1.
Myrna Loy
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Myrna Loy was an American film, television and stage actress. Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to a career following a few minor roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent. During World War II, Loy served as assistant to the director of military and she was later appointed a member-at-large of the U. S. While the height of her popularity was during the 1930s and 40s, she continued to pursue stage, television. Loy was born in Helena, Montana, the daughter of Adelle Mae and rancher David Franklin Williams and she had a younger brother, David Williams. Loys paternal grandparents were Welsh, and her grandparents were Scottish and Swedish. Her first name was derived from a stop near Broken Bow, Nebraska. Her father was also a banker and real estate developer and the youngest man elected to the Montana state legislature. Her mother studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, during the winter of 1912, Loys mother nearly died from pneumonia, and her father sent his wife and daughter to La Jolla, California. Loys mother saw great potential in Southern California, and during one of her husbands visits, among the properties he bought was land he later sold at a considerable profit to Charlie Chaplin so the filmmaker could construct his studio there. Although her mother tried to persuade her husband to move to California permanently, he preferred ranch life and the three eventually returned to Montana. Loys father died on November 7,1918, of Spanish influenza, and Loys mother was able to realize her dream to permanently relocate her family to California. Loy attended the exclusive Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, California, when her teachers objected to her participating in theatrical arts, her mother enrolled her in Venice High School, and at 15, she began appearing in local stage productions. In 1921, Loy posed for Venice High School sculpture teacher Harry Fielding Winebrenner for the central figure Inspiration in his sculpture group Fountain of Education. Completed in 1922, the group was erected in front of the campus outdoor pool in May 1923 where it stood for decades. Fountain of Education can be seen in the scenes of the 1978 film Grease. Loy left school at the age of 18 to help with the familys finances and she obtained work at Graumans Egyptian Theatre, where she performed in elaborate musical sequences that were related to and served as prologues for the feature film
2.
Aspen, Colorado
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Aspen is the Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. Its population was 6,658 at the 2010 United States Census, founded as a mining camp during the Colorado Silver Boom and later named Aspen because of the abundance of aspen trees in the area, the city boomed during the 1880s, its first decade of existence. In the late 20th century, the city became a retreat for celebrities. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson worked out of a downtown hotel, singer John Denver wrote two songs about Aspen after settling there. Today the musicians and movie stars have been joined by corporate executives, as a result of this influx of wealth, Aspen boasts some of the most expensive real estate prices in the United States and many middle-class residents can no longer afford to live there. It remains a popular tourist destination, with outdoor recreation in the surrounding White River National Forest serving as a complement to the four ski areas in the vicinity. Production expanded due to the passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, by 1893, Aspen had banks, a hospital, a police department, two theaters, an opera house and electric lights. Economic collapse came with the Panic of 1893, when President Cleveland called a session of Congress. Within weeks, many of the Aspen mines were closed and thousands of miners were put out of work, eventually, after wage cuts, mining revived somewhat, but production declined and by the 1930 census only 705 residents remained. Remaining, however, were fine stocks of old buildings and residences. Aspens development as a ski resort first flickered in the 1930s when investors conceived of a ski area, friedl Pfeifer, a member of the 10th Mountain Division who had trained in the area, returned to the area and linked up with industrialist Walter Paepcke and his wife Elizabeth. The Aspen Skiing Corporation was founded in 1946 and the city became a well-known resort. Paepcke also played an important role in bringing the Goethe Bicentennial Convocation to Aspen in 1949, Aspen was now on the path to becoming an internationally known ski resort and cultural center, home of the Aspen Music Festival and School. The area would continue to grow with the development of three ski areas, Buttermilk, Aspen Highlands, and Snowmass. In 1977, notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, while in the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen for a hearing, jumped from a second-story window. He remained free for six days, hiding out on Aspen Mountain, in 1977, Aspen was thoroughly photographed for the Aspen Movie Map project funded by the U. S. Department of Defense. The Movie Map is one of the earliest examples of virtual reality software, Aspen is notable as the smallest radio market tracked by Arbitron, ranked at #302. Aspen is a Home Rule Municipality under Colorado law, an elected council of four members and the mayor supervise the citys operations, managed on a day-to-day basis by the city manager, an appointed official who serves at their pleasure
3.
Modernism
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Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief, the poet Ezra Pounds 1934 injunction to Make it new. Was the touchstone of the approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the novel, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. While J. M. W. Art critic Clement Greenberg describes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-Modernists, There the proto-Modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites actually foreshadowed Manet, with whom Modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, rationalism has also had opponents in the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and later Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom had significant influence on existentialism. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was The Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron, Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals in London, such as Paddington Station and Kings Cross Station. These technological advances led to the building of structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be and these engineering marvels radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, the philosopher Schopenhauer called into question the previous optimism, and his ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Nietzsche. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness, in particular, the notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as lower animals proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued that there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system, historians, and writers in different disciplines, have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Everdell also thinks modernism in painting began in 1885–86 with Seurats Divisionism, the poet Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, and Flauberts novel Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. In the arts and letters, two important approaches developed separately in France, the first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors. Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, the school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention
4.
Futurism
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Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, although it was largely an Italian phenomenon, there were parallel movements in Russia, England, Belgium and elsewhere. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past, Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurisms artistic style. Important Futurist works included Marinettis Manifesto of Futurism, Boccionis sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, to some extent Futurism influenced the art movements Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism. Futurism is a movement founded in Milan in 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. We want no part of it, the past, he wrote, publishing manifestos was a feature of Futurism, and the Futurists wrote them on many topics, including painting, architecture, religion, clothing and cooking. The founding manifesto did not contain an artistic programme, which the Futurists attempted to create in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. This committed them to a universal dynamism, which was to be represented in painting. The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, the Futurist painters were slow to develop a distinctive style and subject matter. In 1910 and 1911 they used the techniques of Divisionism, breaking light and color down into a field of stippled dots and stripes, which had been originally created by Giovanni Segantini and others. Later, Severini, who lived in Paris, attributed their backwardness in style and method at this time to their distance from Paris, the centre of avant-garde art. Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism and following a visit to Paris in 1911 the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists, Cubism offered them a means of analysing energy in paintings and expressing dynamism. They often painted modern urban scenes, carràs Funeral of the Anarchist Galli is a large canvas representing events that the artist had himself been involved in, in 1904. The action of an attack and riot is rendered energetically with diagonals. His Leaving the Theatre uses a Divisionist technique to render isolated, Boccionis The City Rises represents scenes of construction and manual labour with a huge, rearing red horse in the centre foreground, which workmen struggle to control. The Futurists aimed through their art thus to enable the viewer to apprehend the inner being of what they depicted, Boccioni developed these ideas at length in his book, Pittura scultura Futuriste, Dinamismo plastico. Ballas Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash exemplifies the Futurists insistence that the world is in constant movement
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Dada
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Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centers in Zürich, Switzerland at the Cabaret Voltaire, in New York, and after 1920, in Paris. The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, Dadaist artists expressed their discontent with violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with the radical left. Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness, still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning in any language, reflecting the movements internationalism. The roots of Dada lay in pre-war avant-garde, the term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 to characterize works which challenge accepted definitions of art. Cubism and the development of collage and abstract art would inform the movements detachment from the constraints of reality, the work of French poets, Italian Futurists and the German Expressionists would influence Dadas rejection of the tight correlation between words and meaning. Works such as Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry, and the ballet Parade by Erik Satie would also be characterized as proto-Dadaist works, the Dada movements principles were first collected in Hugo Balls Dada Manifesto in 1916. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I, avant-garde circles outside France knew of pre-war Parisian developments. Futurism developed in response to the work of various artists, many Dadaists believed that the reason and logic of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos, for example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest against this world of mutual destruction. According to Hans Richter Dada was not art, it was anti-art, Dada represented the opposite of everything which art stood for. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend, as Hugo Ball expressed it, For us, art is not an end in itself. But it is an opportunity for the perception and criticism of the times we live in. A reviewer from the American Art News stated at the time that Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man. Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, a systematic work of destruction and demoralization. In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege, to quote Dona Budds The Language of Art Knowledge, Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of the First World War. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition
6.
Bohemianism
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Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic, literary or spiritual pursuits. In this context, Bohemians may or may not be wanderers, adventurers, Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti-establishment political or social viewpoints, which often were expressed through free love, frugality, and—in some cases—voluntary poverty. A more economically privileged, wealthy, or even aristocratic bohemian circle is sometimes referred to as haute bohème, the term Bohemianism emerged in France in the early nineteenth century when artists and creators began to concentrate in the lower-rent, lower class, Romani neighborhoods. Literary Bohemians were associated in the French imagination with roving Romani people, outsiders apart from conventional society, the term carries a connotation of arcane enlightenment, and also carries a less frequently intended, pejorative connotation of carelessness about personal hygiene and marital fidelity. The title character in Carmen, a French opera set in the Spanish city of Seville, is referred to as a bohémienne in Meilhac and her signature aria declares love itself to be a gypsy child, going where it pleases and obeying no laws. Henri Murgers collection of short stories Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, published in 1845, was written to glorify, Murgers collection formed the basis of Giacomo Puccinis opera La bohème. In England, Bohemian in this sense initially was popularised in William Makepeace Thackerays novel, Vanity Fair, public perceptions of the alternative lifestyles supposedly led by artists were further molded by George du Mauriers highly romanticized best-selling novel of Bohemian culture Trilby. The novel outlines the fortunes of three expatriate English artists, their Irish model, and two very colorful Central European musicians, in the artist quarter of Paris. In Spanish literature, the Bohemian impulse can be seen in Ramón del Valle-Incláns play Luces de Bohemia, in his song La Bohème, Charles Aznavour described the Bohemian lifestyle in Montmartre. Also reflects the Bohemian lifestyle in Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century, in the 1850s, aesthetic bohemians began to arrive in the United States. In New York City in 1857, a group of some 15–20 young and this group gathered at a German bar on Broadway called Pffaffs beer cellar. Members included their leader Henry Clapp, Jr, walt Whitman, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and actress Adah Isaacs Menken. Similar groups in cities were broken up as well by the Civil War. During the war, correspondents began to assume the title bohemian, Bohemian became synonymous with newspaper writer. Mark Twain included himself and Charles Warren Stoddard in the category in 1867. Club member and poet George Sterling responded to this redefinition, Any good mixer of convivial habits considers he has a right to be called a bohemian, but that is not a valid claim. There are two elements, at least, that are essential to Bohemianism, the first is devotion or addiction to one or more of the Seven Arts, the other is poverty. Despite his views, Sterling associated very closely with the Bohemian Club, canadian composer Oscar Ferdinand Telgmann and poet George Frederick Cameron wrote the song The Bohemian in the 1889 opera Leo, the Royal Cadet
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T. S. Eliot
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Thomas Stearns Eliot OM was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and one of the twentieth centurys major poets. He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working and he eventually became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American citizenship. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and it was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets. He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry. The Eliots were a Boston family with roots in Old and New England, Thomas Eliots paternal grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri to establish a Unitarian Christian church there. Eliot was the last of six surviving children, his parents were both 44 years old when he was born, Eliot was born at 2635 Locust St. property owned by his grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot. His four sisters were between 11 and 19 years older, his brother was eight years older, known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns. Eliots childhood infatuation with literature can be ascribed to several factors, firstly, he had to overcome physical limitations as a child. Struggling from a congenital double inguinal hernia, he could not participate in physical activities. As he was isolated, his love for literature developed. Once he learned to read, the boy immediately became obsessed with books and was absorbed in tales depicting savages. In his memoir of Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living. Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision, I feel that there is something in having passed ones childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been here, rather than in Boston, or New York. From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French and he began to write poetry when he was fourteen under the influence of Edward Fitzgeralds Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them and his first published poem, A Fable For Feasters, was written as a school exercise and was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905. Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript and he also published three short stories in 1905, Birds of Prey, A Tale of a Whale and The Man Who Was King. The last mentioned story significantly reflects his exploration of Igorot Village while visiting the 1904 Worlds Fair of St. Louis, such a link with primitive people importantly antedates his anthropological studies at Harvard
8.
Ezra Pound
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Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic, and a major figure in the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and his best-known works include Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos. This included arranging for the publication in 1915 of Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, angered by the carnage of World War I, Pound lost faith in England and blamed the war on usury and international capitalism. Deemed unfit to stand trial, he was incarcerated in St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, while in custody in Italy, Pound had begun work on sections of The Cantos. These were published as The Pisan Cantos, for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress, triggering enormous controversy. Largely due to a campaign by his writers, he was released from St. Elizabeths in 1958. Hemingway wrote, The best of Pounds writing—and it is in the Cantos—will last as long as there is any literature, Pound was born in a small, two-story house in Hailey, Idaho Territory, the only child of Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston. His father had worked in Hailey since 1883 as registrar of the General Land Office, both parents ancestors had emigrated from England in the 17th century. On his mothers side, Pound was descended from William Wadsworth, the Wadsworths married into the Westons of New York. Harding Weston and Mary Parker were the parents of Isabel Weston, harding apparently spent most of his life without work, with his brother, Ezra Weston, and his brothers wife, Frances, looking after Mary and Isabels needs. On his fathers side, the immigrant ancestor was John Pound, a Quaker, Ezras grandfather, Thaddeus Coleman Pound, was a Republican Congressman from northwest Wisconsin who had made and lost a fortune in the lumber business. Thaddeuss son Homer, Pounds father, worked for Thaddeus in the lumber business, Homer and Isabel married the following year, and Homer built a home in Hailey. Isabel was unhappy in Hailey and took Ezra with her to New York in 1887, Homer followed them, and in 1889 he found a job as an assayer at the Philadelphia Mint. The family moved to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, and in 1893 bought a house in Wyncote. Between 1897 and 1900 Pound attended Cheltenham Military Academy, sometimes as a boarder, the boys wore Civil War-style uniforms and besides Latin were taught English, history, arithmetic, marksmanship, military drilling and the importance of submitting to authority. After the academy he may have attended Cheltenham Township High School for one year and it was at Pennsylvania in 1901 that Pound met Hilda Doolittle, his first serious romance, according to Pound scholar Ira Nadel. In 1911 she followed Pound to London and became involved in developing the Imagism movement, Pound was seeing two other women at the same time—Viola Baxter and Mary Moore—later dedicating a book of poetry, Personae, to the latter. He asked Moore to marry him too, but she turned him down and his parents and Frances Weston took Pound on another three-month European tour in 1902, after which he transferred, in 1903, to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, possibly because of poor grades
9.
William Carlos Williams
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William Carlos Williams was a Puerto Rican-American poet closely associated with modernism and imagism. His work has an affinity with painting, in which he had a lifelong interest. In addition to his writing, Williams had a career as a physician practicing both pediatrics and general medicine. He was affiliated with what was known as Passaic General Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey. The hospital, which is now known as St. Marys General Hospital, Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His grandmother, an Englishwoman deserted by her husband, had come to the United States with her son, remarried and her son, Williamss father, married a Puerto Rican woman of French Basque and Dutch Jewish descent. Williams received his primary and secondary education in Rutherford until 1897, upon leaving University of Pennsylvania, Williams did internships at both French Hospital and Childs Hospital in New York before going to Leipzig for advanced study of pediatrics. He published his first book, Poems, in 1909, Williams married Florence Herman in 1912, after he returned from Germany. They moved into a house in Rutherford, New Jersey, which was their home for many years. Shortly afterward, his book of poems, The Tempers, was published by a London press through the help of his friend Ezra Pound. Around 1914, Williams had his first son, William E. Williams, followed by his son, Paul H. Williams. His first son would grow up to follow Williams in becoming a doctor, although his primary occupation was as a family doctor, Williams had a successful literary career as a poet. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories, plays, novels, essays. He practiced medicine by day and wrote at night, in 1920, Williams was sharply criticized by many of his peers when he published one of his most experimental books, Kora in Hell, Improvisations. Pound called the work incoherent and H. D. thought the book was flippant. Three years later, Williams published one of his books of poetry, Spring and All. However, in 1922, the year it was published, the appearance of T. S. Eliots The Waste Land became a literary sensation and overshadowed Williamss very different brand of poetic Modernism. In his Autobiography, Williams would later write, I felt at once that The Waste Land had set me back twenty years, instead, Williams preferred colloquial American English
