September 29

Breaking Boundaries in TV Drama

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On the 29th of September 2013, the long-awaited final episode of American drama Breaking Bad (2008-2013) was aired to U.S. television audiences. Vince Gilligan’s AMC TV series turned out to be a complex and complicated work of cinematic art. The most striking first impression is the film’s atmospheric intensity. The warm hues of the American southwest landscape with […]

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September 28

English Utopia in the Art of Helen Allingham

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On the 28th of September 1926, Victorian water-colourist and illustrator Helen Allingham, born Helen M. E. Paterson, died in Haslemere, Surrey, England. Her career “was circumscribed by, relied upon, and exceeded accepted norms of landscape painting in the nineteenth century. She painted out-of-doors, for example, a common mode of practice none the less considered suspect […]

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September 27

Drawing with Light: The Photographs of Olive Cotton

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On the 27th of September 2003, modernist photographer Olive Cotton died in Koorawatha, New South Wales, Australia. Her work shows an interchange between the pictorialist style and ‘modernism’ (New Photography), which superseded the former in Australia in the 1930s. Cotton was introduced to the arts, science and a love of nature at an early age. Her mother, Florence, […]

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September 26

Marcel Proust and his Mother: A Unique Bond

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On the 26th of September 1905, Jeanne Clémence Weil, mother of writer Marcel Proust, died in Ile de France, Paris. Madame Proust, as she was to be known, seeing as Marcel never got married, was born Jewish on both sides of her family. Her genealogy actually shows that Marcel Proust and Karl Marx were distant cousins, albeit seven […]

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September 25

Aesthetic Delirium in Jack Smith’s ‘Flaming Creatures’

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On the 25th of September 1989, American filmmaker, photographer, performance artist, and pioneer of underground cinema Jack Smith died in New York City, New York. From the early 1960s through most of the 1980s, he was a key figure in American avant-garde film and theatre. His works, marked by a deceptively playful camp sensibility, combine […]

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September 24

Gay Georgian London: Horace Walpole Amongst the ‘Finger-Twirlers’

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On the 24th of September 1717, Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician, was born in London. Although the son of the first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, he is largely remembered in our times for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London, where he […]

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September 23

Paul Delvaux: Secret Facets of Surrealism

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On the 23rd of September 1897, Belgian painter and printmaker Paul Delvaux was born in Antheit, Belgium. His original style and the mysterious, almost mystical, themes he employed in his art, place him outside ‘the box’ of any formal art movement. Between 1920 and 1924, Delvaux studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. His […]

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September 22

The Musical Brush of M. K. Ciurlionis

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On the 22nd of September 1875, Lithuanian painter, composer and writer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was born in Senoji Varėna, the Russian Empire. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau at the turn of the century and is seen as one of the earliest experimenters with abstraction in European art. The majority of his paintings are housed in the […]

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September 21

Modernity and the Body: Sascha Schneider’s Bodybuilders

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On the 21st of September 1870, German painter and sculptor Sascha Schneider was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. During his childhood his family lived in Zürich, Switzerland, but following the death of his father, Schneider moved to Dresden, Germany, where in 1889 he became a student at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. In 1903 […]

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September 20

Gertrud Arndt: Photo Pioneer of Female ‘Self-Disguise’

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On the 20th of September 1903, German Bauhaus photographer Gertrud Arndt was born in Hantschk Ratibor, Upper Silesia. Arndt studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau (under Klee, Gropius and Itten), where she subsequently also taught. Her primary discipline was weaving, her textile designs showcasing the rigid geometric pattern-making typical of the Bauhaus aesthetic. “She must […]

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