Episode 106: Christian Dior: Fashion Designer

Christian Dior

This week Jo and Alisha will delve into the world of fashion for the first time on Arts & Facts and talk about Christian Dior.

Dior was born in Granville, France in January 1905. His father wanted his son to go into politics but Christian was interested in the arts. He opened a successful art gallery with a business partner which closed during the Great Depression.

During World War II, one of Christian's sisters fought in the Resistance and was eventually caught and sent to a concentration camp. She was eventually released and Christian created his first perfume in her honor, Miss Dior.

While Paris was occupied during WWII Christian got a lot of experience in fashion design creating clothes for Nazi officers and their wives. Not the most glamorous way to become a fashion designer, but he did learn a lot.

The House of Dior was founded December 16, 1946. His first collection was shown in 1947.

Bar Suit from the New Look Collection, 1947 & example of his full skirt design

The House of Dior is known for it's fabulous evening gowns. Wouldn't it be fantastic to have a place to wear such a creation in this day and age?

Junon Evening Dress, Autumn/Winter 1949-50

Dior's first accessories 1949

In 1955 Yves Saint Laurent, who was only nineteen at that time, came to work with Dior. He apparently made a huge impression because two years later Dior told Saint Laurent's mother he had chosen her son to succeed him. This was rather bizarre at the time because Dior was only 52 years old, and showed no signs of ill health. Later that year on October 24, 1957, Dior suffered a fatal heart attack.

Yves Saint Laurent after Dior's funeral 

We hope you enjoyed this episode on Christian Dior. If you enjoyed learning more about fashion on Arts & Facts please let us know in the comments and tell us which designers we should talk about in the future.

Next Wednesday will be another Short but Sweet! Have a great week!

Short But Sweet: Episode 13: Hindu Art

Shiva with three faces

In Hinduism there are four goals in life while on earth and a person should aspire to all four. These four goals are: Dharma (righteous living), Artha (wealth earned through the pursuit of a profession), Kama (human and sexual love), Moksha (spiritual salvation).

Hindu temples are dedicated to a deity and aimed at helping the devotee toward his or her spiritual salvation, but the other three goals of life are often represented as well, mainly in sculpture. When a viewer understands these goals they will better understand the many sensuous and seemingly secular themes that can be found on the walls of Indian temples.

Unlike Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or many other religions, Hinduism had no single founder or prophet. Parts of Hinduism can be traced to the sacred literature of the Aryans called the Vedas, which are sacred Sanskrit hymns of praise dedicated to the gods. Other parts of Hinduism came from faith in the power of the mother goddess, a belief prevalent among indigenous peoples. How Hinduism is understood in the present day emerged at about the beginning of the Christian era.

Shiva the Lord of the Dance

This modern form of Hinduism emphasizes the supremacy of the god Vishnu, the god Shiva and the goddess Shakti.

In Hinduism there are many gods, this is called polytheism and can be confusing to people who believe in one god, or monotheism. Hindu’s view their gods as different facets of one diamond.

Vishnu

Shakti, also known as Durga

In Hindu art the viewer will notice deities often portrayed with many arms, this multiplicity emphasizes the power of the deity and the ability to accomplish many astonishing acts of power at one time. If two arms is good, six arms is great. Demons are often depicted with many heads, this is done to indicate their supreme power. When deities are shown with more than one head this is generally an attempt to show the different aspects of their character. For example, if you see the god Shiva portrayed with three heads, the head in the center is his “essential” character while the other two heads could depict his fierce and blissful characteristics.

In Hindu art, just like any religious art, the more you understand of the religion, the more you will appreciate and understand the art.

Lord Rama with Arrows

We apologize for not having the Kandinsky episode up, illness in the ranks prevented us from recording it. We hope you enjoy this SBS on Hindu Art. Join us next week for or first episode delving into fashion! Jo and Alisha will be talking about Christian Dior.

Episode 105: Victorian Fairy Painting

Fairy painting started in Victorian England and is uniquely British. It was heavily influenced by Shakespeare, especially Midsummer's Night Dream and The Tempest but was also influenced by books such as The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope.

Cultural issues, the difficulties of the Industrial Revolution, poverty and the fast changes in society were overwhelming for the general populous. People found their happy place in Fairy Paintings.

Fuseli, Fairy Mab,  c. 1815

Fuseli, Titania Awakening, 1785

William Blake, Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, c.1786

 Fuseli and Blake can be considered the prototype of the Fairy genre.

Richard Dadd, Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, 1855-64, Tate Britain

Richard Dadd is probably the most well know Fairy painter of the Victorian Age, but he was unknown in his lifetime, having spent most of his life in Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital.

Joseph Noel Paton, The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, 1847

Joseph Noel Paton was the most well known Fairy painter of the Victorian era.

Turner, Queen Mab's Cave, 1846, Tate Britain

Even artists who were well respected for other genre's of painting, like JMW Turner, dabbled in Fairy Painting.

Edward Robert Hughes, Midsummer's Eve, 1908

John Anster Fitzgerald, The Captive Robin, 1864

John Anster Fitzgerald, Fairies looking through a Gothic Arch, C. 1864

John Atkinson Grimshaw, Spirit of the Night, 1879

Rackhum, A Fairy, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, 1906

Rackham, The Fairies of the Serpentine, 1906

The beginning of World War I brought the popularity of Fairy painting to an end, but Arthur Rackham created amazing fairy illustrations.

Here's a bonus painting for you! I love the rabbit.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Next week Carrie and Carolyne will be talking about Kandinsky!

Episode 104: Deconstruction Art

Deconstructionism, by it's simplest definition, is the process of taking concepts apart and putting them back together again sideways or inside-out. It began in France in the late 1980's and is often associated with the philosopher Jacques Derrida. He was very interested in fragmentation and taking things apart, to use objects in a way that they were not typically used.

Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette, 1984-87

Parc de la Villette, Dragon Slide

Daniel Libeskind, Zhang ZhiDong and Modern Industrial Museum

Peter Eiseman, Wexner Center For the Arts

 Eiseman, City of Culture of Galicia

Zaha Hadid, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, 2012

Dancing House, Prague, Czech Republic

Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, Las Vegas, Nevada

Los Carpinteros, Cama,

Los Carpinteros, Free Basket

We hope you enjoyed this episode on Deconstruction Art! Next week Julia & Alisha will be talking about Victorian Fairy painting! See you next Wednesday!

Episode 103: A&F Top 10 Scottish Ruins

Welcome to Arts and Facts Top 10 Scottish Ruins! 

Here we go...

10. Dryburgh Abbey

9. Minggary Castle

8. Sweetheart Abbey

7.Edinburgh Castle

6.Dunluce Castle

5. Duart Castle

4. Elgin Cathedral

3.Skara Brae

2. Linlithgow Palace

1. St Mary's Abbey, Melrose

  

Well, that's it for this episode! Join us next week when Carrie and Jo talk about Deconstruction Art!

Episode 102: Blue

Azure, indigo, sapphire, cobalt, beryl, cerulean, cyan, ultramarine. Incase you didn't get our little hint, on this week Julia and Carolyne will be talking about the color blue and its influence in art history. Our topic was inspired by the Blue episode of the BBC documentary The History of Art in Three Colours. If you would like to watch the episode, click the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h83jaUTBlX0

Lapis Lazuli

In the Western world blue was a latecomer to be used in art, design and even dying fabric. Making good blue dye was difficult. For centuries plants were most commonly used to create blue dyes, plants like woad and indigo were popular in Europe and Asia. The arrival of lapis lazuli in Venice changed everything.

Ancient Egyptian figurine in Egyptian Blue

Ancient Egyptians created the very first synthetic blue known as Egyptian Blue by grinding lime, silica, copper and alkali together.

For the Ancient Egyptians blue would protect the dead from evil in the afterlife. It was used for funerary urns, statuary and figurines. They also dyed the fabric a mummy was wrapped in blue.

Saint Denis Basilica, Paris

Blue wasn't typically used in stained glass windows until the middle ages, when the Saint Denis Basilica was rebuilt in Paris. They used cobalt in the windows which when mixed with the red glass created a bluish violet light that filled the cathedral. That particular color came to be known as bleu de Saint Denis.

Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy

While blue had been used extensively by the Byzantines, particularly in mosaics it had not been used in clothing.

Bellini, Lochis Madonna, abt 1470-75

Pretty soon blue was the color of royalty, wealth and religion. Of course this kind of made sense since they were the only ones who could afford to buy it. When ultramarine began to be used in depicting the Virgin Mary, the color blue became a symbol of virtue, holiness and humility. The church even tried to make blue it’s own, saying it could only be used for religious symbolism.

Giotto, Arena Chapel, 1305

Giotto was one of the first Italian Renaissance painters to use ultramarine. The barrel vaulted ceiling is painted blue, not to represent the sky, but heaven. The portraits on the ceiling, encased in circles are God and Saints looking down from heaven. The Arena Chapel is considered one of the masterpieces of western art.

Titian, Pesaro Altarpiece, 1519-1526

The church tried to control ultramarine by inflating prices, at one point is was more expensive than gold. Since blue was the color of the divine, it was only used for the Virgin Mary. Titian, bad ass that he was, broke the churches control and rules associates with it in the Pesaro Altarpiece.

Some examples from Picasso's Blue Period

In Picasso’s case, his Blue Period had to do with sadness and mourning. Picasso sank into a depression in late 1901 and began painting in blue tones because of the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas. His blue's were not ultramarine, but darker more melancholy tones.

Other artists, like Gauguin and Van Gogh, used blue to represent “deepest emotion”.

Kandinsky, Der Blaue Reiter,1903 & Marc, Tower of Blue Horses, 1913

The Movement is also the title of a Kandinsky painting from 1903. The name Blaue Reiter (“blue rider”) refers to a key motif in Kandinsky’s work: the horse and rider, which was for him a symbol for moving beyond realistic representation. The horse was also a prominent subject in Marc’s work, which centered on animals as symbols of rebirth.

For Kandinsky, the properties of Blue were deep, inner, supernatural, peaceful “Sinking towards black, it has the overtone of a mourning that is not human.”

Klein, Various art pieces, Pompidou Center, Paris

Yves Klein believed that blue could change the world. He approached the chemist, Edouard Adam to help him develop the perfect shade of blue and in 1957 he trademarked the color as International Klein Blue. Everything he painted was blue! Klein made his first monochrome painting in 1949 and began his so-called 'blue period' in 1957; he then continued to make blue monochrome paintings called mono paintings which he called OPEN WINDOWS TO FREEDOM.

The Leap Into the Void, 1960

In conclusion, is it any wonder that we as human beings are so entranced by the color blue, it is after all, the color of our planet.

Bill Anders, Earthrise,1968

On December 24, 1968 as the astronauts of Apollo 8 were taking pictures of the moon, Bill Anders happened to look at the window and see the Earth and is rose over the moon's horizon. He took the picture above, forever changing humankind's view of Earth and our place in the Universe.

RECENTLY—Ken Murphy, a computer programmer  built a rig to photograph the sky once every 10 seconds for a year. The resulting time-lapse video collage is a kaleidoscope of shifting weather patterns. Murphy’s project is one of more than 150 featured in The Art of Tinkering. (link and video)


We hope you enjoyed this episode on the color Blue. Next week Alisha and Jo will be talking about Scottish Ruins!