On the 2nd of December 1867, Charles Dickens gave his first public reading in the United States at the Tremont Temple, Boston where he read A Christmas Carol (1843) to an American audience for the first time. This was his second and final trip to the New World – three years later, after a long […]
Category Archives: Politics
Was Camus a Sisyphus or a Stranger?
posted by ArtLark
On the 7th of November 1913, Albert Camus, a French Noble Prize winning author, philosopher and journalist, was born in Dréan, French Algeria. Known for literary landmarks, such as The Stranger, The Plague or The Fall, he is considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Initially a close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus’ rejection […]
Goebbels, Reich and Art
posted by ArtLark
On the 29th of October 1897, Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt, Germany. He was one of the closest associates of Adolf Hitler and a zealously devoted propagandist of National Socialism in Nazi Germany. Between 1933 and 1945 he held the position of Reich Minister of Propaganda and contributed significantly to the initial success of […]
American Concentration Camps in Masumi Hayashi’s Photoramas
posted by ArtLark
On the 3rd of September 1945, Japanese-American photographer Masumi Hayashi was born in Rivers, Arizona, in the Gila River War Relocation Camp, an internment camp built by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) for the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Shortly after the end of the war, her family moved to Los Angeles, where she began her education, […]
Women’s Suffrage and the American Presidency
posted by ArtLark
On the 28th of August 1917, ten Suffragists were arrested for picketing in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. This marked one of the most dramatic points in the American suffragist campaigns. Earlier that year, in January, an ever growing number of women started parading in front of the iconic building and expressing their […]
Amir Naderi: Iranian Cinema after the Revolution
posted by ArtLark
On the 15th of August 1946, Iranian film director, screenwriter and photographer Amir Naderi was born in Abadan, Iran. He is considered one of the major directors of Iranian cinema before and after the Iranian Revolution (1978-79). Orphaned at a very young age, he was raised by a maternal aunt until he was old enough […]
Jan Sawka: Political Posters and the Polish Solidarity Movement
posted by ArtLark
On the 9th of August 2012, Polish painter, printmaker, graphic artist, set designer and architect Jan Sawka died in his home in High Falls, New York. Jan Sawka was the son of an architect father and linguist mother. His childhood was overshadowed by his father’s Stalin-era political imprisonment. Sawka completed two Master degrees: in Painting and Printmaking, from […]
Colour and Meaning in Disney’s Flowers and Trees
posted by ArtLark
On the 30th of July 1932, Flowers and Trees, a Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney and directed by Burt Gillett, was released to American theatres by United Artists agency. It was the first commercially released movie to be produced in the full-colour three-strip Technicolor process after several years of two-colour Technicolor films. Flowers […]
George Grosz: War→Madness→Dada
posted by ArtLark
On the 26th of July 1893, German artist George Grosz was born in Berlin. From an early age, Grosz had passionate ideological views. In January 1919, he was arrested during the Spartakus uprising in Berlin, a general strike accompanied by armed battles, which was being suppressed by the Weimar government, marking the end of the […]
Censorship in Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’
posted by ArtLark
On the 16th of July 1951, The Catcher in the Rye, a novel by J. D. Salinger was published by Little, Brown and Company in the United States. Initially intended for an adult audience, the book soon found its own readership and has since become enormously popular with adolescents, mainly as it explores themes such as teenage […]