The novel, Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, focuses on a 17 year old teenager who has an Italian background called Josephine Alibrandi. Josephine is really two different people at the beginning and the end of the book. In the beginning, Josephine is overdramatic, poised to react to her Italian background and her illegitimacy. At…
Les Miserables known in English as “The Terrible” is a musical portrayal of the French Revolution. It is a musical tragedy, which served as a major powerhouse competitor for Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals in the early eighties and nineties. When first debuting on Broadway in 1987 it traveled a long hard road to compete with…
Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrenceville, Massachusetts on August 25, 1918. He was the first born child of Samuel and Jennie Bernstein, who lived in Boston, but had gone to Lawrenceville to visit some relatives. Bernstein’s parents had little knowledge of, or interest in classical music. The only records Leonard remembers hearing on his family…
Famous American silent movie actor was Douglas Fairbanks was born in Denver, Colorado on May 23, 1889. His father Charles Ulman escaped his responsibility of fatherhood by separating with his wife and leaving his two sons Douglas and Robert with their mother. However, his sons had some happy memories about their father. Their mother Ella…
Kathe Kollwitz was born in 1867 and died in 1945. She was a powerful, intense artist who produced works of great tenderness. Her two artworks ‘Woman with dead child’ and ‘Unemployment’ revel the suffering of humanity and social working class. Kathe Kollwitz was greatly influenced by the hardships of humanity, her main subjects being body…
Many of you know her as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. But there was much more trouble behind Judy Garland than just a pair of ruby slippers. At the young and innocent age of 17 she starred in her 7th film, “The Wizard of Oz”. The same year she had her hand and shoe…
Juan Gris (born Jose Victoriano Gonzalez) was brought up in Madrid 1887; in 1906 he fled to France to avoid military conscription, where he joined the circle of avant-garde poets and artists (which included Braque). His first works were post-impressionist still life but he soon eagerly followed the path towards abstraction right behind Picasso and…
Jean Basquiat was brought into this world in 1960 and grew up in New York. His mother was Afro-Puerto Rican, father was Haitian, and both were middle class citizens. He didn’t try to keep his background from the public, and did not exhibit shame or the need to reverse negative stereotypes about African-Americans, but rather…
Jan Van Eyck was a Flemish painter born 1390 in Maaseik, Belgium and died 1441 in Bruges, Belgium. Eyck was associated with the Renaissance, Flemish School (Ars Nova) movement. Famous paintings and artwork of this artist include Arnolfini et sa femme and Vierge au chancelier Rolin. Jan van Eyck is considered to be a founder…
Jackson Pollock was a revolutionary painter and took his methods to new heights so that he could work more directly with the canvas to show pure emotion within his art work. In 1938, Jackson Pollock went to see a psychoanalysis to help him get over a drinking problem, but he couldn’t express himself well enough…
People all around the world know the voice of James Earl Jones. From Star Wars fans listening to the voice of Darth Vader to news junkies who hear a voice that dramatically intones “This is CNN” just before all the cable network’s station breaks to children who hear the stately voice of the majestic Mufasa,…
Helena P. Blavatsky was born H elene Petrovna von Hahn on August 12, 1831 (new style calendar), in Ekaterinoslav, now Dnepropetrovsk, Russia. Her father, Peter von Hahn, a captain in the horse artillery of the Russian army, was a direct descendent of Count von Rottenstern-Hahn of Mecklenburg, Germany, who had emigrated to Russia in the…
Gustave Caillebotte was the first impressionist that painted realistic, photo paintings. Caillebotte was born in 1848, he was a French painter that was really influenced by impressionism. Mostly all of Caillebotte’s work was, oil on canvas style. He painted Paris Street; Rainy Day in 1877. Caillebotte was one of the less known impressionist painter during…
In the movie, many things portrayed are the same as what really happened in Roman history. Some things though, are a little different in the actual history of Rome than in the movie. Scenes were changed in the movie too, to make the plot more interesting. Maximus was the general of Rome and a really…
During the early twentieth century, women suffered from discrimination and inferiority. An exception to this case was Georgia O’Keeffe, who captured the attention of the world with her paintings. She was the only female of her generation to be accepted as a professional artist. Art critic Henry McBride noted, “Mona Lisa got but one portrait…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in August 27, 1770, in southwest Germany, in a town called Stuttgart. His father was a civil servant in the department of finance. He had one sister and a brother. Throughout growing up and studying, he was known as “the old man” because of his strict study habits. However,…
Garry Winogrand was born in New York City in 1928; he became interested in photography in the late 1940’s when he was in the United States Air Force. When he was done his term of duty, he went on to City College in New York City to study painting. A year later he went to…
Georges Bizet, who is best known for his opera, Carmen, has remained somewhat of a mystery as far as his musical education, social life, and personal life. He is not like so many other composers and musicians of the Romantic Period who led a highly publicized life like Hector Berlioz, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, or Johannes…
One of Britain’s leading post-war painters, Frank Auerbach is among the most internationally acclaimed and collected of living artists from Britain. The painting style of Frank Auerbach is both compactly expressionistic and highly individual. Determined by his desire to capture the spirit and reality of people and places, his paintings, which he works and re-works,…
“The artist’s vision is more important than tradition.” Francisco de Goya, a Spanish artist, believed that the most important thing was to draw what he saw rather than following the traditional style. Unlike any other artists of his time, Goya did not tend to imitate Renaissance arts targeting classical subject matters. Instead, he tried to…
