the influence of those that would soon be called Cubists and later form the Golden Section. The same year, he married Gabrielle Buffet, around 1911 Picabia joined the Puteaux Group, members of which he met at the studio of Jacques Villon in Puteaux, a commune in the western suburbs of Paris. There he became friends with artist Marcel Duchamp and close friends with Guillaume Apollinaire, other group members included Albert Gleizes, Roger de La Fresnaye, Fernand Léger and Jean Metzinger. From 1913 to 1915 Picabia traveled to New York City several times and took part in the avant-garde movements. The magazine 291 devoted an issue to him, he met Man Ray, Gabrielle and Duchamp joined him, drugs and alcohol became a problem. He suffered from dropsy and tachycardia and these years can be characterized as Picabias proto-Dada period, consisting mainly of his portraits mécaniques. He continued the periodical with the help of Marcel Duchamp in the United States, in Zurich, seeking treatment for depression and suicidal impulses, he had met Tristan Tzara, whose radical ideas thrilled Picabia. Picabia, the provocateur, was back home, Picabia continued his involvement in the Dada movement through 1919 in Zürich and Paris, before breaking away from it after developing an interest in Surrealist art. He denounced Dada in 1921, and issued an attack against Breton in the final issue of 391. The same year, he put in an appearance in the René Clair surrealist film Entracte, the film served as an intermission piece for Picabias avant-garde ballet, Relâche, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, with music by Erik Satie
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